Transcript

Aaron Nemoyten (00:00)
From March 9th through 13th, 2026 in San Francisco, 20,000 game developers, journalists, investors, students, and volunteers attended the Game Developers Conference, or GDC, or as they rebranded to this year for some reason, GDC Festival of Gaming. Thousands of others visited without buying passes to network professionally or to hang out with their friends. I went, too, and interviewed nine game developers, asking each of them the same four questions.

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the game industry? What are you angry about right now in the game industry? What are you hopeful about right now in the game industry? And finally, what are you excited about right now in the game industry? Some of these game developers I would call friends. Some I met at GDC last year and hadn’t seen since. And a few I literally just found via LinkedIn. Who are they? And what did they say? My name is Aaron Nemoyten and this is Make Games Drink Coffee.

Aaron Nemoyten (01:06)
Before my guests introduce themselves, I want to apologize for using a wireless mic for these interviews that wasn’t quite as up to the task as I had expected. I’m usually pretty picky about audio quality on the podcast, so I’m sorry about that. Anyway, let’s get to it.

Michael Fitch (01:22)
my name is Michael Fitch. I’ve been in the industry for about 25 years. I’ve done both design and production. I’ve done both development and publishing. And I’m here at GDC hoping to connect with some people and talk about the state of the industry.

Lyn Dang (01:35)
I’m Lynn. games marketer for eight going on nine years now, and I’m glad to be on this podcast.

Daniel Gerstein (01:42)
hi, I’m Dan Gerstein. I am the co-founder and game director at Pistol Shrimp. I work with Fred Ford and we’re working on a sequel to the classic game, the Ur-Quan Masters. And game is called Free Stars: Children of

Aaron Nemoyten (01:53)
I’m gonna jump in here. Dan’s game, Free Stars Children of Infinity, is actually the true sequel to the classic 1992 PC game Star Control Confusing, I know. But that’s the game industry for you.

Dan and I actually both grew up in Novato, up until recently was also home to Toys for Bob. Speaking of which…

Nat Loh (02:15)
Hi, I’m Nat Loh a game design consultant. I’ve been working in the industry for over 20 years. Used to work with Aaron at Toys for Bob.

Aaron Nemoyten (02:25)
Yeah, so I actually started at Toys for Bob the same day as Nat back in 2004. I stayed for six months and then started working on my film degree at SF State. Nat stayed for 13 years. Dan was there for a long time too.

Jessica Flor (02:38)
Hi, I’m Jessica Floor. I’m the founder and CEO of Hexwave Games and working on a cute little game called HerSalon

Thomas Fossgard (02:44)
hey, I’m Thomas. I run a small studio in Poland. ⁓ We’re part of an amazing accelerator called Egg, made by John Graham, who founded Humble Bundle. And yeah, we’re trying to fund our unannounced projects.

Aaron Nemoyten (02:57)
The accelerator Thomas is referring to is Elbow Grease Games.

Aaron Nemoyten (03:01)
I met him at a game startup meetup last GDC while he was looking for funding. I’m really happy he found some because his game looks awesome. I don’t think I can tell you about it though. You’ll have to ask him yourself.

Erika Mariko Olsen (03:13)
my name is Erica, and I have been in the industry about 13 years. I’ve mostly worked at publishers, and I’m now a consultant for developers who are looking to pitch to publishers. And I provide fractional production assistance as well.

Jonathan Jennings (03:29)
Hi, I’m Jonathan Jennings, gameplay engineer at Owlchemy Labs ⁓ and a long time software developer.

Tiffany Otto (03:35)
Hi, I’m Tiffany Otto. I do consulting for business development and games, mostly in the non-endemic space.

Aaron Nemoyten (03:42)
I gotta jump in here again. Non-endemic in this case means not natively games focused. This will come up later in the context of non-endemic investors, which is to say, investors that came to games from other industries in the last few years, mostly because games seemed like a hot investment at the

Anyway, the first question I asked everybody was this. What are you scared about in the industry right now? The first common thread, talent loss.

