Is It TOO LATE To Save The Video Game Industry?
Is It TOO LATE To Save The Video Game Industry?
We are at war. Gaming is under siege and the attackers are within the industry. For the better part of the decade, especially within the last 5 years, gamers, the ones who made the industry the billion dollar complex it is and keep the machine rolling with their hard-earned dollars, have been public enemy number one. Currently, nearly the entire gaming industry is in free fall. Countless big budget releases massively underperforming, endless rounds of layoffs and studio closures, and millions upon millions of dollars in profits lost year over year. So how did we get here, and more importantly, can gaming be saved or are we on the verge of another collapse?
Welcome to MojoPlays and today, we’re going to try to save our favorite hobby and the gaming industry from itself.
It’s hard to pinpoint when exactly gaming turned so antagonistic as the majority of games came and went with very little controversy, but if I had to pinpoint the igniting spark, I’d have to say among other real world events of the time, it was probably the release of “The Last of Us Part 2” in 2020. Now I’m not going to pretend that Laura Bailey and Naughty Dog themselves didn’t receive a lot of backlash and threats, which is absolutely ridiculous and never should have happened, but beyond those things, it was Naughty Dog’s response to the backlash against their story and characters that seemed to tip the scales. After fans were understandably upset over Joel’s untimely death and rightfully called out how easily Joel let himself fall into a trap, especially after the events of the first game, Naughty Dog went on the defensive, copyright striking YouTube channels for daring to voice their opinion about the game. Now besides this being a gross misuse of the copyright protections on YouTube, had they simply put their head in the sand and let fans and critics alike talk openly about the game, it’s likely much of the backlash would have subsided over time, especially since the game has received a re-evaluation by many fans in recent years. This is much like how Kojima ignored the backlash to the Raiden bait-and-switch back in “Metal Gear Solid 2”, and that game has since become regarded as one of the best and most important games on the PS2. And yet, because of their overreaction, the Naughty Dog brand as a whole has been irreparably damaged, and you need only look at the extremely negative reaction to what should and could have been the start of a brand new chapter for the studio with Intergalactic, only to see that sentiment has not changed whatsoever in the last 5 years. But we can’t put all the blame on one studio, no, this is a problem that affects nearly every single studio, media outlet, and gaming community.
Gaming has gone mainstream and because of this, naturally bad actors have found a way inside in an attempt to influence the medium from within. For decades, gaming was viewed as a childish pastime, something you partake in as a kid and then presumably grow out of as you get older. However, gaming has widely become recognized as one of the most profitable forms of entertainment in the world, with players of all ages and demographics continuing to play well into their golden years. And much like film, television and even literature, those with their own agendas and ideals couldn’t leave well enough alone and began to warp that which is loved by millions around the world.
With the rise of social media, so-called gaming journalists began openly attacking gamers in an attempt to shut down discourse, no matter what the game or the commentary surrounding it was. Gamers have been labeled every possible name in the book simply for disagreeing with the direction of the industry. And it's not just from the mainstream gaming sites either. Game developers themselves have become emboldened, openly attacking their customer base for something as minor as asking the most basic questions about a game. The entire industry has become infected by an anti-gamer sentiment and it has become rotten to its core. Community managers are especially egregious in this space. Banning commentators and fans for no reason other than the crime of: *checks notes* having a difference of opinion. Dictating their rule and voice to be that of the company that employs them and completely destroying many games’ reputations before the game even releases.
The pursuit for more diversity in the medium, which was never an issue before, through the groupthink of DEI, or Diversity, Equity and Inclusion has been morphed and twisted into something altogether much more sinister. The forced implementation of DEI has resulted in games becoming nothing more than platforms or soapboxes for people who don’t even care about gaming. Funnily enough, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion only applies to specific groups and is only inclusive to those who agree with everything the group represents, full stop. DEI has instead become “Destroy Everything from the Inside” as they force their ideologies onto a customer base simply looking for the escapism they once enjoyed. And God forbid you don’t agree with these ideas. Numerous gamers have received death threats, been deplatformed, canceled and even doxed or SWATed for simply having a difference of opinion. And yet for all the controversy over the numerous threats against Naughty Dog and Laura Bailey, these events largely go unreported with mainstream journalists siding with big name publishers either to not lose their exclusive access or because they agree with the developers' politics.
