At DICE and GDC this year I heard talk of a trend in game development that sent a chill down my spine: “deprofessionalization.” As A16z marketing partner Ryan K. Rigney defines it, deprofessionalization is a phenomenon driven by the overperformance of older titles (particularly free-to-play live service games), large studios struggling to drive sales, and the outsized success of some solo developers and small teams.
These three forces, he argues, will combine to “drive career professionals from the traditional, professionalized side of the games industry.”
“Some of these people will decide to go indie,” he continues. “Others will leave gaming altogether. And in between there’s a vast spectrum of irregular working arrangements available.”
Deprofessionalization is built on the back of devaluing labor
Rigney offered some extra nuance on his “deprofessionalization” theory in an email exchange we had before PAX. He predicted that marketing roles at studios would be “the first” on the chopping block, followed by “roles that seem replaceable to management (even if they’re not).”
“The winners will be the creative renegades. I’m talking about the people making work that would have never gotten greenlit at one of these bigger publishers in the first place. Some of these creatives will start their own studio, or dabble in side projects…This is the only creative industry on the planet where one person can make $100 million making something by themselves.”
That held up in my survey of the games boothing at PAX. The developers of Mycopunk and Cat Secretary had some of the larger teams on the floor of about 5-6 people. Indie publisher Playism was showing off a number of excellent-looking games like Mind Diver and Break Arts III. Executive producer Shunji Mizutani told me the average team size the company is looking to back is around 1-3 developers (though he said it’s not a hard and fast rule).
[…]his key example of a post-deprofessionalization game developer is veteran developer Aaron Rutledge, a former lead designer on League of Legends, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, and Apex Legends. After leaving Respawn Entertainment in 2024 he founded a consultancy firm Area Denial, acting as a “gun for hire” for studios.
Rutledge deserves his success, and the life of a traveling creative called on by other studios sounds romantic. But as a foundation for game development, it’s a framework that celebrates the few over the many. It narrows which roles are considered “essential” for making great games (often designers or programmers) and treats other positions as somehow less essential. You could see someone like Wehle hiring someone like Rutledge to bring some of that triple-A experience to a small game.
But that feels like the polar ends of who can benefit in the deprofessionalized world—developers with the stability to swing big for big-shot ideas, and programmers or designers with deep career experience that can be called in like a group of noble mercenaries. People in between will be left out.
Just like everything else on this planet rn, if it has any credibility they will trade it for cash.
are they high? it’s the fucking layoffs
as Rigney defines it, deprofessionalization is […]
- The older games are not “overperforming”. The newer games are underperforming.
- Large studios are “struggling to drive sales” because customers take cost and benefit into account.
- The success of those solo devs and small teams is not “outsized”, it’s deserved because they get it right.
What’s happening is that small devs release reasonably priced games with fun gameplay. In the meantime larger studios be like “needz moar grafix”, and pricing their games way above people are willing to pay.
More than “deprofessionalisation”, what’s primarily happening is the de-large-studio-isation: the independence of professionals, migrating to their own endeavours.
Also: “deprofessionalisation” implies that people leaving large studios stop being professionals, as if small/solo devs must be necessarily amateurs. That is not the case.
Deprofessionalization is built on the back of devaluing labor
And he “conveniently” omits the fact that most of that value wouldn’t reach the workers on first place. It’s retained by whoever owns those big gaming companies.
And people know it. That’s yet another reason why they’d rather buy a game from a random nobody than some big company.
As A16z marketing partner Ryan K. Rigney defines it […]
Rigney offered some extra nuance on his “deprofessionalization” theory in an email exchange we had before PAX. He predicted that marketing roles at studios would be “the first” on the chopping block, followed by “roles that seem replaceable to management (even if they’re not).”
Emphasis mine. Now it’s easy to get why he’s so worried about this process: large studios rely on marketing to oversell their games, while small devs mostly reach you by word-of-mouth.
Something must be said about marketing. Marketing is fine and dandy when it’s informing people about the existence of the goods to be bought; sadly 90% of marketing is not that, it’s to convince you that orange is purple.
My PAX trip validated my fear that three professions are especially vulnerable in this deprofessionalized world: artists, writers, and those working in game audio or music.
Unlike marketing teams, I’m genuinely worried about those people. I hope that they find their way into small dev teams.
I’d add that it’s not that larger studios want more impressive graphics that’s the problem but that their games are often monetized to hell and designed by committee to be as marketable as possible instead of being someone’s vision brought to fruition.
And because this sort of big business often focuses obsessively on what can be measured, ignoring what cannot be. Even if the later might be more important.
You can measure the number of vertices in a model, the total resolution, the expected gameplay length, the number of dev hours that went into a project. But you cannot reasonably measure the fun value of your game; at most you can rank it in comparison with other games. So fun value takes a backseat, even if it’s bread and butter.
In the meantime those small devs look holistically at their games. “This shit isn’t fun, I’m reworking it” here, “wow this mechanic actually works! I’ll expand it further” there.
Yeah corpos love their metrics - even though as soon as you measure them they cease to be useful as people will be gaming them. Not to mention they can only show a small part of what is actually happening.