The industry has suffered tens of thousands of layoffs in the last year. These layoffs are our friends and coworkers, or at the very least, our brothers and sisters in the class consciousness sense of the word. And a lot of them might not come back.

Nat Loh (04:24)
The thing that scares me the most is the sort of dynamic that we’ve had for some time where a lot of people leave the industry and all of that knowledge they’ve acquired is gone. People are just constantly relearning the same lessons over and over again or we’re being very siloed in terms of how we share that knowledge with all our peers. So ideally at GDC it’s about sharing that knowledge ⁓ but we don’t necessarily have a clear path for

how that overall knowledge stagnation can be freed up so that we’re able to advance as an industry.

Erika Mariko Olsen (05:02)
I am scared that we’re going to lose a lot of talent right now. Obviously, we’ve had a lot of layoffs. I think it’s a very potentially discouraging time in the industry. I think that there are a lot of people who don’t have the financial.

ability to wait it out for things to get better and I’m I am afraid that we’re going to lose a lot of wonderful talent from this industry just because they don’t have something stable right now.

Thomas Fossgard (05:34)
Right now, I’m scared a lot of talent is gonna leave and not come back.

just because there isn’t enough work and funding. For individuals, developers, for studios, many people got into it. ⁓ I’m afraid a lot of people won’t come back. ⁓ I’m also afraid for the general funding situations because AI and AI related things seems to take a lot of the capital that used to go to more general games.

This is added on top of a recent trend where Buzzwords has been attracting a lot of money in the last three, four years. We just made it hard. It’s just making a nice, normal game. Very hard to get funding.

Daniel Gerstein (06:16)
Right now I am scared in the games industry of the people working in the games industry.

buying into a lot of the dystopia that is happening. And I am afraid that although we have seen a lot of stuff that any creative industry would see with people coming and going, that people see so much negative stuff, and there is a lot of negative stuff, that that becomes a snowball and we lose a lot of creative voices, a lot of creative talent, and we also keep other people out because the space just becomes too negative for anyone to exist in without, you know, taking on that negativity.

Jonathan Jennings (06:53)
I am quite scared for the future of the juniors in the industry. I think it’s really just a really tumultuous time. And I think all of this conversation about AI replacing developers, it’s scary existentially for a lot of us more senior devs, but for the juniors, I feel like it’s robbing them of even beginning opportunities to develop and grow their craft.

And so that just scares me. I think that’s going to set us up with a real talent pipeline shortage or a real issue with not having enough creative developers in the future. And so I think that’s something we need to take a lot more seriously or else we’re going to be really hurting in a year or two when game projects start up and there’s not enough people to do them or not enough talented people.

Aaron Nemoyten (07:39)
People are also worried about which games, teams, and companies do or do not get funding. For a few years starting in 2020, the combination of people staying home and the reduction of interest rates spurred massive investment in the game industry. Then, that investment followed into short-term buzzwords like crypto, Web3, and the metaverse. Then, a few years ago, as interest rates went up and NFTs crashed, most of that money disappeared as well.

Tiffany Otto (08:06)
we’ve had a lot of non-endemic investment in a few years. And when you get that kind of ⁓ cheap, fluffy money running around, people take different chances, they make different bets, they assess risk differently. And we have a lot of people who have fundamentally not worked on a game game, like the creation of a game, making choices about what gets greenlit and what’s like…

like how go to market works for all that. And I think it’s, it’s muddying a lot of waters and like, there’s a lot of conflation of ideas of how to execute on developing, producing, distributing, marketing, and publishing a game. So that’s, that’s, think how I’d answer that one.

Michael Fitch (08:51)
So in terms of what I’m scared about, ⁓ I think the current financing situation is very scary in the industry. You’ve seen for years now people trying to fundraise and not being successful. ⁓ All of those projects that never got off the ground and never got started, they’re not gonna make it through the pipeline, which means you’re not gonna get games out the other side. And what I think we’re gonna start seeing in 2027, 2028 is some of the major publishers having real gaps in their schedules.

because there have been so many things that have been canceled, I don’t think you can maintain a blockbuster lineup the way you used to. So the thing that scares me most is that the financing situation is dire and it doesn’t show any signs of getting any better.

