Not E3 2024: The Summer Game Fest Keynote

Geoff Keighley is the absolute king of coordinating lavish, meticulous, and aesthetically modern video game events that are deaf to what the moment calls for. The Game Awards has long garnered criticism for sidelining its eponymous accolades to cram in more trailers for upcoming products. One reason that the games industry isn't great at honouring developers is that any time you spend looking back at the art that's come before is time you could be using to sell the next commodity. So, naturally, The Game Awards hurries through acceptance speeches and even skips over the formal hand-off of plenty of trophies to prioritise marketing materials. Keighley was always going to be up against a wall with that ceremony; he needs to advertise something on the show to pay the bills, and the least obtrusive thing to advertise at a video game awards is video games.

Still, the organisers have some choice about how high the bills are. You have to ask whether all the accent lighting or the XXXL TV are worth it if they come at the expense of recognising talent and graft in the industry. The Summer Game Fest keynote always felt like a less conflicted Keighley show because the pre-rendered cutscenes and gameplay sizzle reels don't have to fight with much else for attention. You've got one concept fully executed instead of two concepts half-assed, but Captain Keighley landed himself in hot water again last year, as even in 2023, he managed to only welcome men on-stage for the whole 100-minute show. It was a shameful backslide for representation in the industry and not the first time women had been marginalised by a Keighley production. In 2016, The Game Awards issued the "Trending Gamer" award to Steven "Boogie2988" Williams, even after Williams came out in support of misogynist hate movement Gamergate.

Credit where it's due: Keighley has internalised the criticism and in the space of a year, the number of women and PoC on the Summer Game Fest mic has rocketed up. I just remain skeptical of the mission statement behind this year's Keighnote. Its 2023 equivalent lacked any mention of the rampant lay-offs and closures in the industry. That was a missed opportunity because Keighley is seismic enough of a cultural force that his support for developers (or lack thereof) can move the needle on discussions about these things. But again, you spoke, and Keighley listened: this time around, he acknowledged the lost jobs and shuttered studios of 2024, but he did it with a caveat. I'll just quote Geoff here:

"There's also something else happening: our industry is evolving and changing, and thanks to digital distribution, smaller teams and new creators are finding incredible success. [...] Smaller creators can and will break through. It's a reminder to big companies they have to treat their developers right because today there are many paths to sustainability and success".

Most of that statement is technically true. Part of it feels dated because it's been obviously true for so long. "There's this brand new thing called the internet and now independent creators are releasing all these viral games. Have you heard?" But I think Keighley says something really insightful about the games business when he warns big publishers that if they continue to mismanage their studios, there will be swifter, more flexible companies and creators who will eat their lunch. If the chart shown at the Summer Game Fest was anything to go by, some of them already have.

But the uninformed viewer is likely to come away from Keighley's briefing with the idea that the consumer needn't worry too much about big companies capsizing because the little boats will fill the waters. That would be a mistake because 2024 has made it increasingly clear that even the lighter-weight developers lack security in this industry. The majority of companies that have gotten the kibosh in the last five months have been the AA or budget studios:

Roll7 (Developers of Olli Olli and Rollerdrome)^[1]
Tango Gameworks (Developers of Hi-Fi Rush)^[2]
Intercept Games (Kerbal Space Program 2)^[1]
Alpha Dog Games (Mighty Doom)^[2]
Possibility Space (Didn't get the chance to release a game, founded by Jeff Strain, producer of State of Decay)
Crop Circle Games (Same as above)

And while most of the 2024 lay-offs were probably at the palatially large studios, the little guys are still at risk. People lost their jobs at:

Creative Assembly (Total War, Alien: Isolation)
Behaviour Interactive (Dead by Daylight, Fallout Shelter)
Reikon Games (Ruiner)
Relic Entertainment (Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, Homeworld)
CI Games (Lords of the Fallen, Sniper: Ghost Warrior)
Phoenix Labs (Dauntless, Fae Farm)
Pixelberry Studios (Choices)
Black Forest Games (Destroy All Humans!)
Toys for Bob (Spyro Reignited Trilogy, additional work on CoD)
Thunderful Group (Publishers of Steamworld, LEGO Bricktales, and Viewfinder)
Gameloft (Mobile ports for Tom Clancy and Assassin's Creed)

These are just from this year so far, never mind 2023. Keighley's framing implies a dichotomy between big business and small business that hides a key reliance in the industry. Distribution channels aren't the only thing you need to get your game in audience hands; you also need the cash to develop it, market it, and interface with outside parties. Most of that capital is locked up in colossal corporations, which you must hitch your wagon to to see any support. That means, in too many situations, the big boys call the shots, and if the shot they call is to downsize or terminate your studio, them's the breaks. Of the development houses I mentioned, more of them than not had their wings clipped by a titanic parent company, be that Take-Two putting Roll7 and Intercept out to pasture, Sega restructing Creative Assembly, or Microsoft snubbing out Roll7 and Alpha Dog.