A shift is definitely happening, but idk if counting booths at PAX and GDC is representative.
PAX’ audience are primarily comic and board game nerds, they’re historically light on video game booths in their expo hall, usually prioritizing indie booths when they can. GDC’s audience is game developers not players, so the expo is typically a bunch of hardware and backend service companies.
PAX’ audience are primarily comic and board game nerds, they’re historically light on video game booths in their expo hall
That is entirely untrue. PAX has a specific tabletop convention (PAX Unplugged), but the main cons are very heavily video game focused. The expo hall have an indie game section, but the vast majority of the expo hall is major companies (Nintendo often has the largest booth). I have been to PAX West nearly every (I missed the first year and last year), and board games are there, but never the focus
I’m not saying they have no presence, I’m just saying PAX has not historically been a priority for AAA studios compared to things like E3 and Gamescom. On the whole, PAX is like 75% comics, tabletop/board game, and general nerd stuff, and less than 25% game studio presence. Which makes sense because Penny Arcade is a comic and they’ve always had an association with that crowd. Video games just tend to have a lot of overlap with that crowd, so it’s been worth it for studios to have a presence, some years more than others, some years more indie than AAA (ex Indie Megabooth).
Yes, I understand you think it is 75% board/tabletop/comics and, at least at PAX west, that is untrue. Nintendo literally did a mini event inside PAX two years. Larian has had a huge presence since BG3 was announced. There are esports events the whole time. Most of the panels are video game related. It may be that you don’t do the AAA stuff, but there has historically been a huge presence
Yes, I’ve attended everything you mention. I understand you think that is a large presence, but it amounted to less than 25% of the show. Larian and Nintendo were the exception, not the rule, they made up the bulk of the AAA presence.
Ive been going to pax West since 2011 and AAA absolutely had a huge presence there. It was the bulk of the show. Tabletop had a tiny section of the floor
This just seems like a more subtle posturing for “games should cost more”. Video game customers are notoriously right with their wallets. The lockdown boom was a fluke, not a new norm.
But that feels like the polar ends of who can benefit in the deprofessionalized world—developers with the stability to swing big for big-shot ideas, and programmers or designers with deep career experience that can be called in like a group of noble mercenaries. People in between will be left out.
Well, no. The issue is not that people offer their expertise as contract workers. The issue is supposed AAA studios cranking out one piece of hot garbage after another, while small independent teams can work (and fail) with unique ideas at a much faster rate.
There will always be freelance workers and having one on board, even an experienced one, will neither guarantee success nor is it a prerequisite. Looking at some highly successful indi titles of today, they often started with humble beginnings and got gradually more “professional” along the way.
I am currently playing Factorio Space Age and holy hell, have they come a long way since initial release. Fluid system, anyone?
People in between will be left out.
The way I interpreted this was, “the execs will be left out because they can’t do any of this themselves.” They don’t even have the ideas.
Also yea, Factorio is an impressive game. Even the modders are insane, and I don’t really run into bugs ever. Well… software bugs that is.
Coming from the software development side, I interpret this statement a little differently.
I used to work with a team:
- 1 engineering manager whose sole focus was management, developing talent and problem solving around the organization
- 1 very senior engineer who could do the work of 10 ordinary engineers
- 2-3 mid level engineers who could work somewhat independently, as long as they were provided guidance to start
- 1-2 junior engineers who could only handle the most basic tasks and needed hand holding through most projects
Rather than working full tilt, the senior engineer did a lot of work pair programming and helping the juniors develop into better engineers. He accomplished half of what he could, but the team was better for it.
Fifteen years later, no one hired juniors anymore. We hire 1-2 seniors, 2 mid levels and that’s it. Everyone is expected to focus on developing software. No one cares about training or education.
The problem with this is we aren’t backfilling the ranks. If we don’t train juniors, they never become mid levels. Without mid levels, we won’t identify the best to become seniors.
In a world where game development happens on the fringes (indie studios or solo developers), who’s going to hire a junior that can’t contribute meaningfully to the project?
I have also worked on many engineering teams, both as management and engineering. Still, the execs are the ones that get left behind. The juniors at least have knowledge and ability to continue honing their craft. If they’re passionate about it, they will push through and make it work.
The execs just extract money, even in the scenarios you presented, and without any developers they can’t accomplish shit.
Having said that, I get what you’re saying, but again that is something that exists without this idea of “deprofessionalization.” Juniors get the shit end of the stick in a lot of industries, even outside development and engineering. On the flipside, so do seniors when the execs aren’t willing to pay what they’re worth, so they hire green juniors instead.
I played Factorio a fair bit, the fluid system was hell. But based on some LPs it seems Space Age fixed it rather nicely.
And by a modder turned dev, so, professionalisation? :)
Though the way wube works the whole team will have been involved in some way. And they’re a student so it’s part of a fairly normal pipeline for gamedev.
And by a modder turned dev, so, professionalisation? :)
Yup - Kovarex is a great example of how the indie scene is actually professionalising people, not the opposite.