Gaming has always been a naturally diverse story-telling medium with numerous characters from all walks of life having prominent roles within games. And in the old days, these characters were represented as actual human beings, capable but flawed, intelligent but naive, and generally portrayed as everyday human beings, warts and all. However, in the modern day pursuit of diversity, equity and inclusion, all these basic human elements are stripped away, leaving nothing but perfection of the human existence, incapable of being anything less and always superior to all those around them while always going out of their way to make sure they don’t offend anyone ever. This is no better personified than in the recent “girl boss” trope many developers and writers mistake for “strong, female characters.” These “Mary Sues” are the bestest at absolutely everything, perfection personified, and always have to remind everyone else in the room how much better they are than their contemporaries. Look no further than Aloy from the Horizon series. Whereas in Zero Dawn, Aloy was still naive about the world and would make mistakes as she learned and grew as a character, in Forbidden West, she is the greatest, smartest and most capable human being on the planet, flawless in her execution of everything, with all others falling over themselves to behold her greatness. This is another reason Naughty Dog’s upcoming Intergalactic has become so instantly reviled. First impressions matter, and the arrogant, over-confident girl boss aura coming off new protagonist Jordan could single-handedly power the feminist movement for the next six generations.
This isn’t even mentioning the constant race swaps of established characters, the continued uglification of female characters, “game writers” purposely ignoring or outright rewriting canonical lore just to fit their agenda, and just the general PC nature the entire western industry has shifted towards at such an accelerated pace it could have sunk the Titanic on its own. Now, I say specifically western developers, because the Asian market has been single-handedly carrying the industry in the last couple of years. And this is an issue almost exclusive to western developers too. While western devs have been focusing on social justice issues, self inserts, and over-politicizing the gaming space, Asian devs have been giving gamers what they actually want: fun games with interesting worlds, mechanics, compelling stories and beautiful characters. For every Kay Vess, there’s an Eve, for every Jordan, there is a Tifa. For western devs, even legacy characters are no longer safe from this de-beautification. Look no further than the entire character roster of Concord, Mary Jane between Spider-Man 2018 and Spider-Man 2, Joanna Dark in the Perfect Dark reboot, or worst of all, what they’ve done to Lara Croft. And gamers have resoundingly rejected all of this being forced by western dev studios.
Controversial or not, DEI has been one of the most detrimental implementations in gaming. Ever. Gone are the days when delivering a solid product and putting in the work were what it took to advance and make a name for yourself in the industry. Now, it’s based on your background, your preferences and checking all the right ideological boxes. Promotions are no longer based on merit or qualifications and many dedicated lifelong employees are getting passed over for diversity hires with little to no background within gaming and even given high ranking positions. Along with this new hiring practice comes more bloated staff, full of unqualified people who go out of their way to hire former associates and other equally unqualified individuals who bring nothing of worth to a given project. This in turn also comes with even more downsides as these individuals are more focused on their activism rather than their actual job. Countless former employees from studios describe toxic work environments in which everyone walks on eggshells in what has been designated as “toxic positivity” leading to no pushback or criticism of any kind being allowed within the workplace. This isn’t your “safe space”, this is a job.
Talentless people hiring other talentless people to create a product no one wants all while viciously attacking anyone online who speaks out against the direction of the industry. This isn’t even mentioning the outside consulting firms. For some reason, these gaming giants who used to have no problem creating sprawling, detailed worlds with beloved and fleshed out, well written characters, suddenly need writing consultants? What? You need only look at disasters Suicide Squad and Forspoken to get a sense of the writing capabilities of these consulting agencies, who also happen to charge exorbitant fees for their services, while fundamentally destroying everything they touch. Derivative, cliche riddled narratives that go out of their way to be as inoffensive as possible at the cost of saying anything meaningful. Compare the writing between Spider-Man 2018 and Spider-Man 2 as a prime example. Suddenly, everyone is talking as if HR is lurking right around the corner.
