Shawn Layden, former president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, had already predicted in 2020 the difficulties that the video game sector is facing today. It was not a prophecy of him, as he himself underlined, but rather of a lucid analysis of the trends that have been underway for decadeswhich many simply didn’t want to see, including gamers.
Layden returned to talk about the topic in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, in which he admitted that his predictions, although negative, have come true. “I’m not happy that I was right,” he said. “This was not an extraordinary prediction. I simply observed the trends of the last 25 years in the gaming industry. The numbers only went in one direction. Games were getting more expensive, not cheaper. They didn’t get shorter, on the contrary, they became more complex, causing costs to rise. Big-budget blockbusters, those that aim to make a bang, cost between $150 and $250 million. This is a huge burden on developers and publishers, and is a major reason why the industry is contracting.”
How to lower development costs?
But How to lower development costs? Layden starts with a statistic here: “Only 32% of players actually finish the games they purchase. This means that a large amount of development work goes into content that most players will never see.” In short, the length of the games is no longer a decisive factor, given that the average player is approaching the age of 30 and has less and less free time.
This is a different situation than in the past, said Layden: “Back in the days of PlayStation 1, 2 and 3, game length was a major selling point. Reviews judged games based on how much playtime you got with their own money. Maybe it made sense back then, when the average gamer was a teenager or twenty-year-old. They had a lot of time but little money, so they could dedicate many hours to a huge role-playing game.”
Layden also suggests developers to stop chasing ultra-realistic graphics, because he doubts that adding details improves the gameplay or the stories told. Also because according to him, the majority of gamers no longer even notice innovations such as ray tracing.
Finally, think that they can use artificial intelligence to carry out the heaviest and most repetitive jobs: “The AI can only look back. It assembles things to make you think it’s creating something new, but it’s just a remix of old things. Not very innovative.” Layden then cites No Man’s Sky as an example: “A game with virtually infinite possibilities, made by a team of less than ten people. How? Because they spent a lot of time creating tools and systems that let the machine do most of the work heavy, freeing them so they can focus on the creative side.”
