It was a night of intense debate, Crossfire Lounge by GamesBeatDuring the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco. GamesBeat’s leading writer Dean Takahashi hosted three face-to-face conversations that addressed AI Apocalypse, the direct development of marketing and sales, and the status of the gaming industry.
Round 1: AI: Savior or Savior of Game Development?
The first debate was chaired by Takahashi and was hosted by founder and CEO Simon Davis, Mighty Bear Gaming, consultant with Doom, programmer, futurist and Harbinger. Taylor believes that knowledge workers in the United States are coming, and artificial intelligence is accelerating the end of the world.
“There are about 132 million full-time knowledge workers,” Taylor said. “In two to three years, big data, AI and timely chains can handle almost any topic well and we’ll see the collapse of that workforce.”
He said it wasn’t actually the direct fault of AI, but the scalar currency commerce in the United States, a broken system where the formal value of a goods or service is related to a single number – price or wage. He added that this is a system that directly affects game developers.
“In game design, especially MMO game design, scalar currency commerce often destroys our games,” he said. “This is like an invasive game mechanic, a great example of Diablo auction houses,” which immediately undermines the game’s economy when it was introduced.
Davis agrees that this will be disruptive in the near term, but AI is a powerful tool for positive change. Mighty Bear Gaming is investing heavily in AI as part of its core development channel, which has changed the way studios operate. One or two artists on the team are able to handle works that previously required up to 30 artists to manage.
“About a month ago, I made a prediction that in a year, you’re going to run a gaming service with people who don’t have a background in game development,” Davis said. “It’s six days after I made this prediction, and that’s how fast we operate. You have a guy building a game in one day and he’s going to do a hundred k a month.”
It will become possible to have niche games and novel experiences that serve different groups of interest and different communities, and these products are truly viable and you can only build with a few people. Over time, the end result may be many smaller experimental CEOs.
“The economics of making games have been a long time,” Davis added. “So, this is some way to solve this problem and make it more cost-effective to develop games, develop content and try novel ideas.”
Before Revelation goes to Revelation, Simon said, “Anyone can create a game using AI, saying, “Go there, experiment, see what you can build, download the cursor, and see what’s going on.” ”
Round 2: Game App Store: Gatekeeper or Growth Engine?
In the second showdown, Takahashi welcomed Berkley Egenes, Xsolla’s chief marketing and growth office, and Jake Ward, co-founder and CEO of the Data Agreement.
Two traditional app platforms, Apple and Android, have long dominated the mobile app market in the US and Europe, and Meta’s Horizon store is the platform of choice for VR applications. It can be argued that developers are locked in an unfair system and they have to pay a high share of their revenue to be listed. China does not have the same privacy and other regulations, has a wide range of stores, offers developers more options and gains greater control over basic player data and analytics that you cannot get
Ward’s company, the data protocol, board-built developers on the Metahorizon and predicts that the application platform market will actually continue to grow as technology evolves – these stores are both gatekeepers and growth engines.
“I don’t think the problem we’re going to have is that there are only two mobile app stores,” he said. “I think the problem we’re going to have is that there will be 50 different app stores in the technology.”
These platforms lock developers into specific payment types, but they are undoubtedly the key method to launch games, and a 30% profit cut should not be a deterrent. But strategies like Epic Games’ lawsuit against Apple and Google are not the answer, he added.
“There are 30% of people who are a lot. If you don’t expand the growth, you will feel arbitrary,” he said. “But my preference is never a judicial remedy. It’s always a kick in the market, and that can be done.”
Egenes agrees that app stores are still a key approach to market entry, but developers (especially smaller businesses) must change the way they consider monetization if they want to survive. That’s because starting an application, distributing it and marketing is very expensive, especially if developers don’t own the entire ecosystem. Fee and income sharing programs can be debilitating.
“If your developers are going to get screwed up,” he said. “You might have a great game, have a good idea, but it’s cool, but how are you going to make a payroll? How are you going to use version 2.0, 3.0 of the game? Or, if you take San Francisco as San Francisco, we want to bring it to Paris? It’s impossible to bring it to Paris? It’s impossible because you don’t have the money and capital and capital and compliance and don’t understand it.”
Round 3: The future of the gaming industry: boom, bust or rebirth?
In the final debate, Marie Mejerwall, game consultant at Mejerwall Consulting, chaired a discussion between 10SIX Games CEO Susan Cummings and Perella Weinberg partner David Higley.
Cummings notes that there is currently no room for investment in video games that is traditionally available, and the industry is more separate than ever. A few years ago, venture-backed companies were told that they would get several rounds of funding and then start, but that never happened. Many people had to go to publishers and eventually reached a publishing agreement they could have reached, while also giving up most of the companies to VCS.
“I think we need to do the course correction, and we need to think about building real businesses, smaller businesses that find out their viability early before expanding and generating revenue,” she said. “It’s time for us to stop letting gaming VCs tell us what our business is. I’m tired of asking them to confirm or acknowledge what I’m doing. We’re game developers, right? It’s time to bring our industry back.”
She added that the space available for investment is now publishers, saying venture capitalists should invest money in publishers so they can turn the money back to developers and rebuild the industry. ”
Unfortunately, this means you rely on publishers, Higley said.
“Some games have never been seen for a day because the publisher said, yes, I don’t like it,” he said. “Maybe they were told, maybe there’s a reason. But part of the reason is, where should the gatekeeper happen? Being able to go directly to the consumer is very powerful.”
The payment model also transforms the industry with premium gaming, subscriptions, free games and advertising. Subscriptions aren’t as popular and successful as other models, in part because consumers’ expectations are much larger than they expect for free games, Higley said. But Cummings has proposed MMOs like Everquest and World of Warcraft, which are still making money.
“Having a small community of loyalty and payments has a very healthy model,” she said. “We don’t need 200 billion people to play. If you can get 50,000 people to pay $15 a month, that’s a good business. I think the industry will be more niche for what you love, you’re willing to support, and it’s really healthy.”
She added that popular games on Steam are also a great lesson to attract and profit, not because they are investing money into marketing. She said it was all about the community.
“If you do it really well and you develop a community and you can do it right, you can succeed,” she said. “It’s about quality. Suddenly, when it’s hard to make money, you’d better fuck trust your own buildings because you’re going to really struggle every step of the way.”
And, when you have access to players, when you move out of the App Store and Publisher model, the downside is that you have to do it yourself.
“We’ve seen a lot of people say, oh, I’m just going to self-publish. No, it’s actually a lot harder than they realize,” Higley said. “It’s not just slapping on the steam and seeing what’s going on. Distributors have to step in and do the loss.
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