It's only been one month into the new year, and already things are looking dour for the video game industry. Last year we witnessed million dollar games flopping and investors pulling out of sizable deals, and now there's a swarm of layoffs and cancellations to add on top as well. I've actually been meaning to write about this topic for months, but recent events have gotten so extreme I moved this article forward in the queue.

It's safe to say that AAA games have been in a downward spiral for a while now. When exactly this change began is up for debate, but it's not an uncommon complaint that games have gotten less creative, less performant and less finished at launch for at least some years. Sure, AAA games have also gotten a lot prettier, but to get there they've also gotten nakedly obvious about how little they think of the average consumer's intelligence between seventy dollar price tags, deluxe editions, pre-order goodies, season passes, microtransactions and more. All of this, according to the big publishers, is necessary because of the enormous risks involved with developing an AAA game. The consumer demands high budget photorealistic games, so by and large that's what publishers will make. It's necessary to ship out unfinished games and sell them piece by piece because otherwise, they'll never make a profit.

I can't help but wonder, how is it possible that they think this? Is this really a good reason to chase after that last 10% of photorealism when it costs millions more in development when consumers can't tell the difference? Is squeezing a few more dollars out of your customers really worth the risk of ruining your company or your product's reputation? Haven't indie sensations like Minecraft or companies like Nintendo proven that this mentality is bass ackwards for decades now? And, most importantly, if it really is this risky to develop an AAA game in the current industry, why even take that risk when there's hundreds of millions of dollars on the line? Why not just make a bunch of smaller games?

The actual reason is simple: the people at the top of this industry don't understand the market that they're in. If you showed them Sonic 2006 and Sonic Generations side by side and asked them which of them is the beloved one, they wouldn't be able to tell you. (They might even pick the former because it looks more "realistic".) This is why so many large companies keep making the same mistakes, because in the process of trying to extract as much money out of consumers as possible they end up pissing them off when they inevitably take it too far without even realizing. That's why we keep getting the same mediocre games filled with the same uninspired and greedy design trends as every other modern game, because that's the only thing they know that will reliably sell, and by god do they have good reason to think that. For all the internet's griping, franchises that have gone stagnant ages ago like Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed and Fi- I mean EA Sports FC still make their publishers millions each year. Their fans know what they like and will gladly fork over another seventy dollars for a new installment, so why change a winning formula?

That kind of mentality is exactly why the industry is heading the way it is right now. Budgets have become so bloated that even a decent hit can't make its money back anymore, and if you can't tell a good game from a bad one, how do you know what to invest in and what to cancel? The answer to that seems to be to make less new games and more sequels, remakes and reboots because supposedly that's less risky. Not true. You can easily destroy the reputation of a well-beloved franchise by accident if you don't know what you're doing, and a small new IP flopping isn't nearly as bad as when it happens to a recognizable one. After all, we can't forget about all those profitable spin-offs, tie-ins and merchandise. Franchises can always recover from an awful game, but that seems to be happening less and less as the years have gone by. That might have something to do with publishers being less willing to invest another fifty million into an IP that recently bombed even if it's because of bad management, it might have something to do with the creators of those beloved IPs no longer being involved, who can say. Either way, there's only so many recognizable IPs you can burn down until you've run out of them. At that point, you're stuck with ashes.

So what does the future hold for the current AAA industry? Well, from where I'm sitting in my comfortable analyst's armchair, I don't think it has a future. As long as people who don't understand video games remain in charge, they'll continue this unsustainable model, investing millions into flops and trying to push trends that will never catch on even among video game players (who aren't exactly known for being consumer-savvy). All those millions of dollars of profit are nice until they run out and the majority of the industry crashes under the size of its billion dollar budgets and dumb greedy decisions. That might sound dour, but it's not necessarily a bad thing. As long as there are people who get creatively inspired, there will be great games. As long as people want to keep creating, there will be great games. As long as there are people that seek them out, there will be great games. This industry is still relatively young and can still take all kinds of unexpected turns, and from the ashes of the old industry we can always build a new one. One where, I can only hope, the people in charge know what they're doing.

Maybe a crash is exactly what the video game industry needs right now to breathe some new life into it.