It’s no secret that the gaming industry is on a downturn, with a great number of recent layoffs even at AAA studios. 2023 had some very notable failures, with names as large as Activision and Bethesda experiencing catastrophic flops in Modern Warfare III and Starfield respectively.
Bethesda’s Starfield promised to “set players loose” and allow them to explore “over 1,000 planets,” something especially appealing to existing fans remembering the highly polished worlds from the previous Fallout and Elder Scrolls series. Announced as early as 2018 and described by director Todd Howard as: “Skyrim in space”, the open-world title was not modest in its promise to fans. The game’s all-time peak for concurrent players of over 330,000 players on Steam (Parreno, gameranx.com) is a testament to the appeal of this vision. Suspense built for years, with catered releases only adding to the excitement. The problem came soon after the game released, when fans learned Starfield couldn’t deliver on its promises. All but a handful of cities were procedurally generated with a limited selection of structures and encounters, revealing a monotonous and soulless galaxy to fans who had expected the same polish and love found in Bethesda’s previous IPs on a never-before-seen scale. The game had succeeded in giving players the opportunity to travel through space to over 1,000 planets, but failed to make them interesting or memorable. Those release numbers soon fell to below 12,000 (pcgamesn.com), lower than the current player counts for both Skyrim Special Edition and Fallout 4. By this point, that number has dwindled even further to an average of 3.8k average concurrent players per day (gamalytic.com). Does this mean the gaming industry is dead?
No, it’s not. Just as some of the biggest players in the gaming industry have faltered, existing rivals and new players alike have succeeded where Bethesda failed by delivering experiences catered to what their audience actually desires. The most obvious example has to be Larian Studios’ Baldur’s Gate 3, the ambitious and long-awaited third installment of a beloved franchise built with the newest technology on the market. Sound familiar? Besides Starfield being the first in its franchise, the circumstances are nearly the same, with both studios even having roughly 400-500 employees. The key difference was that Baldur’s Gate 3 delivered on its promise.
Larian started by pitching an online roleplaying experience similar to its previous installments, and utilized Steam‘s Early Access to allow players to sample the game before it was finished, taking constant feedback and refining the core experience based on real feedback. Despite being one of the most technically impressive games in recent memory, Baldur’s Gate 3’s first players were not promised the world, and instead were offered the opportunity to play an “unfinished” version of an experience that was still being refined and polished. Even in this stage the game wasn’t particularly lacking, but the issues that did arise were much easier for fans to voice in a constructive manner and were quickly remedied. By the time the title finally released it had become the modern D&D roleplaying experience fans had dreamed of, a faithful successor to previous installments in every sense of the word. It currently averages 82.6k average daily concurrent players, and has achieved an estimated $821.50 million gross revenue on Steam alone. Compare this to Starfield’s 3.8k player count and estimated $119.4 gross revenue (numbers from gamalytic.com).
Note that there are two inputs here: the technical product and the promise. Don’t be fooled by its failure, Starfield is a very technically impressive game. The scale of its map and the capabilities of its engine are great feats in their own right. But these things aren’t inherently valuable from a consumer perspective. The lesson to be learned comes mainly from the second input, the area of the marketer. Rather than focusing on your technology and serving it to customers, figure out how you can make it work for your customers. Take feedback early, and actually listen to it. If a AAA studio like Larian can employ this kind of iterative model, there’s no reason their peers and indie developers can’t utilize the same tactics and be honest with their audience.
So let’s really break it down, what does being honest in the gaming industry actually entail? First, don’t make broad and vague promises before hiding the product in suspense. Some amount of suspense can still be good, especially early in development, but it should not be a central tactic of a modern marketing campaign. Next, rather than telling fans what you made, ask them what they want. Don’t take this as literally as polling random gamers on features they want and putting them all together, this might sound like a good idea but it will lead to a game lacking a core vision. Instead start with a concept, or an improvement on an existing one, and create an early playable demo. Once you can get the vision into the hands of the customers, you can allow them to shape it into the form they really want. Just like Larian developed an RPG by allowing players to refine their choices, a platformer might be refined by allowing players to dictate the pace and difficulty of their experience.
Essentially, your goal is to promise less, deliver more. This can be done both figuratively and literally if you truly adopt a more genuine approach to game development. Specialize in catering a personalized experience to an actively involved audience, built around a clear vision. Ensure that this vision is shared not only by the developers and the marketers, but especially the fans. An involved audience will not only give your best feedback, but also became your strongest advocates when the full release date approaches.
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