The video game industry is in a state of flux, and that’s putting it lightly. Whatever emerges will necessarily look nothing like our current moment’s fissuring landmass, and perhaps that metaphor is not entirely inapt: Maybe it’s time for the video game industry to balkanize. On the latest Aftermath Hours, we talk about what that might look like.
This time around, we’re joined by game developer, consultant, and general industry luminary Rami Ismail to discuss his new Levelling The Playing Field series of courses aimed at making “the critical less-spoken parts of indie gamedev accessible away from expensive visa-locked hotel bars.” These come at a time when the industry finds itself in a state of freefall, with layoffs and closures ravaging triple-A studios while indies are forced to appease the ever-changing whims of Steam and penny-pinching publishers. We talk about what it means to release something like this now and whether chunks of it are potentially outdated on launch, as well as the ways indies and publishers—in their attempts to head money troubles off at the pass—often play it too safe and doom themselves to obscurity in the process.
Speaking of doom, we then move on to Saudi Arabia’s deal to purchase EA, which finally went through this week. What will this mean for the company and the many studios under its umbrella? Obviously the future is vast and unknowable, but the answer is layoffs. Finally, we speculate as to what would happen if the world ended tomorrow and, eons later, aliens dug through the ruins (they’d correctly ascertain that Stardew Valleyslaps).
You can find this week’s episode below and on Spotify, Apple, or wherever else you prefer to listen to podcasts. If you like what you hear, leave a review so that we can make our own series of courses full of knowledge accessible only if you visit extremely cheap hotel bars (or the floors/couches of friends’ houses we stay at when attending conferences).
Here’s an excerpt from our conversation (edited for length and clarity):
Rami:One thing I do like—and this is true more so in Europe and Latin America; Asia is sort of its own thing—you’re seeing a lot of local events really flourish at this present time. We’re talking about larger events like Gamescom, which has been expanding into LATAM as well, but also very small, specialized events that focus on a specific genre or a specific region or a specific style of making games. There’s conferences for narrative games. There’s conferences for mobile games. There’s conferences for Spanish games. All of this is happening. That is exciting to me. That is good.
From the bottom of my heart, the biggest wish I have for this whole thing is to just shatter. I want this industry to just shatter into a million beautiful shards that all have their own heroes, their own things, their own structures, their own funding methods—instead of everything being like “You’re trying to make a tiny narrative game? Yeah, can you make your budget $500k+? Because we don’t really do under $500k.” And it’s like, I’m trying to build a narrative game that lasts two hours and is about a dog that I saw last week. I don’t need $500k, but then the publisher has no idea how to do that. Let it shatter.
Nathan: You want the video game industry to balkanize.
Rami: Yeah, a million different things. I want a million different industries. And we do it [in some cases]. You can look at Draknek & Friends for puzzle games. You want strategy games? It’s kinda Hooded Horse. We’re seeing different verticals; different parts of the industry are starting to create their own structures—because fitting everything into one structure is insane. It’s a terrible idea. But we’ve done it.
Nathan: Now that’s collapsing, which I think brings us pretty elegantly to EA. It’s one of the many major publishers that is now crumbling, and so in swoops Saudi Arabia—and, you know, some private equity, but mostly Saudi Arabia—with a giant bag of money, saying, “OK, we are gonna save you.” But that’s “save” in finger quotes, because Saudi Arabia is actually going to strip EA for parts, and it’s going to be a fucking bloodbath.
Rami:Pretty much right out of the gate. What was it? $1.8 billion in interest every year?
Nathan: Yeah, their debt has gone from around $2 billion to $20 billion. To account for that, EA is looking to cut $700 million in annual costs.
Rami: You mean people.
Saudi Arabia’s deal to purchase EA is going to cause a lot of pain, but it’s officially happening
AftermathNathan Grayson
