Shawn Layden, former Playstation boss on the future of videogames: "I'm mortally concerned".

[Cyan]

in an interview with Destin -youtuber and IGN journalist- he talks about the AAA problem, the forever game problem and many other details like the new generation of gamers. whether Xbox will go 3rd party or not, Xbox games on Playstation, if exclusives are moral or helpful etc etc:

(0:00) Introduction
(0:45) Who is Shawn Layden
(02:04) PlayStation Nintendo & Xbox on Stage
(03:55) His Favorite Moment
(05:03) What was it like revealing God of War?
(08:55) Is gamescom the new E3?
(10:50) The AAA Problem
(12:20) A Path to a New Normal
(14:40) The Forever Game Problem
(19:30) Was the VIta Ahead of It's Time?
(23:57) Are Handhelds the next Battleground?
(27:00) Will Switch Overtake PS2?
(28:10) Laydens Favorite PS Console
(29:30) PlayStation's PC Release Strategy
(34:00) Will Next Gen Dissapoint?
(38:40) How Spider-Man & Insomniac Happened
(41:40) Puddle Gate
(45:10) Cross Platform Play
(47:30) Shawn's Departure
(49:40) Girls Make Games dot com
(50:58) Xbox Shaking Up The Industry
(53:40) This is How You Share PS4 Games
(56:50) Patron Questions Xbox Games on PS5
(57:47) Is Xbox Going 3rd Party?
(58:12) Will Indie & F2P Take Over?
(01:02:50) A New Generation of Gamers
(01:04:50) Are Exclusives Moral / Helpful?
(01:08:00) What Trend Would You Eliminate?
(01:09:25) Would Layden Work at Xbox?
(01:10:56) Should Xbox Buy Ubisoft?
(01:12:23) Digital Game Ownership
(01:15:40) Shawn's Favorite Game
(01:17:40) Girls Make Games dot com

the part where he talks about Playstation games going to PC is really interesting, since he talks about other things like the console wars is over (mentioning Peter Moore 'cos of a recent interview he gave) and compares it to the video format wars.

Where what once was a lively battle between two completely different standards -like VHS vs Betamax- and PS3 vs X360 where we had a very lively battle between the two, which were COMPLETELY different architectures.

You had to recode your game for each one (PS3 and X360), and now the conversation is about framerate and raytracing, while the PS5 and XSX just became the same arquitecture, they are so similar you don't have to recode your game, so it's like VHS vs Betamax, where VHS won, and hence there is no console wars anymore.

 

[Cyan]

at 35:04 he talks about how hard is going to be to sell next gen consoles, because now things are about teraflops and Raytracing, which are concepts that "people don't understand" and "teraflops and raytracing just don't make a sexy ad copy", to sell a console.

"Raytracing is great but if your dining room window is open and any sunlight is hitting off your TV you are not seeing your Raytracing", not to mention your framerate will be dipping to 20 frames per second.

That's another interesting point.

 

[Cyan]

some other interesting tidbits from the interview.

His favourite game, the one that impressed him the most, was Prince of Persia, back in the day.

59:25

I'm looking at what they call triple A now like really high-end Indie stuff yeah and is that indistinguishable from what I we used to call double AA you know back in the 80s when you had THQ and interplay and Cave, and Gremlin and Ocean and you know the list goes on....

That category of gaming, AA, I don't think it's being well served and that's the category that brings variety and that's what we're missing right now. I think we're getting too much monotonal in the different offerings we have.

I was at DICE a couple of weeks ago and having a conversation with a person of my Boomer cohort and what she said to me was "you know I really miss?", I said "what" and she replied "I miss finishing games yeah I really used to like completing that dopamine hit I'd get when I final boss and I won it's like so so uplifting".

But now with either forever games or games that have 100 hours of gameplay we're just not finishing games anymore we have to look back and think about what that really means...,

I mean.., what if you walked out of halfway through Star Wars would that be okay from George Lucas' perspective? From a development management or publisher point of view?

I look at statistics like something like 35% of players see the end of your game, if that, and all that money I spent on the last level of that game which most people didn't see...

We need to take two steps back and ask ourselves are we doing this right? Are we still doing this right? Is there another way to do that?

