A drastic shift in direction for the gaming industry

Many giant companies have expanded their workforce by focusing on hyper-specialization of roles, where each person handles a tiny detail. This heavy structure has led to monstrous budgets in AAA titles that fail to recover operational costs, something that has become common in recent years. Meanwhile, the indie scene manages excellent financial returns with moderate investments. Thomas Mahler sees these two worlds colliding, highlighting that professionals who master multiple production tools can make processes much more agile and efficient. The era of extreme specialization appears to have reached its productive limit.

It's sad to witness the mass layoffs that continue to plague several major publishers in the market. In light of the current situation at Xbox, dealing with severe restructuring, the creator of Ori mentioned that he himself would make cuts at the brand and that the tough decisions were foreseeable.

“It's sad to see what's happening at Xbox right now. Many good people affected and I don't want to minimize that, but to be honest, this has been expected for a long time and I'm not sure if it stops here. It could be the beginning of a much larger reboot in the entire industry. In the long run, I think this reboot may be good for games and players,” the developer pondered. It's a tough view on the job market, but it exposes the management excesses committed by multinationals in the sector.

He also pointed the finger at the global market, commenting that many professionals are in shock simply for having ignored the obvious signs of the current business model's wear and tear. Projects grew chaotically and became too expensive, going from dozens to thousands of collaborators without a sustainable financial plan to justify such expansion.

“I think we're currently seeing worlds collide. Many indie projects are done with reasonable budgets and achieve a huge return on investment. Meanwhile, how many AAA games with monstrous budgets have we seen in recent years that haven't recovered the costs?” asked Thomas Mahler.

The analysis lays bare that having famous brands in the catalog doesn’t save any company if the internal teams lose the creative ability to deliver experiences that truly captivate the audience. This forced reconfiguration might end up cleaning up corporate excesses and restoring the focus to what really matters: the quality of the product that reaches the consumer.