Game Development: The Video Game Industry Is Broken

Glen Brunke, June 4, 2024

The video game industry, despite its massive revenue that surpasses both the movie and music industries combined, is fundamentally broken. The sector has become structurally trapped by its own business model, exploiting human psychology to maximize profits at the expense of innovation and player satisfaction.

The Cost of Production and Risk Aversion

Producing a high-quality video game today is incredibly expensive, often costing hundreds of millions of dollars. This financial burden creates a high-risk environment where failure can be catastrophic for game developers and publishers. As a result, executives are incentivized to extract as much revenue as possible from existing successful titles rather than investing in new and innovative projects. The fear of financial loss stifles creativity, leading to a stagnant market dominated by sequels and remakes rather than fresh, groundbreaking games.

Public Companies and Shareholder Pressure

Many of the major players in the gaming industry are publicly traded companies. This status places significant pressure on executives to continually deliver increasing profits to satisfy shareholders. The traditional formula for success in video games—creating a great game and reaping the rewards—has been replaced by a focus on maximizing addiction. Companies now employ psychologists to design games that exploit vulnerabilities in human cognition instead of more developers and designers to make the games better. These game mechanics make games highly addictive and capable of generating continuous revenue streams.

The Exploitation of Gamers

Modern video games are often designed to be more addictive than enjoyable, prioritizing monetization over player experience. Techniques such as microtransactions, loot boxes, and paywalls have become ubiquitous, turning games into platforms for extracting money rather than providing entertainment. Gamers frequently face situations where essential parts of a game are locked behind additional payments. This practice can be compared to watching a movie and being charged extra to see the ending—it's an exploitative approach that undermines the integrity of the gaming experience.

The Decline of Player-Centric Game Design

The shift towards profit-driven game design has led to a decline in the quality and completeness of games. Instead of focusing on delivering a fully-realized, enjoyable product, developers are often forced to segment their games, offering the best features or content as paid extras. This fragmentation diminishes the overall experience and erodes trust between gamers and developers. The industry's reliance on these tactics has fostered resentment among players, who feel manipulated and exploited.

The Path Forward: Ethical Game Design

Game companies should prioritize innovation and creativity, developing new and original games that offer unique experiences. Incorporating ethical considerations into game design can help create more respectful and enjoyable experiences for players. This needs to include limiting the use of addictive mechanics and ensuring that games are complete and satisfying without requiring additional purchases. Developers should also be open about their design choices and monetization strategies, ensuring that players feel respected and valued.

The video game industry stands at a crossroads. We can absolutely go back to a world without monthly subscriptions, paywalls, in game micro-transactions. But for that to happen, gamers must demand the ability to play video games for entertainment when and how they want, and to not be drained of cash a few dollars at a time.