There is no such thing as a video game industry

Christopher Dring, The Game Business:

My argument is that Resident Evil is more a competitor to Stranger Things than it is to Clash of Clans. Candy Crush is more directly competing with Tiktok than Fortnite. Roblox is more a rival to the school playground than Street Fighter.

I just picked four segments, but you could easily add more to it. I would argue there are games that are akin to toys, for instance. And there are other ways to categorise these player motivations, such as Professor Richard Bartle’s four-way ‘Bartle types’, or Quantic Foundry’s motivation model. Or you can just create your own based on your own world view.

These different ways of reframing the business helps us understand a few things. For one, being amazing at one type of game, doesn’t mean you’ll be amazing at another. How many single-player story studios have tried and struggled to develop and launch a live-service multiplayer title? Naughty Dog stopped mid-way through developing its The Last of Us online game with the realization that it wasn’t set-up to deliver it. Of course there are exceptions (take a bow Rockstar), but there are far more BioWares, Crystal Dynamics, Remedys and Rocksteadys. It’s not that these studios aren’t talented, it’s just their expertise lie in different areas.

Beyond talent, I also think reframing the business is something we need to be doing more with those outside of games, whether that’s investors, analysts, legislators, and even politicians. It’s not uncommon for me to speak to a non-games analyst who has made the mistake of looking at mobile games and console games through the same lens.

With so many games published monthly/weekly/daily and “forever” games seemingly dominating the market, I continually wonder who is playing all of these games? Does a 40-100 hour turn-based RPG stand any chance of business success if the market is at once so fragmented and consolidated? (There’s room for Baldur’s Gate 3 and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, so I suppose so!)

I think the answer to those questions lies in Dring’s statement. Evaluating “video games” as a whole — whether that’s due to the legacy of the medium (a new form of entertainment that all looked the same) or to prop industry numbers as Dring’s guest Nicholas Lovell points out — is broken. I think “this is no video game industry” is a much healthier way to consider the interest and investment.

This sentiment feels like the perfect follow-up to my piece “Video Games Do Not Exist”.