Designers of some the top-selling video games in the world gathered this week in San Francisco but the mood at this year’s Game Developers Conference was at times dour.

Game companies have been coping with layoffs, mergers and product cancellations. And while 2023 delivered some huge hits, many executives roaming the Moscone Center said rising development costs, slow growth and the pressure to deliver winners has led to a play-it-safe approach at the biggest companies, taking some of the edginess out of the industry.

“It’s harder to take risks,” said Martin Sibille, a vice president at Tencent Games who previously spent 15 years with Electronic Arts. 

Top titles can cost up to US$300 million to develop – the same as a blockbuster movie. And just as the film industry loaded up on superhero pictures, video-game makers are relying on well-known franchises as budgets balloon, according to executives at some of the industry’s top companies.

Slow growth explains some of the caution. Market researcher NewZoo predicts the US$184 billion industry will expand by less than 1 per cent this year. More than 6,000 workers have lost their jobs recently as the major companies reduced spending. 

Under new owner Microsoft Corp., Activision Blizzard canceled its Odyssey survival game, which had been in development for six years. Tencent’s Riot Games unit, Sony Group Corp.’s PlayStation Studios, Bandai Namco Holdings Inc. and Embracer Group AB are among the firms canceling dozens of unannounced titles. Electronic Arts halted work on a new first-person shooter in the Star Wars universe as it laid off 670 workers.

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Players’ increasingly high demands for graphics and game play, paired with the continued popularity of “service” titles that stick around for years, has raised the barrier for new entrants. 

“The video-game industry has not grown to accommodate budgets,” said Saxs Persson, a vice president at Epic Games. “You’re going to get things that people perceive as being safe. Nobody wants to play safe. Nobody says, ‘This is a good, predictable game.’” 

At some point, he said, even well-known franchises might become cost prohibitive. The studio behind the award-winning Spider-Man 2, Insomniac Games, let staffers go this year despite selling 10 million copies of the US$70 game, which cost US$300 million to develop.

Investors have other options, such as a platform where users can make their own games – like Roblox or Epic Games’ Unreal Editor for Fortnite – because, for big-budget games the “hit rate is too low, it’s too unpredictable, it’s too long-range, and too many things can go wrong, not right,” Persson said.

Indie publisher Devolver Digital is one of the few firms that hasn’t rethought its approach amid the pressure in the industry. The company works with game budgets in the US$1 million to US$5 million range, like hits Cult of the Lamb and Hotline Miami. 

“Our strategy is to weather what’s going on right now,” said Chief Marketing Officer Nigel Lowrie, who says small developers haven’t failed the company yet. “The risks are still there, but they’re not so high that it’s cataclysmic.” 

At the conference, one studio head’s stark diversion from the trend generated praise from peers. Larian Studios founder Swen Vincke told attendees that his company won’t make another sequel to last year’s hit Baldur’s Gate III. The Dungeons & Dragons-themed game will be the last in the series.

“We want to do big, new things,” Vincke said on a panel. “We don’t want to rehash the thing that we’ve done already.” BLOOMBERG