A Giant Data-driven Look At The Games Industry AND A Leader’s Mistake To Learn From

Read Time: 2 Minutes

Hey all,

Matthew Bell did a great job of collecting data and putting it into a digestible format. It’s worth a look, I read through the entire thing and do not regret it. Check it out if you want a look at our industry by the numbers.

State of Game Dev Deck by Matthew Ball

https://www.matthewball.co/all/stateofvideogaming2025

I disagree with some of his conclusions, I see AI as more of an unknown rather than the thing that will turn the AAA space profitable again. I also worry we’re getting wrapped up in the “forever” game problem a bit much. 

I do appreciate that he called out where future innovation is coming from. The combination of those “black hole” games and the existence of platforms like Roblox are reshaping how player’s play. It only makes sense that that would require us devs to think differently about our side of the equation.

Next up:

Balancing Creative Pressure With Constraints by Jonathan Zabel

https://gameproductionplaybook.substack.com/p/balancing-creative-freedom-with-constraints

Admitting and acknowledging uncertainty? Focusing on alignment? In this one, Jonathan hits a ton of notes I care a lot about.

I want to also call out his willingness to tell a story about how he got this wrong. He fell for the trap of just “getting to the next phase” instead of thinking about why the next phase mattered. I deeply appreciate his openness and willingness to walk all of us through that.

It can be easy to armchair quarterback the mistakes of others, but harder to call out our own. Big kudos here. 

Some great stuff to learn, Jonathan has been doing production for a long time at many levels. Enjoy!

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