It’s a peculiar feeling, that only in the years following the death knell of E3, that I found both the inclination and opportunity to return to an in person game industry showcase. Seeing Geoff Keighley’s Summer Game Fest presentation in person filled a gap of emotional resonance, not filled in the last few years of E3’s struggle to maintain relevance post pandemic, where the shift in focus to the less cumbersome and costly direct digital presentations became the norm.
There was a palpable sense of community, mutual excitement and understanding, that was much welcomed after a year of what can be ambivalently described as one of the game industries best and worst, 2023 was a year of titanic releases from Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, Hogwarts Legacy, Final Fantasy XVI, and the full launch of Baldur’s Gate 3 to name a few, while simultaneously being the host of over 10,000 lost positions via mass layoffs and studio closures across the industry. A trend that has unfortunately continued and already surpassed in the first half of 2024, with nonsensical developer shut-downs such as Microsoft’s closure of Tango Gameworks earlier this year, whose sleeper hit, Hi-Fi Rush, was wildly successful across any conceivable metric in spite of its utter lack of marketing, all to allegedly supplement tax write-offs on the closure.
Though it was stated most poignantly by Geoff Keighley himself in the showcase opening statement “And I know if you watch this show you don’t just play games, you deeply care about this artform, and the heath of this industry…But let’s also face it, this has been a tumultuous and difficult year, with company layoffs and studio closures, that have disappointed all of us”…“But there is something else happening, our industry is evolving and changing, and thanks to digital distribution, smaller teams and new creators are finding incredible success’ Keighley pointed out that 8 in 10 of the best selling games on steam in the last 6 months came from Indie, mid size teams as well as solo developers.
Summer Game Fest has, since its start in 2020, given a platform to both large and small scale industry announcements and premiers, presenting updates for highly anticipated titles as well as uplifting and spotlighting smaller projects that might otherwise go unnoticed. While this year’s show presented a healthy variety across the budget spectrum, some of the most interesting components of the show were not for any singular title, but the context of batch slate announcements from new and unique publishers.
Our industry is evolving and changing, and thanks to digital distribution, smaller teams and new creators are finding incredible success.
Geoff Keighly
One such announcement was that of the Blumhouse Games Studio, Blumhouse Productions having already bridged one gap to video games in the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie, have come forward with a whole slate of various indie horror game projects. CEO Jason Blum took the stage alongside Creative Lead Louise Blain “We wanted to take our approach to movies and apply it to games, and that’s what you see here, we’re gonna do independent games, we’re gonna look for creators, we’re gonna give them a platform, and encourage them to be weird and subversive and find the most effed up scariest things they can and put them into really cool games!” Blumhouse Productions approach in question is taking a variety of niche productions, scripts, or concepts that might be considered risky or not offer “enough” of a return on investment, and producing these projects with realistically achievable budgets. The Blumhouse portfolio spans many different styles and subgenres within the greater horror scene, and while sometimes an acquired taste, the achievable budgets and consistent profitability of their movies speak to a greater potential of possibility and success in the application of that same mentality in the interactive medium.
The other slate presentation came from Inner Sloth, the indie development team behind memetic lottery winner and social deception game Among Us, which gained the bulk of its following years after its initial launch in 2018, during the pandemic, where a greater allotment of free-time and need for social interaction created the perfect space for games like Among Us. Victoria Tran and Forest Willard took the stage to present Outer Sloth, an indie game creative mutual fund, utilizing the success of Among Us to help produce and perpetuate other games in the indie space. The path of using one’s own success to help initiate the success and creation of contemporaries in game development is both heartwarming and step in the right direction in exploring and substantiating alternatives to the current industry publishing dynamic, that has resulted in the hostile acquisition and dissolution of so many studios for the impossible pursuit of perpetual corporate stock growth. Seeing genuine excitement, effort, and collaboration towards attaining sustainable development practices makes me hopeful for a stronger sub triple A environment as well as all the fruits of that labor, new and unexplored narratives and ideas to subvert the “games as a service” model that has muddled the quality of the medium.
Another unique announcement came with Sam Lake’s arrival on stage to the tune of Alan Wake 2’s musical number, announcing the anticipated Night Springs DLC, in the kind of subversive, Twin Peaksian, convergence of narratives only Remedy has deigned to attempt. Alongside this announcement was that of the Alan Wake 2 collectors and physical editions, the title until now was a digital exclusive, yet another inversion of the traditional publishing practice of creating either losses through overproduction physical copies or a scalping feeding frenzy over limited stock, we see Remedy making efforts to produce physical iterations to support demand after release.
While there are plenty of announcements to appreciate and analyze, I recommend viewing the presentation firsthand to find which of the upcoming titles appeals most to you, and see if these shifts in dynamic may be a hopeful sign for a more sustainable future in the industry.