Another thing we came across when talking with DICE developers was about this very same problem about variety and gaming that on PS1 and PS2 you've heard the expression that necessity is a mother of invention...

We came up with something, constraint is the father of creativity you know PS1 think about it, it had 770 Megs of compact disc storage we got Metal Gear 2 with 2 Megs of RAM on board. Maybe it does 480p? Maybe it doesn't? You had all those constraints you know draw distance you know that's why you had so much fog in games.

In the past you were just battling the constraints of the hardware which made for some very clever game designs that came out around there.

Now the hardware isn't the impediment if anything it's the fact that the power scales to Infinity that leaves you with these massive worlds..., like "wow I can make a world now where.., see that mountain? We can walk there".

Okay, "why would I want to walk there?". "But we can!". Okay but.., "why do I care?".

I think the AA going to a kind of gaming sector where I want to see a lot of attention to and I think for that matter the problem with Indies have is discovery. You go to the Steam story and 40 games came out in the last hour....

(he says indie developers should get together to make their games more visible)

50:29

on some things needing a change, this doesn't make the cut anymore.

I was at Devcon in Lisbon last month talking to developers there about how do we change the business model?

How do we change the root to market.., we've been selling games pretty much by the same pattern for the last 40 years and it doesn't work the way anymore.

Simple things like 70/30... What does that mean? In a world where I don't know if you're getting 30% value from the publishing part to be honest...

1:03:14

on younger generations:

I think we're missing it even today. We're looking at well 15 year olds... 15 year olds in 2015.., are not the 15 year olds in 2025.

My 5 y.o. and 7 y.o. nephews are a good example of this. One of them told me the other day: "Do you know how many games I uninstalled the other day on my tablet?". I asked how many and he replied: "I uninstalled 16 games".

Back in my day having one game at least was quite the feat.

 

[techuse]

People don’t have to understand ray tracing or TFLOPs. Produce games that are markedly better than what was on the prior console and people will upgrade. If the current trend continues then it will be a very difficult sell.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

Most of this stuff is clickbait nonsense.

100 million people have bought consoles this generation and we're not even 5 years in. MS and Sony will probably sell 150 million units between them and PC gaming is stronger than ever.

These guys know what to say to pander to the current narrative, but I don't find much of it insightful.

 

[Cyan]

People don’t have to understand ray tracing or TFLOPs. Produce games that are markedly better than what was on the prior console and people will upgrade. If the current trend continues then it will be a very difficult sell.

perhaps it's too late for AAA games. Even super talented developers like that CoD Modern Warfare 2 developer who created Xdefiant, which is probably a great game, is repenting 'cos the game is closing down.

Most of this stuff is clickbait nonsense.

100 million people have bought consoles this generation and we're not even 5 years in. MS and Sony will probably sell 150 million units between them and PC gaming is stronger than ever.

These guys know what to say to pander to the current narrative, but I don't find much of it insightful.

Shawn Layden has been working more than 30 years in the industry. I think that statement alone show we area talking about someone who knows his stuff.

In a parallel universe, maybe AAA games are thriving, but in real life they aren't. Some of them are usually very good games, not all aren't particularly fun but fun enough.

There are very few "AAA" games I truly enjoyed since a decade ago. Skyrim -not AAA-, The Witcher 3 -great story telling even on secondary missions, great great writing, not AAA either-, RE2 Remake -not truly AAA imho- and I don't know, A Plague Tale games -not truly AAA either imho-, modern Tomb Raider games , Indy, and probably some game I forget.

 

[Cyan]

on people that don't complete games, a VERY recent video that appeared in my feed today.

The author talks about free games, having tons of games, etc.

My solution, for example, has been to create a collection on Steam called "Games I Want to Finish." I put a game there, and that's the only thing I play until I finish it. The most recent one, Xcom 2, I played until I finished it.

"Sometimes the best game is the one you're playing right now." Quote from the video below.

Why 90% Of Gamers Never Finish Games - Analysis Paralysis, The Choice Paradox & 12 Proven Solutions​

 

[techuse]

I think the problem is that very few AAA games are actually good these days. I’m not aware of many/any games that are legitimately good being financial failures. You can’t just blame the market because you are delivering worse products.