Lyn Dang (09:33)
I’m scared about is I see kind of like an almost

hourglass distribution, where at the very top you have your really high performing IPs, your big companies. And then there used to be a healthier space in the middle of funded, indie, but not like at least they’ve got something to work on. But now it’s all either very top or very bottom, where there’s no funding or tons of money. There’s nothing in the middle. And that’s what I’m scared of.

Jessica Flor (10:05)
I am scared that with all the technology that is available to people that so many games are going to be made that it ends up making it really hard for small indie creators to get noticed, especially if they can’t find publishers or learn to market for themselves. I heard a stat just recently that the last Steam Next Fest had 45 % AI-generated games. And so the amount of noise that’s being created by people who may not have all the experience they need to make a quality game ⁓ is just putting really awesome small studios at risk.

Aaron Nemoyten (10:35)
I also asked what everyone was angry about in the games industry right now. One common concern was, to paraphrase Rodney Dangerfield, we get no respect.

Lyn Dang (10:43)
I’m angry about is my background is actually in community management. So it’s all about communications with people and, you know, empathy. And with the waves of layoffs that have been happening, you know, throughout the industry, I feel like there’s better ways to do a layoff. feel okay, I’m not going to argue there should. Yes, there should be in the ideal world, no layoffs. But if it’s going to have to happen, then there are ways to be, you know, empathetic about it. There are ways to

off board people to convey the message in a way that shows you taking this seriously and you care and you want the best, whatever happens if the layoff is inevitable. So that’s something I’m angry about. In my eyes, it’s very possible and in my eyes, easy to approach this in an empathetic way, but it’s just not happening. People are just being cut without resources, without explanation, and that makes me angry.

Jonathan Jennings (11:39)
What makes me angry in the game industry? I’m for the developers. I feel like game developers don’t get enough respect. I think that we make games possible. I understand that business interests pay for games, but you can’t have games without the creativity, without the talent, without the passion that us devs bring. I think game developers…

deserve more respect and the lack of respect we get from the people whose lives we make possible, upsets me greatly.

Aaron Nemoyten (12:08)
Some concerns were even more broad. We do, after all, live in a society.

Daniel Gerstein (12:13)
I am angry right now.

about in the industry that we live in the same thing, same environment that everybody else in the world lives, that the overwhelming amoeba, that everything must be better, everything must be improved, everything must make more money infinitely or it’s worthless. Everyone’s going through that and games always go through some versions of that. But right now that dial feels turned up to 11 and it is causing unnecessary distress. And after so many GDCs, I am angry that I come here and there are people here

proudly advocating for things like AI workflows and things that actually people have been speaking out and don’t want and that their voices are not being listened to. same thing everybody else is going through. We just are in our own game development shadowed version of it.

Nat Loh (13:04)
⁓ if the one thing I’m angry about, I don’t know if it’s the industry at large or more of just the world economy, but publicly traded companies. Do I need to say more? I will.

publicly traded companies, they’re structured to always push for growth. you make a billion dollars every year consistently for 10 years, that’s seen as a negative in eye of world economy, because you are not growing. And one of the trends with the game industry right now is we’re reaching a lot of market maturity. The past, I forget how many years, there was 20 % growth every year.

That’s flattening down. So hopefully the big corporations understand that trend and can adjust their strategy to be more reasonable and not be like, we need to make so much more money every year all the time.

Aaron Nemoyten (14:03)
Another concern was, does the industry create a healthy ecosystem for new ideas?

Jessica Flor (14:08)
Honestly, I am angry that so much of the old guard of traditional gaming still exists in 2026. I feel like we are, I mean, I guess it’s a part of being of this time right now, but I wish that everyone was as open and welcoming and ⁓ shared information readily the way indie game communities do. And I just still see this

hold tight, locked door, triple A mentality that isn’t going away and I hope that they adjust that.