This also means that many beloved heroes need to be completely torn down and or punished seemingly for no other reason than fans’ adoration for them. Suddenly, Lara Croft from Tomb Raider is no longer a treasure hunter, but is now a “Seeker of Truth”. No one had any issue with the Tomb Raider series beyond Lara’s bust size throughout her entire gaming catalogue, even into the reboot trilogy, until some social justice warriors came in and told everyone that what Lara had been doing for the better part of 2 decades was wrong and you should feel bad for enjoying it. Now you can’t even boot up the recent Remasters without a ridiculous word salad from the devs at the beginning condoning her actions. Calling back to Joel and his abysmal treatment from The Last of Us Part 2 for a moment, no one had a problem playing as Ellie in the sequel. No one. And there were undoubtedly numerous other ways they could have still told the story they did without killing Joel in such an undignified manner, which ended up feeling like nothing more than the devs purposely being mean spirited for the simple reason that fans loved Joel, identified and sympathized with him and that was apparently not the message Naughty Dog wanted to be taken from their game, therefore fans must be punished. And the same thing happened again in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and their send-off for Kevin Conroy’s final performance as the definitive Batman. Noticing a pattern yet?
These DEI hires and consulting groups also lead to another major issue. Bloat. Studios that used to produce incredible games with barely 100 people are suddenly ballooning alongside their budgets with not only multiple studios, but hundreds, sometimes thousands working on a single title. And the products don’t match the growth. Gamers have become beta testers, playing games with massive Day 1 patches or being encouraged to revisit a game a year after launch because it’s “fixed” now. Concord, a game that cost somewhere in the ballpark of $400 million, not including what Sony spent to acquire the studio, has an hour and fifteen minutes of credits. FOR WHAT!? Who are these people? What EXACTLY did they do to make this game? It certainly doesn’t look, feel, or play like a feature length movie’s worth of developers worked on it. Millions upon millions of dollars for a game absolutely no one wanted and no one played.
Recent successes like Black Myth Wukong whose development team consisted of roughly 140 people, or Stellar Blade, with its staff of 300, arguably delivered better products than anything major AAA studios have put out this entire generation and probably even the previous one. And you know what? Despite coordinated and manipulative hit pieces based on manufactured controversy by mainstream journalists, both games were resounding commercial successes. Hell, my most anticipated game of 2025, Expedition 33 has only 30 developers working on it. 30! And that game’s production, art design and creativity is light years ahead of anything else we’re expected to receive from a major studio in the near future. Shocking what you can accomplish when you bring together passionate people who only want to entertain and create something new and exciting, isn’t it?
And yet, big AAA or AAAA studios, (eh Microsoft?) are constantly having to bring in even MORE studios to develop their games, while having the absolute nerve to start talking about charging gamers $100 for games going forward. That’s right, some lunatics out there are trying to use GTA6 to push the idea that due to ballooning costs of game development GTA6 could be the first $100 game to set the standard for the industry for no other reason than it's the most anticipated game this generation. All while completely overlooking the fact that with all the special editions, DLCs, skins, content packs and so on, video games already cost well over $100 for the complete experience. It’s just the sheer audacity to ask your customer base to pay more while continuing to release games that no one wants or plays that end up falling well below the quality of anything we received even two decades ago.
This also brings up another point of contention, the constant stream of “safe games”. The PS5 and Xbox Series have become nothing but expensive boxes for a constant stream of remakes and remasters, wasting valuable resources and developers on re-releasing last-gen content on current-gen hardware. This generation, the PS5 has seen less than 50 PS5 exclusive games, with only a handful of these coming from internal studios. After wasting years developing live-service titles no one was demanding, Sony canceled almost all of them, forcing those studios to start from scratch and likely not even release a single game this generation. And don’t even get me started on Xbox. After spending billions of dollars acquiring some of the biggest development and publishing companies in the world, what does Microsoft have to show for it? Countless flops, bug-riddled games, and now a push for everything to be an Xbox console. This is truly the weakest and most pointless gaming generation of the last 30 years.
