Video games in 2020 are an odd sort. It’s arguably one of the biggest years for video games since 2013 with the release of a new generation of consoles, yet somehow it feels as though the entire industry has hit a rut. The industry as a whole raked in a little over thirty-five billion dollars last year, but this year only a measly three billion.

It’s important to note that I’m writing this before the release of Cyberpunk 2077 or the yearly Game Awards, so everything I’m stating about the state of the industry could change rapidly in the weeks after I write this. However, as it currently stands, even if Cyberpunk was akin to the second coming of Christ it couldn’t stop the extreme lack of financial gain that is plaguing the industry. 

This downturn has been many years in the making. Year after year, developers and publishers have slowly been growing more distant and relations between them have gotten rougher. More and more we’re seeing games get rushed to meet deadlines simply to improve a publisher’s gain that year. The truth is that the more publishers control their developers, the more we as a consumer can see through the cracks of development.

The quality of games has slowly been lowering as well. This sounds like an objective thing, but once you break it down it becomes anything but. Games routinely cost around sixty dollars upon release and can range in length, making video games much more of an investment than other forms of media. It’s not uncommon for a game to be released for full-price and only last four hours, meaning you just paid fifteen dollars per hour of content. It’s even more common for a game to cost sixty dollars and then have downloadable content that costs more money for access to more of the game. So with this in mind, the medium, in general, is a lot more critiqable than a movie or TV show.

So what are the problems with games themselves? Well, the answer to this question will really vary from developer to developer, but I’ll hit the more important notes. I talked briefly earlier about downloadable content (DLC) and how it’s used to split games up between separate purchases. DLC in and of itself is not a bad thing., It allows developers to add on to a game they’ve already completed, but this isn’t how it’s used. DLC is often an excuse to rush a game, leaving large chunks of it out so the developer can make those parts later, and then the publisher can sell them for more money. 

Games as a service are also a wide contributor. If you don’t know, games as a service is a term that refers to a game that constantly evolves and changes over time. On paper, this sounds great. A game that not only has a wide variety of content but keeps adding to it to keep you coming back, unfortunately like DLC producers don’t quite see it that way. I’m going to use an example of a pretty recent game: Marvel’s Avengers. This game launched in an absolutely pitiful state with “copy-paste” level design and combat that frankly wasn’t fun. This would all be fine, had the company not promised Marvel’s Avengers to be a game as a service game, and now have pledged themselves to keep adding content to a game no one wants to play. 

Now you might be wondering: Well DLC isn’t all bad, and there are good “games as a service” games, and you’d be absolutely right. DLC in and of itself is amazing, and there are definitely some DLC I refuse to play without. Games as a service are great too. Look at Fortnite. Whether you love it or not it’s one of the most successful games on the market. Where these things become an issue is when publishers use these to undercut development. DLC is great until the game is being torn apart for it, and games as a service are great for adding content, but they shouldn’t be an excuse to release a game slowly over a year.

I have loved video games ever since I was a kid, so you can imagine how much it hurts for me to say that the industry is dying. Video games have lost their luster, and now their creators might be done for.