Tiffany Otto (14:39)
hesitate to use the word anger, because it’s been like a bit of a slog So I’m not sure if I anger left, but like I’m gutted about how we’ve had a lot of consolidation over the last few years.

And so we’re not getting like as interesting of stuff as much anymore. I feel like we’re getting like less cross pollination and we’re seeing some gems fall through the cracks. don’t know if I have enough bandwidth to even feel anger anymore, but I’m low key, I’m gutted at the consolidation. I don’t think it leads to a healthy ecosystem in games.

Aaron Nemoyten (15:07)
And then we had some other concerns.

Michael Fitch (15:10)
terms of what I’m angry about, I am mad as hell about all the AI scammers who are pushing this narrative that AI is inevitable, that AI is magical, that AI will solve all of your problems, none of which is true.

And the fact that people are getting rich off of this while they’re promoting nothing that actually has any value to it, it just drives me insane. I’m so mad at all these people who are pushing this bullshit and making money off of it when they know it’s bullshit.

Erika Mariko Olsen (15:39)
I don’t know if I would say I’m truly angry angry about anything. I’m more disappointed in some of the stuff. ⁓ I am disappointed. I am your disappointed Asian mother. In some of the

decision makers in our industry who have made a lot of short-sighted decisions.

Thomas Fossgard (16:04)
hard to be angry. In general, everyone I meet are trying as good as they can. It’s not easier for publishers. It’s not easy for anyone, really.

it’s hard to focus my anger at someone specific. I have one big dream and it’s that executives and people make these funding decisions that they would take more personal involvement and accountability in choosing gets to make their game.

Aaron Nemoyten (16:30)
Fortunately, it’s not all doom and gloom. Here’s some advice a few developers gave that had nothing to do with making games.

Jessica Flor (16:36)
bring good walking shoes if you ever come to GDC. It’s just, it’s a long event. It’s my second year doing it and I truly love the opportunities but you have to pace yourself especially if you’re more introverted so it’s my little word to the wise if you ever end up in an event that’s super big for this industry.

Thomas Fossgard (16:56)
San Francisco is an absolutely beautiful city, but you have to get out of the downtown area. If you are…

in SF or at GDC, go explore the rest of the city. ⁓ It’s absolutely amazing. So hop on an e-bike, go and just explore. That’s what I do and I love it.

Aaron Nemoyten (17:17)
I completely agree with that. Explore the city, explore the Bay Area, go to the forests of Marin County or go to Golden Gate Park, the Exploratorium. Heck, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is so close to where GDC is, it’s in the background of half these interviews. Okay, we’re gonna take a quick break and then we’ll get to the positive stuff. What developers are hopeful and excited about and some hot takes.

Welcome back. The first half of this episode was a bit of a downer, so I’m going to make sure we go out on some high notes. Everybody is hopeful about new games, especially indies.

Lyn Dang (18:27)
What I’m hopeful about and what I really enjoy, especially being here at GDC, is the spirit of Indy and the spirit of people who, despite all the circumstances, despite world politics and how things seem to be collapsing, we still have each other. We still have the support of each other. And there’s still lots of people who are like, you know what, I don’t have any funding, but I’m still working away on my game. And I love

going home and playing more games. That’s my immediate answer, the favorite one. But overall, I feel like there’s still a future and we’re seeing, you know, indie hits and people are realizing, wait a minute, you know, even from other countries that aren’t, the typical Western markets or Western developers, there’s still beautiful games being made.

And I think that’s gonna endure whatever circumstances happen in the industry.

Daniel Gerstein (19:21)
I got the same answer to all these questions. I am hopeful. I am hopeful right now in games because I meet other game developers and we are as we are much more diverse than any media would ever tell you. I’ve worked in games for so many years, over 20 years I think, I’ve been, I started making games as a kid and I’ve seen so many things but every year I am so hopeful and excited by seeing the people who show up and are still

interested in this is still believe that games have the power for change and that’s something that sounds corny but it’s true I really think games can bring people together and games are a way of getting people to connect in a place that’s safe when a lot of the world maybe doesn’t feel safe.

