The End of "Video Games"

Press F to Pay Respects

For the generation that grew up with an Atari, Commodore 64, and NES, “Video Games” as a form of media were in a constant state of evolution.

We went from this:

To this

To this

To this

To this

And finally to this

This state of constant improvement was expected. And as we grew used to this state of improvement, the market dictated what a “Video Game” was. It was $50 or $60 or then $70, it came on a cartridge or a disc or was downloaded. It lasted 5 or 10 or 20 or 40 hours. It involved high fidelity graphics, then voice acting, then motion capture. It involved cut scenes then quicktime events. It gave you missions, it told you a story, it gave you agency, it took away agency. It immersed you, it let you feel powerful. A fairy or a disembodied voice over a radio or an intercom or a bluetooth earpod told you that you were doing a good job and where to go next.

As part of “Video Games” the market expanded as we grew older because we had more dollars to spare. Just as we grew comics from 50 cent rags on supermarket racks to multi-billion dollar blockbusters, we grew the video games business as we traded our earning power for time in their worlds.

Our kids, though, live in a post-”Video Game” world. Games to them are no different than YouTube, or Tiktok. Infinitely available, part of a fluid notion of interaction across a spectrum of chatting with people on Twitch to stealing brainrots to riding chicken jockeys to finding imposters.

A year ago I wrote that the industry had crossed the rubicon and didn’t realize it yet, as games with huge investments all failed one after the other.

Nearly $1bn in game investment went into the following games: $400m for Mindseye, $100m for Splitgate 2, hundreds of millions more for Marathon, and tens of millions more for FBC:




The studio closures we are seeing this month, from Ninja Theory to Don’t Nod, are part of this same problem. “Video Games” as we have known it are rapidly consolidating to what the market can sustain.

There will be fewer AAA titles going forward, because the market does not sustain the number currently being made. As the first generation that grew up on games, we are old now; we are not spending as much of our time or money on games. Growth is instead coming from Roblox, China, etc.

It’s clear where the younger generation are, and they are not playing “Video Games”.

At this very moment on Roblox there are 207,000 people playing Steal a Brainrot. There have been 70 BILLION plays since last summer.

Each time I bring this up, I am told these are not “Video Games.” Here is one such comment from someone to me last week:

The “Video Game” is what our generation has defined it to be. And the younger audiences have told us what they consider a video game to be instead. It’s not our definition.

This doesn’t mean that the “Video Game” as we have known it goes away. It means that it’s a smaller field, with fewer developers, fewer studios, and fewer titles coming out. Xbox is right to make the cuts it is making; Sony will continue to do the same.

Investing in fewer, bigger titles is what has helped the movie industry survive in the age of YouTube. Xbox has already said that this is their strategy going forward in the age of Roblox, and it will be the same for Sony.

Meanwhile, the number of releases on Steam will increase. Massively. From small, single person teams, AI powered by coding tools. I expect it to double in the next year.

But are those “Video Games”? The longer we hold tight to this definition, speaking it like a mantra, the more blind we are to reality.

In June 2023 there were three public “Video Game” publishers in the United States: Activision, EA, and Take-2. By the end of this year there will be one, the former two having both been acquired.

I visited a friend’s house recently where his two children sat on a sofa, in front of a TV, both of whom were playing Roblox titles on tablets while watching a YouTube video on the television. The PS5 unit under the TV was off.

Lowercase ‘video games’ will be bigger than ever. The time of “Video Games” however, is at an end. They are no longer the growth product, and they are increasingly irrelevant to the young.

Our market is big enough to sustain an Xbox brand with a half dozen studios; it is not big enough to sustain an Xbox brand with thirty. That is what this month’s closures are about. After the warm nights of Summer Games Fest ended, we awoke to the cold light of day where you can announce a title like Senua and see it gone in the blink of an eye.

It’s not actually different than the pattern that we’ve seen since 2023’s first layoffs and closures began. High Guard was announced at the TGS, shut down a month later. It just happens faster now, because the underlying fundamentals of those financing the titles changed.

So let’s be clear: the studio closures aren’t happening because studios were making profitable titles. They are happening because revenues to cover their costs were not being generated, meaning their audiences did not show up.

If anything, the current issues lay bare that the industry was being heavily subsidized by investors for the last six years, rather than by reinvestments from player profits. The players hit F years ago; we are only just finding out now.

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CEO & Emmy-Award Winner, Genvid. Previously 社長付 (President's Office) at Square Enix Holdings.