Today’s news of the acquisition by Embracer Group, combined with other news of crazy investments in new products that have not yet proved anything in the world, led me today to make a fairly radical reflection on my personal LinkedIn. Radical and certainly full of bias.
We tend to evaluate successes and failures in the video games industry in terms of cash flow. The impact of a game on the world is evaluated by stock market experts, who focus on business performance and growth opportunities.
Why then does this news bother me? To understand this it is necessary to understand why I do this job. I study and work as a game designer every day. I do it because I find the idea of having people in the world who spend moments of fun thanks to the fruit of my work truly fascinating.
That’s all.
Does anyone get rich thanks to the fruit of my work? I am very happy for this person.
But that’s not my life goal. My job is to create experiences that are able to marry the fantasies of some people looking for happy moments. The rest is a consequence.
When I see disproportionate valuations for “nice to have” features such as transportable avatars to other games and then see deals made with the creators of epic intellectual properties such as Final Fantasy and Tomb Raider, my head is short-circuited!
I know very well which thing has the most value for the players, between a feature and an epic story. It’s not being able to use a 3D model in more than one game to make a difference in gaming experiences.
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