Helldivers 2 Director Urges Studios to Take More Risks, Avoid ‘Safe Bets,’ and Explains Why It Would Work
[summaraize]
The creative director of Helldivers 2, Johan Pilestedt, discussed the “ridiculous” state of the video game industry, which regularly goes through “cycles of death and rebirth” that have become “unnecessarily brutal” in recent years.
Speaking at a GDC session attended by Eurogamer, Pilestedt targeted the current state of the industry, which continues to lose talent despite the number of people playing video games being higher than ever before.
Helldivers 2 Director Says Safe Bets Are a ‘Death Sentence’ for Studios Trying to Survive in the Gaming Industry
According to Pilestedt, the problem is that publishers and developers have become too cautious, failing to meet the growing diversity of tastes among gamers: “The games industry is caught in a vicious circle of death and rebirth. Every so often we lay off thousands of people suddenly, and then nobody understands why, and I think it’s just because we converge.”
Pilestedt added, “We will always go through the cycles of death and rebirth, but now that cycle is unnecessarily brutal because we don’t diversify enough. We need to make more types of games because people are playing more than ever and still we are unable to stay in business. It’s ridiculous. If everybody stopped making battle royales and made [different] games we wouldn’t be in this position.”
“A lot of publishers – I’m sorry, my dear publisher friends – try to play it safe by taking safe bets. But one thing that I can guarantee is that those safe bets are a death sentence for the studios that try to make it. We are in the business of taking risks, and if you don’t take risks, we’re never gonna be able to achieve success. Few people believed that Helldivers would amount to anything, and yet here we are,” Pilestedt concluded.
His statement makes a lot of sense when looking at the industry’s current trends. Developers and publishers focusing too much on what is currently popular—like battle royales—often overlook the need for new experiences that can attract a wider audience.
A few months ago, former PlayStation CEO Shawn Layden also pointed out that studios shouldn’t focus on creating “a dollar store version of God of War,” but rather on introducing fresh and new ideas to the industry.
In related news, the former President of Sony Interactive Entertainment EU claimed that corporate greed does not cause industry layoffs and advised those affected to “drive an Uber” until things settle.
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