The Rise and Fall of the Gaming Industry

I think now is the right time to talk about this. I’ve had this in the back of my mind for a while, years already, but I believe we have reached a critical point where bubbles might burst at any moment. So I guess it’s better to get this thought out before it’s too late to do so.

Growing up with video games being a very strict niche, limited to a small part of the population, and quite often seen as wrong for adults to have or enjoy, I was always happily surprised when, over the years, I saw video games reaching a broader population, a more diverse kind of people. In the 2010s, I could already see that video games weren’t just for young boys anymore. And by 2020, it was not only (mostly) culturally acceptable for adults to play, but also for women, and people of other genders and ages too. With the rise of smartphones and the Nintendo Wii, older people that had never interacted with video games, or even general technology, were now playing Wii Sports and Candy Crush. It was a marvelous feeling for me, seeing a form of entertainment that, just 10 years earlier, was dismissed as something only for small kids, no, something that was only for small boys, now had become a hobby enjoyed across all genders and ages.

Smartphones had a huge impact on this, allowing short sessions of gaming without the need for extra device. People could play something to pass the time while waiting for the bus or standing in line, which helped popularize gaming even more. The 2010s were a great time for mobile gaming. Some of the most popular, most downloaded, most played games were launched in that period. When it came time to replace their phones, people started looking for devices with better hardware so they could play more or newer games, it became a priority in many cases.

I don’t like, not one bit, how Nintendo handles its online services or even its fans, or people talking about nintendo games online, and their image is so burned with me that I, someone who for as long as I could afford always had a Nintendo console and several of their games, am now reluctant to buy their newest release. I may not even get it at all. But I still have to admit that Nintendo had a great influence in spreading the idea that “video games are nice” to everyone, across all ages, with the Nintendo Wii. While Sony and Microsoft were busy with gore, shooting, blood, and kills, which really appeals only to a niche or a certain age, Nintendo made games that could be enjoyed by young kids, together with their parents, and even their grandparents. Accessible to all, and still challenging if you wanted to complete them 100%. The Wii is still being used today in senior homes to stimulate movement. It was, or is, such a great console with great games. In my opinion, the biggest contributor to the popularization of games in the last 15 years.

And then came the big news, the one that made me so proud. Seeing something so niche, so small, so “for kids,” “for nerds”, I started seeing the headline:
“In 2020, the gaming industry made more money than movies and music COMBINED!”
And this was repeated for 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024. Every year since 2020, the gaming industry has generated more money than movies and music. It was wonderful news for me, not because I was getting any money from it, quite the opposite, I was losing money buying games and consoles, but I was proud to see this hobby, this lifestyle that was until recently something to avoid, now bigger than the biggest entertainment industries.

And then comes the fall.
And it’s not pretty.

For a while now, the mobile gaming scene has been terrible. At first, it was nice, democratic, anyone could get rich, or at least richer, if they published something good, something playable, enjoyable. And that did happen for quite a while. Developers and companies were making an effort to create the next game that was better, more complete, more fulfilling than the last. But that nice and healthy competition didn’t last long. For over a decade now, smartphone gaming has been taken over by money-grabbing trash, soulless, mindless, repetitive, copy-pasted, fake games. It pains me to even call these ad-shower apps “games,” but that’s how they’re classified. It’s incredibly hard to find a good game in any mobile store these days. I’m sure there are many good and real games, but unless you already know they exist, already know the exact name of the game and the exact name of the publisher, it’s basically impossible to find anything worthwhile, because everything else is buried under thousands of poorly-made, copy-pasted, ad-ridden clones. But they make money, both for the developers and the stores where they are published, so they keep being replicated like a virus. Every day, hundreds more low-effort copies are published. As long as someone downloads them and clicks, most often accidentally, on the dozens of ads per minute they show, someone is making money. So it won’t stop.

And then come the billionaires.

Well, it was to be expected. I wasn’t expecting it, but that’s probably why I’m poor and those investors are rich. But looking back, it was to be expected. Shortly after those headlines about the video game industry making boatloads of money, other kinds of news started appearing, like Chinese conglomerates buying gaming companies, Dubai billionaires investing heavily in the biggest game studios, and so on. And these rich people, they don’t care if the games being made are fun or meaningful. They don’t care what’s being created. They only care that their money is being multiplied over the years. That’s why they invested in the game industry, not to make games, but to make money.
And how do you make sure the investors are happy?
By making developers and consumers miserable.

Shortly after the reports of rich investors entering the industry, we started seeing news of crunch. Developers working 16, 20 hours a day, 7 days a week. Harassment. Terrible behavior from leadership. Because investors want their money quadrupled by December, so the unfinished game must be released in November!

And the consumers aren’t happy either! These last 5 or so years have been filled with unfinished games, the kind where, after buying, you still need to download a day-one patch that’s twice the size of the original game. And even then, they still have so many bugs that they still need 20 more patches during the year to fix most things. But many bugs are just left there, because no developer is assigned to care for a released game anymore. They all have to move on to the next deliverable, to make up for investor expectations.

And now the investors aren’t happy either.
They came in hard and big, investing heavily with the expectation of multiplying their money 5, 6, 10 times! Just release a game and in 2 years, you get 10 times your investment! Easy money with little effort!

But that’s not how the game industry works. And it’s even harder when developers and creators are under so much pressure they can’t innovate, hell, they can’t even do the basics. So, you end up with games that look pretty, but do nothing more. They’re kind of boring, or just the same thing as before but with more pixels. And those games don’t sell that much. They’re not a disaster, far from it, they actually sell quite a bit. I’m one of those consumers who wants to give it a shot if it’s a franchise or idea I like even if people online are trashing it. I was there for Cyberpunk. I was there for Mass Effect Andromeda. Sadly. But I bought the games.
The games are being sold, and they’re making money, but the investors were expecting a return 10 times what they put in, not only 3 times. The game took $10 million to make and made only $40 million back? That’s a failure. They wanted $250 million. So only $40 million is a failure.

And that’s the state of the gaming industry now. The investors aren’t happy, the developers aren’t happy, the consumers aren’t happy.

Soon, some of those big investors are going to destroy move on to another industry. Game companies will go bankrupt. Thousands of people will lose their jobs across the world. And we’ll go back to games being niche.

I seriously hope not.
But the current trajectory suggests that’s where we’re going.