The ongoing contraction, consolidation, and uncertainty in the video games industry threatens to box out new creators and deny opportunities for teams to develop their craft, according to veteran game developer Xalavier Nelson Jr. of Strange Scaffold.
Speaking on the state of game development, Nelson Jr. raised concerns that a new generation of household studios—pointing to names like Larian, Remedy, FromSoftware, CD Projekt Red, and Respawn—may never be given the chance to bloom under current industry conditions. He noted that while great games continue to emerge unexpectedly from unexpected places, the expected bedrock and legacy spaces of the industry are shrinking or shutting down entirely.
The Cost of Unsustainable Budgets and AI Pressures
Nelson Jr. addressed how generative AI fails to solve underlying budget problems in game development, stating that worse games made cheaper with AI will not fix an unsustainable approach. He summarized the core dilemma: "We are spending an unknown amount of money in an unknown amount of time to make a game of unknown quality to reach an unknown amount of people." Furthermore, AI-driven RAM shortages have pushed hardware prices for consoles and Steam Machines high enough to limit accessibility for many players.
Contrasting modern development times with past eras, Nelson Jr. pointed to FromSoftware's output. Before its modern era, the studio shipped three to four games a year minimum, later shifting to a three-year cycle between Dark Souls 3, Sekiro, and Elden Ring—a pace built on a team that had already shipped dozens of titles. Without the conditions to practice and refine their art over years, future studios will struggle to reach that level of output.
Impact on Future Careers
Major publishers including Microsoft, Amazon, Hasbro, and Embracer have enacted severe layoffs and studio closures in recent years. Nelson Jr. emphasized that the invisible damage of executives and investors waiting for great hits to emerge from the ether is that upcoming voices will never get the means or opportunity to sustain a career in development.
To help reverse the trend, Nelson Jr. encourages audiences to pay attention to the creators of the games they love, show up for those projects consistently, and evangelize them so independent and mid-sized teams can keep making them.