 

[hughJ]

Has the completion rate for games actually ever been high? What percentage of 8bit and 16bit games did anyone finish? For me it's got to be comfortably less than 5%. I also don't think choice paralysis trends have actually changed all that much either. I distinctly remember going to the video store in the 80s and 90s and going through the same process for games and movies: perusing the aisles for 30+ minutes, debating with a friend on what to get, and on many occasions getting nothing at all. Today's version of that is just less inconvenient and more profitable because you're still paying for your Netflix, GamePass, and Steam library of unfinished content. Rather than not-playing-games while standing in Blockbuster Video or reading a GamePro, we're staring at a Steam library or writing a post about not-playing-games on B3D.

Secondly, I'd push against the notion that completion rate should even be a metric that anyone cares about in the first place. I've completed games that I thought were mediocre, and I've not completed games that are among my favorite of all time. I've never played a game where the developer's execution of the ending mattered a heck of a lot; where a good ending made me reevaluate a game that I thought was mediocre, or the inverse. My most positive memories of my favorite games generally come during the first 10-50 hours. That even includes competitive multiplayer games and MMOs that I've ended up sinking thousands of hours into.

 

[eastmen]

The problem is games take longer than ever to make. So course correction is going to take a long time. The games that are hitting now were green lit in 2018-2021. It's a vastly different climate than it is now. I think these large studios need to slim down a bit and get time lines down to 3 years. If you can't turn around a gmae in 3 years you are going to have lots of issues. That are they have to divorce themselves from the zeitgeist and just make a game that appeals to the core gamers and hope it breaks into mainstream

 

[Johnny Awesome]

perhaps it's too late for AAA games.

How can we say that in a year that GTAVI is coming out?

Shawn Layden has been working more than 30 years in the industry. I think that statement alone show we area talking about someone who knows his stuff.

Maybe. Or maybe he's out of touch

In a parallel universe, maybe AAA games are thriving, but in real life they aren't. Some of them are usually very good games, not all aren't particularly fun but fun enough.

There are very few "AAA" games I truly enjoyed since a decade ago. Skyrim -not AAA-, The Witcher 3 -great story telling even on secondary missions, great great writing, not AAA either-, RE2 Remake -not truly AAA imho- and I don't know, A Plague Tale games -not truly AAA either imho-, modern Tomb Raider games , Indy, and probably some game I forget.

That's just your opinion. I think the average Sony gamer was pretty happy with God of War and other AAA games they've produced. The average Xbox gamer was pretty happy with Forza Horizon 5. I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that the new Ghost of Tsushima and Doom Dark Ages will be well received as well.

AAA = dead is a false narrative. Good games still do well. AA or AAA.

As for completing games? I think it's always been this way.

That's one of the things I like about GP. You can try out 5 games for every one you feel the need to complete. You don't have to make a critical decision about where to spend your $70. It's especially true now that there's a new 1st party AAA game on GP every 2 months and usually a 3rd party one to go with it.

 

[techuse]

How can we say that in a year that GTAVI is coming out?

Maybe. Or maybe he's out of touch

That's just your opinion. I think the average Sony gamer was pretty happy with God of War and other AAA games they've produced. The average Xbox gamer was pretty happy with Forza Horizon 5. I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that the new Ghost of Tsushima and Doom Dark Ages will be well received as well.

AAA = dead is a false narrative. Good games still do well. AA or AAA.

As for completing games? I think it's always been this way.

That's one of the things I like about GP. You can try out 5 games for every one you feel the need to complete. You don't have to make a critical decision about where to spend your $70. It's especially true now that there's a new 1st party AAA game on GP every 2 months and usually a 3rd party one to go with it.

GTA 6 is unlikely to release this year IMO.

AAA isn’t dead, but their prevalence will decrease. Only a small handful of developers will be able to produce them.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

Not when AI gets going.

 

[Cyan]

Not when AI gets going.

they are just going to need different ideas. AAA has become too risky so the money they put on those games is invested in a way they can get some return of the investment, which means creating the same game with maybe better visuals but little more.