Nat Loh (20:05)
I’m hopeful about our young kids. This may be an angry thing, but people, need to hire more juniors. Lots of reasons for this. But we got lot of eager folks in the industry looking to make something wonderful and tap into that talent. Start planting seeds for the next generation of gamers.

think there’s a lot of good games out there. ⁓ Hopefully, we’re going to see a bunch of people who are essentially adapting to the situation where they’re banding together with people they know working on projects and essentially finding their own path and

working around the whole publisher model. need a few more Clair Obscurs a few big games that can do super well, get publishers to be like, oops, we passed on that project and the real FOMO of missing out on the next big hit to get them to really, I think, change the way they’re doing business. Right now, I’m seeing a lot of publishers who

are looking at like in the developers and expecting them to take on 50 % of the risk, but also the terms of like taking on the the developers themselves.

Logically speaking, if they take on half of the risk, then they should get at least twice as much of benefit from

Erika Mariko Olsen (21:29)
I am actually hopeful, or maybe this is more the excited question. I don’t know which one this really falls under better, but you know, with a lot of these larger projects getting I am seeing a lot more people

starting to pursue smaller projects that they wouldn’t have necessarily time to do otherwise or that they just didn’t have the push to do otherwise. And I think that there’s been sort of a, you know, unfortunate series of events that has maybe kind of led to a push of people being able to.

like finally pursue a personal project that they were particularly interested in. I think that we might come out of this seeing a lot more like small interesting projects from the people who are finally able to work on that weird little idea they had.

Thomas Fossgard (22:27)
I think it’s a big trend now that a lot of developers just make games without funding. You see a lot of very risky projects being made, especially by small indies and solo devs. so cool to see, and they do a lot of beautiful things. I also see a lot of movement on the art side. People are really looking outside the traditional game art styles. They’re trying to find something else.

it’s going to be interesting to see what comes out in terms of new mechanics, new interesting art styles, and new ideas.

Jonathan Jennings (22:57)
I still feel like there’s so much opportunity to make more exciting games. I feel like the creativity of game developers is being held back by really stagnant

budgets and old business models. feel like once like the business end of the industry figures itself out, I think that we’re going to see a whole new era of really incredible games. And so I’m really excited. I think that there’s still a ton of opportunity and passion and creativity out there for game devs. And I can’t wait for that to finally be met by the business interests that are currently holding that back.

Tiffany Otto (23:31)
I think, God, it’s so cliche. I have seen some real absolute gems from people. have no business knowing about their product. So like they’re either like really small or they’re really young or it’s a student team or it’s from a country would not normally get like served algorithmically. And so like, I do see some real diamonds in the rough. Like obviously I’m nervous, like, are they going to get funded? Are they going to get distro? But like, I don’t know. There’s some really cool like

things hiding under small rocks in a way that, you like don’t get me wrong, we have so much digital penetration, which has like pluses and minuses, but one plus is we have more rocks to look

Jessica Flor (24:05)
Well, I’m really hopeful about my team personally. It’s the first time I’ve ever worked with a full female team and the dynamics of being in a meeting and have everyone listen truly and give thoughtful responses, not talking over each other and bring valuable things to the table every time we meet is just refreshing and I’m really excited for these young new voices to have the chance to show what they can do.

Michael Fitch (24:30)
What am I hopeful about? mean, GDC is great for renewing your hope in the industry, thing that makes me hopeful every single year is the people, because the industry has been brutal since the very beginning. If you think about the OGs and what they had to do to stand up an industry, you literally had to write the code, package the code, find someplace to sell it, and go someplace with your cassette and a little baggie and find someone to put it on a shelf.

So the game industry has always been hard, ⁓ but the people who make these amazing games, they’re just amazing. They’re just astonishing. I love the hashtag, what a game dev looks like. Comes out every year at GDC. Those people are what give me hope. Those people are making new, interesting, dynamic game experiences. They’re the future.

