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The industry is going through a bit of a rough spot at the moment, with prominent studios like Monolith Productions and Arkane Austin being shut over the past year and even more facing layoffs, like Bungie and Rocksteady. Even a game as monumentally successful as Marvel Rivals ended up with layoffs to its US staff. Many are hoping that the release of GTA 6 will lead to the gaming market growing again and help get people back into industry jobs. While not involved in the upcoming game, Rockstar veteran Leslie Benzies has his own advice for the industry.
Benzies – who is now working on the upcoming shooter MindsEye with his studio Build a Rocket Boy – spoke to Edge Magazine in issue 409. During the interview he talked about why he thinks the industry is in such a precarious place, saying, “There are no more hours in the day, there are no more humans emerging that play video games, so there’s a finite user base. There are so many games, and I think we’re starting to feel the effects of that over the past year or so, in closures and layoffs.” While figures like Steam doubling in size since 2020 maybe refute the claim that there are “no more humans emerging that play video games,” Benzies is right that there are more games than ever trying to take attention away from players, with some like Fortnite having endless amounts for players to do.
Benzies offered his advice on what studios should be doing in the wake of everything, saying, “These days, you have to look at your analytics. You’ve got to see what people want to play… I think we as an industry need to get smarter, to know, ‘Will people actually want to play this?'” Of course, not everyone feels the same way. Helldivers 2 boss Johan Pilestedt recently said, “”A lot of publishers try to play it safe by taking safe bets, but one thing that’s guaranteed is those safe bets are a death sentence,” and urged studios, “Don’t copy others, instead, think about what you want to make and take a gamble on it.”
However, Benzies did say that experimentation is a natural thing: “we might go off on a tangent that people don’t want.” But added, “This is one of the benefits of Arcadia [Build a Rocket Boy’s user-generated content systems]. We can build small, almost test levels, spend a million quid building something, and if it gets good engagement, we’ll go build a proper production of it.”