This focus on safe games has also completely crippled the industry, with recycled content being pushed as new and exciting, focusing primarily on legacy properties while being completely risk averse to anything new that doesn’t immediately become a blockbuster financial hit. Publishers have turned to rebooting the entire series, betting on nostalgia and brand recognition to create the next blockbuster, while at the same time, updating the game for the mythical modern audience and disrespecting the property in the process. Legacy characters are often neutered, pale imitations of themselves pushed to the background by new, diverse characters who constantly belittle them while establishing their superiority. The bait-and-switch tactic has become so commonplace, many fans are able to easily spot it and rightfully reject these titles by voting with their wallets. The pursuit of safe financial investments has also seen the closure of numerous high profile studios with many of them either being shut down completely or absorbed into bigger, more recognizable properties. Activision with Call of Duty and Ubisoft with Assassin’s Creed are the biggest offenders in this department. Anything that isn’t an immediate commercial success is squashed usually within the same fiscal year as publishers quickly try to recoup their costs to please their corporate shareholder overlords.
Which leads me to my next point: video games are no longer designed for gamers. They're created solely to fulfill profit quotas, the shadowy organizations and individuals who bankroll these publishers to churn out a constant stream of mediocre products and blaming their customer base for their failures. The recent push for games to appeal to a “modern audience” has also been a significant financial blunder for the industry. The pursuit of new players while blacklisting and disowning the dedicated fan bases than made the gaming industry the billion dollar entertainment complex it is is a bold choice to say the least. And surprise, surprise, the modern audience not only doesn’t exist, but also doesn’t play or buy video games. These people are only interested in pushing the activism these new games represent while refusing to do any of the momentary lifting required to keep pushing the message. The recent push against male gamers has backfired catastrophically to say the least. Gaming is and always has been a male dominated hobby, with male gamers making up the vast majority of the customer base by a large margin. And while there has been an uptick in female gamers over the last few generations, this demographic still pales in comparison to what should be primarily the target audience of these developers.
So, now where does this leave the industry and is there anything we can truly do to save it? Well, no not really. This is an infection from within the industry that is so deep, nothing short of a complete collapse and restructuring could fix the downward spiral they themselves have enacted. What I mean by this is not only do you have people at the top talking out of both sides of their mouth, claiming to love gaming while at the same time doing absolutely everything to burn it down from within, but they also protect their own. Gaming has become an industry of “failing upwards”. There used to be a time when those responsible for financial failures were held accountable. Whether through resignation or termination, those who made the decisions were the ones who suffered the consequences. Not so anymore. Instead, while those in the corporate positions of power continue to rake in ludicrous salaries, the devs simply trying to do their jobs are the ones let go and or blacklisted from the industry for having their name associated with a financial failure.
As a prime example, look no further than the complete and utter disaster of both Concord and Dragon Age The Veilguard. Both games are widely considered some of the greatest financial disasters of 2024, and yet, like rats fleeing a sinking ship, many of those in high ranking positions managed to escape the rushing flood waters of studio closures and layoffs and have already found new employment elsewhere. Corinne Busche, the activist director of Dragon Age The Veilguard who not only might have killed the Dragon Age IP permanently, but also put the final nail in the coffin for Bioware’s reputation, has been hired by Wizards of The Coast to work on a new Dungeons and Dragons video game, while the writers of Veilguard along with other Bioware embarrassments Anthem and Mass Effect Andromeda have been hired as the lead writers for Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Tsushima follow-up Ghost of Yotei. Make of that what you will. Even the marketing director for Concord has recently been hired by Microsoft to work with Halo Studios. Nepotism is clearly alive and well within the gaming industry.