Aaron Nemoyten (25:21)
To some folks, hopeful and excited seem too similar, but I wanted to ask both anyway because different emotions can elicit different answers, and excitement and hope are in some ways the short and long term mirrors of each other. So, what were people excited about? Games, people, and possibilities.

Daniel Gerstein (25:39)
I am going to give a selfish answer. I am excited about the release of my own game. I have been working on a game that has had the longest development cycle that I have ever had, which is over four years now for pre-production and production put it all together. So I’ve been working on this longer than I worked on any other project. This is my first indie project. I have been so shepherd this project through and get to meet my community. And I have I’m so lucky I have such a supportive community. So I would say I’m not excited because it’s mine. I don’t I don’t want to

play it. It’s not for me. I’m excited to have other people playing it and finally see this through and deliver on something that people are excited about, which is cool.

Jessica Flor (26:17)
been so excited to connect with people. There’s so many, I mean, we’re at GDC, so it’s like an easy thing to talk about. But every time I talk to new creators, how excited they are about their projects, the ideas they have about how things should work or what type of games should be made. ⁓ It’s just inspiring and it really excites me to keep building new things. Hopefully not get distracted and start a new project, but yeah, it’s really cool to see everyone’s work.

Erika Mariko Olsen (26:40)
I mean, I think that I’m excited to see that a lot more of these like kind of weird little games are seeing financial success. a lot of times the decisions that publishers make to sign something is based off of old data, based off of comparable titles that they’re able to get.

the metrics off of and decide whether or not, this is a financially feasible project that might make positive revenue. And ⁓ I think that seeing a lot more of these like weird little indie things could give publishers and investors that push to maybe believe in something that they didn’t have ⁓ the like evidence to believe in before.

Jonathan Jennings (27:28)
I love seeing games like slay the spire 2 explode. I love seeing like so many indie games are, it’s almost feels like we’re going through another indie game Renaissance where all these small teams are making really great titles. ⁓ think Clair Obscura is a great example of like, it doesn’t take a ton of money and a ton of people to make something fantastic. and so that fills me with a lot of hope.

I’m really hopeful for the future of indie games and really the appreciation of again the craft of us as game creators.

Tiffany Otto (28:00)
mean, literally 1.7 Stardew, but like that’s not a real answer.

now I’m not saying we’re in a bubble, but if we’re in a bubble and if it pops, I think that whoever survives the next shakeout is going to there’s going to be an interesting Renaissance moment of that. We’re getting more diverse voices, we’re getting more intersectional projects, we’re getting phenomenal cross pollination in ways that like under 1990s traditional like top down three tier publishing system we wouldn’t have gotten and like

I was a vintage now, but like I was a teenage exocolonist is a perfect example of the kind of game that probably would not have gotten green lit 30 years ago. But I have spent over a hundred hours in that and I am just scratching the surface. I find myself wanting to play it. And that quirky, interesting style, it’s it’s written and designed and developed in a manner that like, I literally think at no other time in history could have been made. And that’s, that’s iconic to me. And like,

Obviously Citizen Sleeper is nowhere near a sleeper hit. That game, like everyone loves and like Citizen Sleeper 2 saving it for a rainy day. And I think a game like Citizen Sleeper or Citizen Sleeper 2 is example again of this informed cross-pollinated of play. Like the stories told in those games would not have gotten told 20, 30 years ago.

Thomas Fossgard (29:18)
I’m excited about what the smaller projects are promising. I think over time, these projects will do well. They will eventually turn into small teams that will make bigger and bigger projects, but with those original ideas and attitudes in place.

Michael Fitch (29:33)
What am I excited about? Oh my god, I’m excited about everything. You know, the future in games is always a new frontier. You never know what’s coming out.

But I think the thing that gets me most excited is just the games themselves. I’ve always loved playing games. I got into the game industry because I was a player and I wanted to make the games that I was playing. And every year there has been something new, something unexpected, something that’s blown my mind. And we just keep doing it year after year after year. So I think the game industry is the most exciting place to be. I think it’s always been the most exciting place to be. I wouldn’t want to be in place else.

