In a November interview, Blizzard's current President, Mike Ybarra noted that gamers today have no patience; they want game changes and addition daily, which is impossible to meet at the same time quality and money are involved to make it happen. That be an odd statement to come from a company president of a business that makes it's living on game popularity and rabid fan involvement, i.e. biting the hand that feeds you, but the sentiment is rooted in same impossible race of trying to keep audiences happy that social media influencers end up facing if successful as well. The fact is, much of digital society has become uncontrolled consumerism. You're only as good as your last app, click, button, feature, expansion (and that's only for five minutes at best).
Content is Only Good for 5 Minutes Now
The idea of the insatiable digital audience is not new; influencers have been complaining for years now about the constant grind to produce, and their critics have been complaining about the lengths the same go to for holding onto the audiences they already have. While there's not a lot of sympathy for online creators, particularly in the influencing arena, it doesn't change the fact of how much energy goes into the process to entertain via the Internet today. Even writing this specific article took me two months (first month hit a writing wall, and now I've got the motivation to complete it at the end of December, and that's on a casual pace). Even with a great spark of ingenuity, it can take hours to polish a first draft. And with video, probably three times that effort goes into a 5 or 10 minute video with the work of three different people on average. Most successful content teams are easily running 8 to 10 people on a channel production.
Games are no exception. The burn to produce and capture audience attention has easily been concentrated into the first three months, with a slew of updates, add-ons, monetization and more premium features needed to keep audiences going and, more importantly, spending. If a game dies off now right after launch, it's either accused of being a rug pull or gets a load of criticism destroying any chances for a viable enhancement to arrive down the line a few month later. Even big companies are not immune; Microsoft earned itself a bevy of insults and lasting scars for its flop with Cyberpunk 2077 (which actually is a fun game, just a very short storyline).
So what makes a good game last? The viral simplicity of something like Minecraft, for example, seems to elude others, especially those caught up in the churn to produce bigger, better, loader, flashier and more violent to catch audiences.
Audiences Have Shifted, and So Has How We Pay for Games
On the other hand, whom are these games being sold to? Essentially the market has had a reputation of being dominated by 13 - 25 year-olds either spending their parent's money or their first paycheck and living at home. While probably about 10 percent is everyone else on the planet in terms of demographics, the myth hold out, the primary market is a bunch of testosterone amped teenage males. Oh joy. In reality, the stats are now mixed. While in the mid-2000s the field was close to 2 out of 3 players being male, it's now almost 55/45 male to female players. Additionally, while those under age 34 still represent almost 60% of the market globally, older Gen-X players make up a healthy 25% and Boomers have gained a notable 15%. So, the argument of male teenagers demanding content like a bunch of spoiled brats with too much money to burn doesn't hold true anymore. Being a spoiled brat seems to be equal opportunity for multiple age groups now, at least in terms of demanding game content (I'm getting visions of a Boomer Karen screaming at game support about dying too often in Call of Duty suddenly).
Part of the content demand and impatience may also be the game producers' own doing as well. Decades earlier, games were sold on shelf packages. You paid once and then decided a year later if you wanted to buy an expansion. Now, most decent games are on a subscription basis paid monthly. So, no surprise, gamers are feeling they should get their benefits right away; they're paying for them every 30 days so that money should be doing something, right? Ergo, exponential pressure on game producers to "produce." And it's big money too; 55 percent of gaming is subscription-based now, generating $385 billion annually. So, game producers shouldn't expect a shift in patience anytime soon, especially if they are quick to charge up front every month. There was some inherent operational value with the game-in-a-box marketing approach, but those days are gone now.
Next time a politician is complaining that the government doesn't have enough money, tell them to start a video game company instead of taxes. It works better.