They say that those that can’t do, teach, and it would seem that those who can’t create join video game studios. The incessant need for modern creators to “see themselves” within video games in order to enjoy them has had such an adverse effect on gaming that modern video games can’t even be considered as “art” anymore. These people can’t create interesting worlds or characters of their own, at least not ones that anyone would be interested in, so they instead feel the need to rewrite and desecrate beloved characters until nothing remains. Legacy studios have become shells of their former selves and are instead the “Ship of Theseus” personified. For those unfamiliar, the Ship of Theseus is a hypothesis over the restoration of a decaying ship. How much of the ship can you replace before it is no longer the ship it once was? Studios like Naughty Dog, CD Projekt Red, Bioware and dozens more are no longer the same studios that created the video games we loved. These developers advertising “From the studio that brought you” are nostalgia baiting, as the creators who helped shape and mold those games are no longer a part of the studio's creative vision.
Let this be a lesson to all of us: gate keep your hobbies. It’s not hard to look at the current situation in the gaming industry as something we ourselves as gamers are partly responsible for. For generations, gaming was shunned by the mainstream public and the constant punching bag by out-of-touch media personalities and parents and in our desire to be accepted, we welcomed one and all, encouraging them to find their space within our beloved hobby, and by the time we realized what we had done, it was too late, and the cancer had spread. These people joined our gaming communities not for their love of the medium but for their own selfish reasons, pushing their ideologies and opinions on gamers with the threat of retaliation as a fear tactic to get their way.
Thankfully all is not lost, my fellow gamers, for the tides, they are a-turning. The days of hiding incompetence behind the guise of diversity have come to an end. Due to recent real world events that have led to the complete and utter dissolution of DEI programs means the well of endless cash for pushing specific ideologies into places they never existed, as well as the recent revelations that legacy media outlets were paid to target gamers and label them as every derogatory name in the book has been a rallying cry for the gaming community, and they have awoken a beast from its slumber. Gamers are once again on the defensive and any smear tactics and harassment campaigns are being met with an unprecedented amount of pushback. People who have become accustomed to always getting their way are now screeching and having to defend their positions in a way they’ve never experienced before and like a cornered animal, they’re lashing out and showing their true colors.
Without the additional money that DEI offered in exchange for selling their souls and turning on gamers, studios will gradually be forced to cut out the rot, but this will be far from a painless process. Most upcoming projects are too far along in development to really expect any significant change and we likely won’t see the fruits of our labors until the next generation, but know this player, we ARE winning. And for those of you clinging to these practices that have nearly driven the gaming industry into ruin, just know, these companies were never on your side. Never. Like any major corporation, they follow the money and there were only so many financial failures they could withstand before the pendulum would shift back in the opposite direction. You nearly destroyed an entire artform for your beliefs and you rightfully deserve the reckoning that has befallen you. There will of course still be those resistant to change and eventually they will be forced to face the backlash of their precious and almighty investors and shareholders and if Ubisoft’s current predicament is anything to go by, they will not be happy for long.
So what does this mean for the industry going forward and is it still possible to turn things around? Well, yes and no. The vast majority of studios will continue to cling to their old ways despite the constant string of commercial failures and flops, seeking to blame everyone but themselves. EA even recently went so far as to blame the lack of “live service elements” as the main reason for Dragon Age The Veilguard’s failure. If gamers truly want to affect change then they need to hit them where it hurts. 2024 was the year when gamers made their voices heard and nearly every major studio felt the weight of this uprising. If you want to support the games industry, don’t support studios who don’t support you. If game publishers want us to get used to not owning our games, then they should get used to not owning their studios.
