Confirming my opinions with the 2024 GDC State of the Game Industry Report.

It’s a strange feeling having your suspicions confirmed. An unsettlingly gratifying mix of smug self-satisfaction for being right and the stomach-turning dread of your assumption being the reality. That about summarizes my current mindset after reading the 2024 GDC report: a long list of confirmations to theories and options I held beforehand, being confirmed one after another, causing the pit in my gut to grow larger with each ticked box. However, the realization of the reality of the situation isn’t as dire as I make it out to be, as with clarity comes focus, and with focus comes solutions to problems hiding in that fog of uncertainty. Two of those discussed in the brief, the use of Generative AI and the Moral issue within game studios, revealed themselves to be intertwined, and by attacking one, we get at the roots of the other.

            Beginning with the newest branch of the dilemma tree from which all problems sprout, AI. We are reaching a fever pitch with the discussion of AI as a tool, something that will not be going away any time soon, if not at all. It has ingrained itself into most of our day-to-day operations and within the very roots of the modern internet, and while the effects of such a change would be difficult to describe in full in a modest amount of time, the conversation about its use within game development highlighted by the GDC brief is a window to better frame the problem with. According to the report, 49% of developers surveyed used or worked with someone using generative AI tools [1]. That’s a scary number, 49%, as on its own, it makes these tools seem more widespread and already integrated into what should be a creative medium. Yet, peel back that number somewhat and look at the departments these answers are coming from, and that 49% appears less dire. Of the 31% of developers who answered yes to ‘Do you use generative AI tools, 44% were in Business and Finance, 41% in Marketing and PR, and 33% in Production Management [1]. Now, speaking as someone with a business degree and an undergraduate in Production Management, this makes perfect sense. Of course, these people use AI to generate briefs, emails, and other documents because their work is the least creative and easiest to streamline.

The actual developers, the people building the game, are much more in the minority, with the highest percentage of ‘yes I use AI tools’ coming from programmers at 25% and the lowest at 6% from QA testers, with designers, artists, and writers falling somewhere in between [1]. And those people are far more critical of AI’s application but not deaf to the help it can be [1]. If anything, the range of responses from actual developers signals to me that AI, on a game-building level, is being used as a tool and not a replacement for human work. Those programmers using AI are probably using it to check their code or generate sample code for the more tedious but necessary parts of their game. To me, that’s the proper use of AI in game development, hell, in creative endeavors at large. I use Grammarly for all my papers and projects because having an on-call editor built into your computer is a tremendous help. But like an editor, I don’t always take their feedback because it's still a subjective, formulaic interpretation of my work.

AI is excellent for crunching large data sets, filling in in-betweens, or copy edits. However, I still have a human editor whose opinion I hold higher than Grammarly’s because her comments are focused on form and creative content, something Grammarly can’t do even if it tries its damnedest. End of the day, AI tools are just that, tools, and in a creative field like game design, they should be treated like a supercharged spell checker, something that looks over preexisting work to alert the creator of problems they missed on the first run; a trend that I think is becoming the norm given the testimonials within this section. While artists, designers, and programmers are worried about the ethical implications of these tools, they are pushing for responsible uses of these tools to make game development better by allowing creatives to tackle more interesting problems while AI handles the grunt work. But while this is the vision of the future, the reality of the situation is less rose-tinted and obscure for most, and this is not helped by its ready adoption by managers and producers, the people who write everyone else’s checks.   

            A growing concern in the industry is job security, an issue that has hung around the sector for a good long while but has been ramped up with the looming question of AI. In 2023, we saw several of the largest, best-selling games drop, only to watch nearly a quarter of the people who made those games possible lose their jobs. Swen Johan Vincke, founder and CEO of Larian Studios, made it a point when accepting game of the year for Baldur’s Gate 3 (BG3) to thank the members at Wizards of the Coast who protected his team during BG3’s long and costly development [2]. Almost none of those people were still working for Wizards of the Coast as of him accepting the award for Game of the Year in 2023 [2]. Earlier that same year, Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard was finalized. Over 1,900 developers were let go in the wake of the sale [3], most likely to maintain the studio's profitability following the 69 billion dollars Microsoft dropped in acquiring the studio[3] and in 2024, Tango Gameworks - founded by industry veteran Shinji Mikami of Resident Evil 4 fame - a studio fully staffed with long-time seasoned developers who knew and proved that they could make good games and turn a profit was let go by Microsoft, after its breakout hit High-Fi Rush exceeded all of Microsoft’s expectations [4/5]. They’ve since been acquired by South Korean game studio Krafton, but of the four Microsoft studios shut down that year, Tango was the only one to be saved [4]. It is no wonder, then, why 56% of devs at GDC have the thought of being fired rattling somewhere in the back of their heads [1].

