On one hand, from what I understand, in the 1983 crash there was a real mood of video games being over, that the fad had passed. In North America, anyway. I don’t think there’s any risk of that happening today. On the other, the video game industry is a lot larger now, so there’s a lot more shrinking that can happen without it completely destroying itself. So in that sense it may actually be bigger.
That said, I’m inclined to believe that by laying off all these people, big companies are just creating their own future competition, because there’s no shortage of demand for video games. If anything there’s a greater demand for games that aren’t constrained by the arrogance of big company executives.
One of the reasons the 1983 crash was so harsh was because brick and mortar distribution and producing expensive cartridges made self-publishing and indie development much more difficult. Hell, the Commodore 64 never had any problems throughout the crash because games were distributed on tape and floppy disk, and hobbyists could easily create new games much cheaper than console counterparts.
I would argue we have the same echoes here. The winners will be the indie PC and mobile devs alongside digital distribution platforms like Steam (Valve) and GOG where anyone with talent and ambition can enter.
On one hand, from what I understand, in the 1983 crash there was a real mood of video games being over, that the fad had passed. In North America, anyway. I don’t think there’s any risk of that happening today. On the other, the video game industry is a lot larger now, so there’s a lot more shrinking that can happen without it completely destroying itself. So in that sense it may actually be bigger.
That said, I’m inclined to believe that by laying off all these people, big companies are just creating their own future competition, because there’s no shortage of demand for video games. If anything there’s a greater demand for games that aren’t constrained by the arrogance of big company executives.
One of the reasons the 1983 crash was so harsh was because brick and mortar distribution and producing expensive cartridges made self-publishing and indie development much more difficult. Hell, the Commodore 64 never had any problems throughout the crash because games were distributed on tape and floppy disk, and hobbyists could easily create new games much cheaper than console counterparts.
I would argue we have the same echoes here. The winners will be the indie PC and mobile devs alongside digital distribution platforms like Steam (Valve) and GOG where anyone with talent and ambition can enter.