Change will happen slowly and we must also be wary of studios and developers who pretend to have players' best interests in mind. They’ll promise change while also expecting gamers to just forget the last decade of harassment. Many will even hope to be welcomed back with open arms while manipulating dedicated fans into believing all of this was somehow our fault and none of them deserve redemption. Trust must be earned and never taken for granted. The big name publishers and developers who want to reconnect with players first need to clean house and make it well known that they will be returning to the good old days of entertaining their audience rather than lecturing them. Even this won’t be an easy feat as many of the biggest problems within these studios are so ingrained within that nothing short of a complete layoff would be necessary.
Thankfully, some developers have noticed this and not only left these studios in droves but have also taken some of the best talent with them and created brand new studios with the simple mindset of creating video games people love. These smaller “Super Studios” have already put their former employers on watch, in particular Rebel Wolves and their upcoming title “The Blood of the Dawnwalker” which is being led by the creative director of The Witcher 3 and numerous other big names from CD Projekt Red. Former creative leads of the Mass Effect series have announced their comeback with Exodus, and this is only a couple of the massive studios that have been established and begun work on video games that will put their former employers to shame.
This focus on smaller, dedicated studios is the model which the industry needs to be shaped by. Like I said earlier, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is being developed by only 30 people. At most these studios should be relegated to 100-200 devs at most. There is no point in having multiple studios across the world working on a single project and still expecting to deliver a quality product when one department doesn’t know what the other is working on from one day to the next. The entire industry has become so overblown with staff that it's impossible to pinpoint exactly what the majority of them actually do. The vast majority of video games that have stood the test of time and are still critically regarded to this day were created by small, passionate teams and with technology progressing to the point where small teams and solo developers are becoming the industry leaders? What exactly is the point of having studios composed of hundreds if not thousands of individuals working on a single project when these teams could be splintered off and end up developing two or even three new games? The reason why this isn’t a viable option is because the devs working today are so incompetent and unskilled that their work needs to be constantly carried by veterans leading to constant oversight and the need for even more developers to pick up the slack.
The era of these safe games also needs to come to an end. Player fatigue is a real thing and most gamers are tired of not only the deluge of familiar franchises, but also the overuse of specific game mechanics. Souls-Likes, Metroidvanias, and kitchen sink-style games that feature a little of everything the industry have to offer have diluted their respective genres and stagnated creativity. I took quite a lot of criticism for lambasting the overabundance of Souls-Likes these days and all it took was “Ninja Gaiden 2 Black” for everyone else to realize there can be too much of a good thing. Sony is especially guilty of playing things too safe this generation. Once heralded as an industry leader in experimental, creative and imaginative titles, they are now instead focused on nothing more than remakes, remasters, and legacy sequels with the bulk of their catalogue being carried by third party developers. This has also led to constant restructuring at the top level with a constant rotation of CEOs attempting to undo the damage done by their predecessor.
It’s not just the lack of creativity the industry is dying for either. Gamers have become nothing but beta testers for buggy, broken games created by inept and inexperienced developers who spend more time attacking gamers on social media than actually working on their game. Endless amounts of pre-order bonuses won’t make up for the fact we can’t even play the damn thing at launch without it crashing. As the famous quote goes: “Late is just for a little while, suck is forever.” It’s not very often a game can recover from a botched launch, No Man’s Sky notwithstanding, and these days if a game launches broken, gamers are more likely to completely write the title off entirely. Even Bethesda is learning this lesson the hard way. Whereas gamers were more accepting of a few bugs here and there even just a couple generations ago, gamers are no longer willing to be these big supposed AAA developers’ playtesters any longer.
Gamers have made their voices heard loud and clear and it's up to the publishers and developers to listen. The gaming industry became the financial juggernaut it is today without any forced diversity, live service games, or the constant threats against gamers and their beliefs. Gaming used to be a welcoming community for people from all walks of life from all over the world, and it has since mutated into an echo chamber of self-important people who punish others for a difference of opinion. We are not internet trolls, grifters or whatever other slanderous and narcissistic title you want to award to us for daring to speak our minds about the direction of a hobby and pastime we are deeply passionate about. The days of bullying us for our love of video games have long since passed and we are done being played. We are gamers and just like our beloved games, we won’t give up until we win.
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