The industry, or at the very least the people in the C suite, have been sending the message, intentional or otherwise, that job security isn’t on anyone’s mind. This, combined with the threat of unregulated generative AI replacing design, art, and coding positions, has left many in the industry with a jaded and cynical outlook, a mindset I myself have to struggle against from time to time. But it is telling of the current state of large-scale game development, that the bubble is on the verge of bursting, and everyone is afraid of what will happen when it pops. To me, that’s why unionization has become a hot topic in game development. Clearly, developers have had enough, and with a crash on the horizon, they want firmer ground to stand on and are now more willing to fight for it. Personally, I am all for unionization, and it would be a significant moral victory for developers to have, which would lead to better overall output and worker retention because people now have a proper safety net below them. But that only strikes the branches of the tree, similar to AI. To uproot the problems that have plagued the industry for years and continue to hamper devs to this day, we should realize that major studios are no longer the only path to development.

The past decade has seen a boom in indie development, and while that sector of the industry has its own pitfalls and problems, it is quickly becoming more desirable than AAA development. Most of the devs let go in 2023 have formed their own studios, snatching up other jobless devs they’ve worked with in the past and continuing the work they love in a more sustainable and freeing setting. History is repeating itself once more, as in the lead-up to the original Western Game Market crash in the 80s, Activision split off from Atari in 1979 and was formed by the uncredited developers Atari was refusing to acknowledge [6]. Game development has come a long way since 1970, and with the power of the internet, the tools and skills of game development have been democratized further. We now have self-taught, independent artists developing the games that now set the conversation around gaming. Eric Barlowe’s Stardew Valley, Lucus Pope’s Paper’s Please and Return of the Obra Din, and the poster child of this movement, Toby Fox’s Undertale, shattered expectations and stole the limelight away from long-time players like Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo; inspiring independent teams of people to make games that continue to inspire and engage like Domesticated Ant’s Gravity Circuit or Tour De Pizza’s Pizza Tower. There will be a sea change soon, I don’t know when, I do know how; but in my lifetime, I will see the shape of the industry change in response to what is bothering developers and players today. And while I will most likely not see that old, knotted tree uprooted in that time, I will see many of its branches hacked back to the trunk.  

Citations

[1] GDC. 2024 State of the Game Industry. “Informtech.” Jan 18, 2024.

[2] Ngan, Liv. “Larian CEO Acknowledges Wizards of the Coasts Layoffs in Belated the Game Awards Speech.” Eurogamer.Net, Eurogamer.net, 14 Dec. 2023, www.eurogamer.net/larian-ceo-acknowledges-wizards-of-the-coasts-layoffs-in-belated-the-game-awards-speech.

[3] Welsh, Oli. “Everything That Happened with Microsoft’s Acquisition of Activision Blizzard.” Polygon, 14 Jan. 2023, www.polygon.com/23546288/microsoft-activision-blizzard-acquisition-deal-merger-ftc-latest-news.

[3] Warren, Tom. “Microsoft Lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox Employees.” The Verge, 25 Jan. 2024, www.theverge.com/2024/1/25/24049050/microsoft-activision-blizzard-layoffs.

[4] Weatherbed, Jess. “Hi-Fi Rush Studio Saved from Microsoft Shutdown.” The Verge, The Verge, 12 Aug. 2024, www.theverge.com/2024/8/12/24218424/hifi-rush-studio-tango-gameworks-saved-krafton-microsoft.

[5] Dinsdale, Ryan. “Shock and Anger as Xbox Shuts down Arkane Austin, Tango Gameworks, and More.” IGN, 8 May 2024, www.ign.com/articles/shock-and-anger-as-xbox-shuts-down-arkane-austin-tango-gameworks-and-more.

[6] Ray, Michael. “Activision Blizzard, Inc.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., 22 May 2011, www.britannica.com/money/Activision-Blizzard-Inc.