Happy Halloween! It’s time to get spooky as the pumpkin season finally reaches its apex. I’d imagine most websites are recommending a slew of horror games right now to really get you in the frightened spirit, but 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Alan Wake 2 just came out and I’ve already told everyone I know to play 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Haunting Ground and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Silent Hill 2 anyway. So, instead, let’s talk about something that is truly horrifying: the modern video g🍸ame industry.
2023 is frequently being hailed as one of the best years in the medium’s history, and when you look at the sheer number of excellent games launching in the past 10 months, that’s an easy observation to get on board with. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Th✤e Legend of Zelda: Tears of the K🐻ingdom, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Baldur’s Gate 3, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Resident Evil 4, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Super Mario Wonder, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Hi-Fi Rush, and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Armored Core 6 are just some of the bangers to emerge this year, and I could spend an entire article heaping praise upon all of them. We will look back on 2023 as a time period where new innovations were made in a ranꦰge of genres, pushing the medium forward in ways 🦩we can’t even quantify right now.
Don’🌠t Forget Indie Horror Games This Halloꦯween
A🐲lan Wake 2 isn't the only game waiting to scare you this Halloween.
But it’s also been a year of studio closures, mass layoffs, and constant reminders that all the corporations who call the shots in this young industry are willing to punish those making their successes possible to cover up foolish mistakes. Even a single failure can cause studios that have been around for decades to close without warning, given no chance at redemption or a way to explore new ideas to bring them back into the limelight. Volition wasn’t only shuttered because the S🤡aints Row reboot was a failure, it just happened to be expendable when a deal🌺 parent company Embracer Group depended on fell through, with billions needing to be recouped that executives sure weren’t going to cough up. Now we all lose out.
The very same corporation who is willing to throw decades of history under the bus to save its own skin also happens to own iconic properties like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Borderlands, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Legacy of Kain, and so many more. Unless a studio is assigned to these names, who’s to say they won’t rot in some corporate vault forever, or be responsible for yet another harsh round of layoffs when a reboot or sequel fails to sell ten million copies? It’s sad to see this industry consolidate itself into smaller and smaller corporate foxholes as beloved games many of us grew up on become bargaining chips for potential profits. It’s even sadder that fans can do nothing to stop this, watching as major acquisitions and studio closures slowly become the norm in a time when we’re constantly being told to celebrate how far ga💛mes have come. It’s hard when the people responsible for making them can’t catch a break.
168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Epic Gam🌼es also recently let 900 e✱mployees go as part of a major restructuring, despite it having more money than sense and being responsible for both the largest game and development tool in the world. CEO Tim Sweeney said the company wasn’t making as much money as it was spending, but apparently wasn’t broken up enough to take a couple of millions off his own paycheck to balance things out. People who were acquired and e𓂃xcited about the positive changes Epic Games could bring about are now stuck looking for work across an increasingly volatile industry, while platforms like Bandcamp are being torn apart as the last few pieces of independence modern media has are left behind in favour of corporate profit. It sucks, and there is no fixing it until something drastic changes and those in charge come to realise the landscape we’re in isn’t and never will be sustainable.
Just this week Bungie announced that it will be delaying both Destiny 2: The Final Shape and Marathon amidst a bunch of its own ꦑlayoffs, despite recently being acquired by Sony which has a greater number of resources to work with. Even that wasn’t enough to keep the lights shining in this cutthroat industry, where the majority of games now take several years to make, and a single failure can see hundreds left out to dry. We’ve allowed video games to become more visually spectacular and more mechanically immense, but only with constant sacrifice of human employees trying to make ends meet. You can keep telling us mass layoffs are a sad reality of regular corporate restructuring🏅, but that doesn’t make the bullshit smell any better, nor will it make thousands who call this industry home feel safe within it.
I haven’t even touched on the systemic racism, sexism, and transphobia that has gradually been unearthe🍬d as part of myriad corporate scandals, or the overpaid executives who make ridiculous decisions and earn millions in bonuses while workers beneath them are laid off like it’s nothing, like human beings are replaceable cogs in a machine that can’t afford at any moment to stop moving. Except it can - these problems can be solved, and video games can be a better, more inclusive medium, corporations just know to make these changes pockets would need to become a tiny biღt lighter. Which, sadly, is apparently asking way too much.
For all the wonderful games and worthwhile progress being made in the industry, I find it hard to be hopeful about how far ♐we’ve come or where we’re set to go when everything is so vulnerable to being cut out from under us. Workers and consumers forced to abide by the selfish whims of corporations that ℱchange on a dime, trying to stay afloat in a modern world where a single mistake can drown you. Give me all the horror games in the world and there will never be anything more startling than the real thing, and the fact I’m afraid we’re now too far gone.
