Former Blizzard president and CEO Mike Morhaime says the gaming industry's “downturn” in recent years has been “exaggerated,” likening the situation to a correction in a post-pandemic world.
Morhaime left Blizzard in 2019 and founded his own gaming company, Dreamhaven, in 2020. His debut project, the tabletop-inspired fantasy RPG Sunderfolk, has just been revealed.
In an interview with Agency Live (time-stamped here), Morhaime was asked to comment on the “difficult climate” of the gaming industry, particularly from the perspective of a new studio with a debut project.
“We don't have any games on the market, we don't have customers yet, so we haven't experienced a recession,” he said. “I would say that even the gaming crisis is a bit exaggerated, because when you look at the gaming industry in general, it is actually still growing. There are more people gaming than ever before.
“The thing is, during the pandemic, people didn't have much to do, so they turned to streaming platforms and games,” Morhaime said. “And it was a huge increase in usage. And a lot of companies saw that and thought that was the new trend and it was just going to continue, so there was a lot of investment. And when that didn't continue, I think probably the finance department said, 'Oh, wait a minute, margins and everything.' And that's why they wanted to get back to the trend line.”
The crisis referred to here is, of course, the relentless shrinking of the gaming industry, manifesting in thousands of layoffs at Microsoft, Sony, Riot, EA, Take-Two, Bungie, Twitch, Humble Games and many more. Morhaime's idea that we are seeing a post-Covid correction is not new and is probably accurate to some extent, but it may not tell the whole story either. Agency noted that “oversaturation” of the market is another factor, and Morhaime agreed that “the amount of competition is greater” and referenced a statistic he had seen that “15,000 games are released on Steam every year.” If anything, that figure is likely to increase next year.
Some submarkets may also be especially oversaturated and therefore dangerous, particularly the live services space that routinely gobbles up and spits out games, including Redfall, whose creator Arkane Austin was shut down by Xbox, and Concord, which Sony pulled the plug entirely. when he launched. so bad
The full picture is probably too broad and nuanced for me to adequately describe in one news story, but in addition to the post-pandemic correction and market saturation, industry experts would probably also point to rising game development costs and large-scale acquisitions leading to restructuring. as additional factors in the current volatility of the industry.
At least we have these upcoming indie games to look forward to.