Doom co-creator John Romero and his fellow developer wife, Brenda Romero, believe the modern games industry crisis isn’t just going through another rough cycle. It may be facing something worse than the infamous video game crash developers lived through in the 1980s. After losing funding, undergoing downsizing, and watching layoffs happening across the industry, the Romeros say the current situation feels unusually unstable.
“I feel like the industry’s in a really horrible place,” Brenda Romero said in an interview with Gamesindustry.biz. “I mean, we were there in the 80s for the crash, and this is definitely crashier. There are so few people that have not been affected, or their partner’s affected, or they’re worried about being affected. It’s a really difficult time right now.”
She was referring to the 1983 video game crash, a messy collapse where the market got flooded with extremely low-quality releases, with the E.T. tie-in being the most notorious example. Retailers stopped touching anything labeled computer or video game, consumers lost interest, companies folded, and warehouses full of unsold copies literally ended up in landfills.
John Romero then pointed out a growing contradiction in the industry where success no longer guarantees stability for the studios. Over the past year alone, companies like EA, Microsoft, and Sony have cut staff or shut down studios despite shipping major hits.
He took Battlefield 6, which did ‘really, really well,’ sales-wise, but suffered a huge layoff as an example. “I don’t understand what that’s all about,” said John.
The fallout also changed how John and Brenda operate their own studio. Romero Games itself reportedly shrank from around 110 employees to just nine after funding for an unannounced shooter was pulled. They said that the project survived, but the team is forced into a ‘micro-studio’ structure that’s becoming increasingly common.
The Romeros’ remarks land right when the economics of game development are starting to look even more unsustainable. Budgets for AAA games are now reportedly hovering around $300 million — sometimes significantly more. At that scale, publishers may need more than six million sales just to recoup costs.
That leaves little room for risk and experiments, which in turn, squeezes mid-sized, AA developers even further. The market only has room for massive million-dollar blockbusters at one end, tiny indie teams at the other, to put it simply.
Still, despite the uncertainty, the Romeros believe this situation won’t last forever. Referring to various indie developers like Balatro‘s LocalThunk and The Binding of Isaac‘s Edmund McMillen, game development will not stop even when the industry collapses.
“I’m not going to stop making games,” said John, with Brenda joking that he probably will be found dead coding in his seat. Meanwhile, Brenda concludes the interview in a more somber tone, “It can’t stay like this forever.”
