It was a night of intense debate and verbal SmackDowns at the Gamesbeat crossfire lounge, during the conference of game developers (GDC) in San Francisco. Dean Takahashi, principal editor of Gamesbeat, welcomed three head-to-head conversations, attacking the Apocalypse of AI, marketing and direct sales and the state of the game industry.
One Round: AI: Savior or Saborator of the Development of Games?
The first debate, moderate by Takahashi, featured Simon Davis, founder and CEO of Mighty Bear Gaming against Dave Taylor, advisor, programmer, futuristic and Harbinger of Doom. The apocalypse of knowledge workers in the United States is coming, said Taylor, and AI rushes.
“There are about 132 million workers in full -time knowledge,” said Taylor. “In two to three years, when big data, AI and fast channels can manage almost any subject reasonably good, we will see a huge collapse in this workforce.”
It is not in fact the AI which is directly at fault, he said, but instead of the American scalar monetary trade, a broken system where the formal value of a property or a service is attached to a single number-a price or a salary. It is a system that has a direct impact on game developers, he added.
“In the design of the game, in particular the design of MMO games, Scalar Money Commerce generally disrupts our games,” he said. “It is like an invasive game mechanic, a good example of being the auction house in Diablo”, who immediately undermined the economy of the game during his introduction.
It will be a short -term disruptor, Davis has accepted, but AI is an undoubtedly powerful tool for a positive change. Mighty Bear Gaming invests massively in AI as part of their development pipeline, which has transformed the operation of the studio. One or two team artists are able to manage the work that would take up to 30 artists to manage.
“About a month ago, I made a prediction that during the year, you will see studios to man with someone who has no experience in the development of games according to a game as a service,” said Davis. “And it happened six days after doing this prediction. It is the kind of speed at which we operate. You have a guy who builds a game in one day and he is a hundred k per month.”
What will become possible are niche games and new experiences that serve different interest groups and different communities, products that are really viable that you can build with only a few people. The net profit can be many smaller and more experimental CEOs over time.
“The economy of game creation has been broken for a long time,” added Davis. “So this will somehow remedy it and make more profitable to develop games and develop content and try new ideas.”
Before the apocalypse can, anyone can spend time using AI to create games, Simon said: “Go ahead, experience, see what you can build, download the cursor, see what’s going on.”
Round 2: Application game: goalkeepers or growth engines?
In the second confrontation, Takahashi welcomed Berkley Egenes, chief of chief marketing and growth of Xsolla and Jake Ward, co-founder and CEO of Data Protocol.
The two platforms of traditional applications, Apple and Android, have long dominated the mobile applications market in the United States and Europe, while Meta’s Horizon Store is the essential platform for VR applications. The developers are undoubtedly locked in an unjust system in which they have to pay an exorbitant share of their income in order to be listed. China, which does not have the same privacy and other regulations, has a wide range of stores, giving developers much more choice and greater control over the essential data and analyzes of players that you cannot get in the United States
Ward, Data Protocol’s company, onboe developers who build in meta -horizon and predicts that the application platform market will continue to develop as technology evolves – and these stores are both guards and growth engines.
“I don’t think the problem we are going to have is that there are only two mobile application stores,” he said. “I think the problem we are going to have is that there will be 50 stores of different application in all technologies.”
These platforms lock developers in specific types of payment, but they are also undoubtedly a critical means of launching a game, and the 30% reduction in profits should not be a means of deterrence. But strategies like the Epic Games trial against Apple and Google, which have loosened the grip of platforms on the market, are not the answer, he added.
“30%is a lot. It also seems arbitrary if it is not put on the scale of growth,” he said. “But my preference is never for the judicial remedy. It is always to kick the market, and it can be done.”
Egenes has agreed that application stores are always an essential way to enter the market, but developers – in particular small operations – must change the way they consider monetization if they want to survive. Indeed, the launch of an application, distribution and marketing is expensive, especially if the developer does not have everything all the whole ecosystem. Revenue sharing costs and diets can be debilitating.
“You are screwed up if your developer,” he said. “You might have an excellent game with an excellent idea and it’s something cool, but how are you going to pay?
Round 3: The future of the game industry: boom, bust or Renaissance?
In the final debate, Marie Mejerwall, consultant at the games at Mejerwall Consulting, moderated the discussion between Susan Cummings, CEO of 10six Games and David Higley, partner of Perella Weinberg.
Cummings noted that there is not a space traditionally invested in video games at the moment, and the industry is more separate than ever. The companies supported by VCS a few years ago were informed that they would obtain several financing cycles, then launched, but that never happened. Many had to find an editor and ended up with the same publishing agreement that they would have obtained anyway, while abandoning a large part of their business at the VC.
“I think we have to correct the courses, we must consider the creation of real businesses, small businesses that determine their viability as soon as possible before they were not on a scale and generate income,” she said. “It is high time that we stop letting the game VCS tell us what it is.
The space invested is now the publishers, she added, saying that the VC should pay money in the publishers, so that they can reimburse developers and rebuild the industry. »»
Unfortunately, Higley said, this means that you depend on the publisher.
“There are matches that have never seen the light of day because the publisher said, yes, I don’t like it,” he said. “Maybe they are informed, maybe there is a reason. But part of this is, where the porter should occur? Being able to go directly to the consumer, it’s quite powerful.”
Payment models also modify the industry, with premium games, a subscription, a free game and advertisements in the mix. The subscriptions are not as popular and successful as other models, said Higley, in part because consumer expectations are much more important than they are for free game, for example. But Cummings mentioned MMOs like Everquest and World of Warcraft, which still earn money.
“There is a really healthy model to have a loyal small community that pays,” she said. “We don’t need 20 billion people to play. If you could ask $ 50,000 to pay $ 15,000 a month, it’s a great deal. I think the industry will become a little more on the niche subsets of things you love and that you are ready to support, and it’s really healthy.”
Popular games on Steam are also a good lesson to stand out and have a profit, she added, and it is not because they pump money in marketing. It’s all about community, she said.
“If you do something really good and feed your community and you do well, you can succeed,” she said. “This is quality. Suddenly, when it is really difficult to earn money, you would better believe in what you build, because you will really fight at every stage.”
And although you have access to the players, when you leave the model of the App Store and the publisher, the disadvantage is that you have to do it yourself.
“We have seen a lot of people say, oh, I’m just going to publish self-publishing. No, it’s actually much more difficult to make they don’t think so,” said Higley. “It is not only a question of slapping on the steam and seeing what is happening. But the publishers must improve if they will intervene and wreak havoc. They must really do the work to move the needle for the content creator.”
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