Aaron Nemoyten (30:08)
That would be a fantastic place to end it, but we’re actually not done yet. I also asked for any hot takes that didn’t seem to fit anywhere else. I got some really interesting answers.

Lyn Dang (30:18)
Because I’m a communications person, hot takes is like the opposite of what I’m supposed to say. So I don’t quite have anything like that. But yeah, I hope everyone, like even those who can’t make it to GDC, right? There’s still the community. And despite what you might think, you belong in it.

Daniel Gerstein (30:38)
I’ll give the same hot take I give all the time. And I’ve been saying this for years, so I don’t know how hot it is. This is a lukewarm take now. Graphics don’t matter.

People engage with stories, they engage with gameplay, anybody who has played Dungeons and Dragons or any tabletop game for years can tell you that it doesn’t matter what you show a player. Games are about interactivity and constantly chasing the graphics fidelity thing is what everyone is doing and it is such a waste of time. We should make games that are weird, and I should say there are more of those happening, but.

More people need to let go of graphics as being an important component of games. The gameplay, the story, and the connection and interactivity are what make it last for people.

Erika Mariko Olsen (31:19)
Final thoughts or hot takes? Ooh. Ooh.

This is ⁓ something that I heard from an engineer, but I really like the phrase.

AI creates tech debt at the same rate that it creates code.

Jonathan Jennings (31:36)
Yeah, I’m probably gonna get in trouble for this, but I think I’m ready for live service games to not be the primary business model. I’m ready for games that focus on multiplayer being great, like opportunities to create interesting gameplay. But I feel like starting a game with the understanding it needs to be live service and then a game later.

is hurting the industry. And so I’m ready for live service games to like take a backseat to creativity.

Aaron Nemoyten (32:06)
There were two final hot takes about how data isn’t everything. And I think this is actually a great place to leave it.

Tiffany Otto (32:13)
Don’t get me wrong, data is super important. You can’t decide what you can’t measure. But there is a je ne sais quoi in our industry and I believe ⁓ historically it’s been called finding the fun. And I think that’s our real like, God, I hate to say superpower. But that’s like our real value add. That’s our real like…

That’s our buff, our bonus.

feel like our ability to do that is something like really special that almost any other industry doesn’t have. I’ve never met someone in another industry get a handle quite on that concept that we as game developers, I think, see as core to our craft.

Michael Fitch (32:46)
guess my one thing would be a lot of people do analysis of the industry and it’s easy to try and make sense of things after the fact, but in my experience it’s the games that drive the market, not the other way around. If you went back to ⁓ 2001,

and you told everybody that ⁓ Grand Theft Auto 3 was going to be the best thing since sliced bread, they would have been like, what? Why? Grand Theft Auto 2 was top down. wasn’t that interesting. It was hardly playable sometimes, right? ⁓ And then Grand Theft Auto 3 comes along and just blows everybody out of the water, right? And now all of a sudden, there’s this huge market for open world sandbox games, right? Everyone’s like, RTS sucks, it’s dead. Starcraft 2 comes out.

There’s huge numbers. Everyone’s like, ⁓ RTS is alive again. It’s like, no, RTS never died. The market is driven by the products. The market does not drive the products, right? Great games are what make the market. And so when you see all of these analyses of what’s going to be successful in the future, it’s bullshit. They don’t know. Unless they’ve played the game, they’re making it up.

Aaron Nemoyten (33:55)
And that’s our show. Huge thanks to Michael Fitch, Lin Dang, Dan Gerstein, Nat Lowe, Jessica Flohr, Erica Marico Olson,

Aaron Nemoyten (34:04)
Fosgard

Aaron Nemoyten (34:05)
Jennings, and Tiffany Otto for taking time out of their busy GDC schedules to be on this episode. We’ll be back to the regular interview format for the next one. You can find the podcast at makegamesdrinkcoffee.com or email me at makegamesdrinkcoffee.gmail.com. Drink up. I’ll see you next time.

Erika Mariko Olsen (34:27)
angry about in the industry right now?

I got distracted by a little bird there. Let me think.