Consultant and experienced developer Rami Ismail has shared his thoughts on the state of the games industry, while expressing some fears and concerns. He tried to outline the issues of the existing system where funding decides what gets made.
Baldur’s Gate 3
Last week, Ismail wrote a thread about the state of the games industry after a brief conversation with IGN director of video content strategy Destin Legarie.
They had a bit of an argument about whether the market is going too far in one direction with all those microtransactions and $20 skins, and whether developers struggling to get funding could succeed in a system where players vote for titles like Genshin Impact with their wallets.
It’s just really weird seeing people yell “then go against capitalism! be poor! starve for the art!” at developers just trying to earn a wage making the best game possible in a shit system funded by the audience that’s now yelling at the developers.
— Rami Ismail (رامي) (@tha_rami) August 17, 2023
Legarie tried to say that there are still plenty of opportunities for people to start making games by “installing Unreal” or using platforms like Kickstarter. However, Ismail argued that this is not how things work in the industry.
On the one hand, people can really “install something” and make a game. On the other hand, they are usually small itch.io projects created by “solo devs in spare time that overwhelmingly aren’t made for money.”
Ismail noted that aspiring developers have to compete with $2 million indie games and $250 million AAA titles because that’s what the audience buys these days. So to enter the market with a commercial project, they must seek funding.
You can do Kickstarter, but to get to a Kickstarter you still need years of pre-production & the worst thing about Kickstarter is that if you fail, you fail in public. It’ll kill any opportunity at any other funding, so Kickstarter is about the riskiest gamble out there.
— Rami Ismail (رامي) (@tha_rami) August 17, 2023
This creates the vicious circle where “the stuff that does get funded raises the bar, requiring more funding.” It has gotten much harder for just two creative people to make an indie game — they will most likely need a publisher, a grant, or any other source of funding. According to Ismail, he saw plenty of devs fail to get funded because they couldn’t prove that their game would recoup investment.
People may think that when a certain game becomes a huge success, it opens up new opportunities for developers of other games in that genre. But Ismail believes that, say, Baldur’s Gate 3, which is now taking the charts by storm, won’t lead to better CRPGs and won’t convince publishers to support devs who want to create their own dream game in this niche.
“It’ll lead to fewer funded games in the genre because the bar is up now & who’d fund a game less good & beloved than BG3? The risk is up again,” he said.
And then some publisher exec is going to go, “OK we can’t take this risk unless you can make it make more money” to some starry-eyed dev who has had a CRPG dream for decades – and there come the MTX and all that shit.
— Rami Ismail (رامي) (@tha_rami) August 17, 2023
“We’re literally stuck in a system where funding decides what gets made, everything that’s successful tightens the noose, and everything that’s unsuccessful is used as proof that we shouldn’t make more like it,” Ismail noted.
He added that the current state of the industry is determined by market realities, including what players expect from modern titles and what they spend their money on. This results in a system where developers “need absurd amounts of money to make even an indie game.”
According to Ismail, it is also one of the reasons behind consolidation, with even top publishers like Activison Blizzard deciding to merge with even bigger corporations to “compete with the Googles & Tencents & NetEases & Apples of this world.”
So if you think things are bad now, wait until you see what’s coming, because as things get forced under larger & larger money-umbrellas for not being able to compete with Genshin/DFO/League /Roblox/etc., they’ll have to care more about promising money with whatever they do make.
— Rami Ismail (رامي) (@tha_rami) August 17, 2023
Ismail noted that with indie games taking two years to make and production of AAA titles taking five years, we won’t see today’s effects until 2028, “until the whole thing implodes on itself or the F2P model collapses or the money people have a Christmas miracle & decide they care more about smiles than money.”
In this reality, developers have two options: give up on the medium they love or try their best to succeed within the existing system. According to Ismail, although devs are aware of all the issues, they can’t fix them. “We can’t replicate a Larian because to do that you need a time machine & start in a saner time,” he concluded.
So I don’t know what the answer is & I’ve been looking for it as if my career depends on it because it kinda does. What I do know is that to get better, it’ll either take a full collapse of the industry, or “shorter games with worse graphics made by people paid more to work less”
— Rami Ismail (رامي) (@tha_rami) August 17, 2023
Rami Ismail is best known as the co-founder of now-closed studio Vlambeer (Ridiculous Fishing, Nuclear Throne). He is also an outspoken industry ambassador, speaker, and the creator of presskit(), a free solution for creating game press kits.