Contrary to Keighley's optimistic introduction, you can become successful without treating your employees right. Blood pressure has risen over the last few years as workers keep seeing companies post increasing profits while decreasing worker satisfaction. Big tech is also under no obligation to do what's sensible or sustainable. The NFT craze wasn't sustainable, but there were plenty of games company executives willing to pay through the nose to invest in it. Hi-Fi Rush was popular and printing cash, but it wasn't enough to keep Tango open. In fact, the Tango closure set off alarm bells for industry observers because if making a game that's commercially, critically, and publicly prolific isn't enough to secure your continued existence, then anyone could be on the chopping block.

No matter how many studios go under, the Activision-Blizzards of the world will always have someone coming for that cheddar. The independent developers are simply too numerous, diffuse, and determined to disappear as a category. But they can disappear as individuals, and while I'll give a big thumbs up for Keighley wanting to put the wind up the industry executives, I do also want to highlight that we are poorer for losing this talent, and that money is not serving as much of shield for at-risk developers. Even Geoff's own palooza this year acknowledges that vulnerability.

Publicity like the Summer Game Fest can't make smaller studios invulnerable, but it can help bolster some devs' positions. Yet, many of those developers are not in an economic position to buy that publicity, even if they're doing everything right. And while blockbuster studios have less to announce and prized previews are locked up in platform-holder conferences, SGF needs those smaller and more diverse games if it doesn't want to appear bony. But that doesn't mean letting studios buy eyeball time will ensure those games show up. Per Esquire, it costs $450,000 for a two-minute slot on the SGF opening show. A non-prestige game can be just as financially successful as a tentpole release in terms of the ratio of cost to profit and still be well short of affording the Keighley broadcasting fee.

Profitability does not equal fun factor or artistic merit. Still, if small games are the new big games, then the way the industry is going to survive is by having a bunch of games making a fair amount of moolah instead of a few titanic ones dredging the public for tens of millions. So, it's possible to have a financially healthy industry that nonetheless is teeming with games that can't be accommodated by the traditional Keighley carnival. To redress that balance, you need to do what Keighley did this year and give some of the little games a leg up: let indies and mid-level publisher games in at a reduced rate or gratis.

I thought this SGF kickoff, while it sputtered into a cringy, overly-commercialised final twenty minutes, was a hell of a party, and it owed a lot of that energy to the subversive and unexpected titles. They're games that aren't selling consoles, that probably aren't going to be seen on the front page of Twitch, but whip ass kind of because of that. They include the ambitiously inclusive Battle Aces, the curiously minimalist One Btn Bosses, and Nomada's Neva, a game of misty sunlight and idyllic, colourful nature. Nomada Studio's debut, Gris, is unforgivably underrated. It elicited tears from me, not because anything sad was happening but just because of the sheer immensity of the music and landscapes.

In film, Blumhouse has burnt out various series through compulsive sequelisation, but they've also taken risks with original ideas that have really paid off. Blumhouse Games looks like the studio in the form you'd want to see it in. They're trying to work out what the Blumhouse Pictures of games would be instead of trying to crudely force properties built for film to the shape of interactive entertainment. The Simulation and Grave Seasons look disturbing because the horror games don't seem to know they're horror games. We saw them play their surface level straight, making the dark undercurrent feel organically invasive.

Fear the Spotlight appears to fish the PS1 horror aesthetic out of itch.io and introduce it to the long-form, publisher-led space. Brandon Cronenberg (Infinity Pool, Possessor) lends his eye to Project C and the attempt to transplant film directors into video games in the past has often ignored how different the expertise required in each medium is. Yet, it's encouraging that Cronenberg is flanked by veteran game dev Sam Barlow. Graduating from the radical Telling Lies to the uncomfortably personal Immortality, Barlow has gone from strength to strength and there was something Cronenbergian about his last release. Again, there is a mask and a face behind it.

I also can't help but think that there's more than we see to Wanderstop. Davey Wreden makes games that slowly build a body of commentary on themselves, and after the decidedly formal The Beginner's Guide and The Stanley Parable, the cartoony, high contrast Wanderstop represents an astounding transformation of Wreden's style. Once Human's boss designs are sublime: dark, fractured gods that make you look miniscule in their presence. Cairn aims to take the movement-struggle genre, which has been dominated by comedies like Getting Over It and The Game of Sisyphus, and do something earnest and dramatic.

There is part of me that misses the big, dumb, explosive E3, but the best thing to happen to the expo might have been its death. In place of a relative few mega-publishers sucking up all the oxygen in the room, feeding us on a diet of pre-rendered trailers, we've got an embarrassment of streams that let the smaller, more innovative, more interesting devs shine through. Those developers, often lacking the funds for indulgent cutscenes and opulent marketing, are also more likely to show gameplay on stream. For the time being, even a Geoff Keighley is plugging into that ecosystem. Thanks for reading.

Notes

Take-Two is reportedly set to close Roll7 and Intercept and sell off Private Division by Vikki Blake (June 1, 2024), Eurogamer.
Microsoft Closes Redfall Developer Arkane Austin, Hi-Fi Rush Developer Tango Gameworks, and More in Devastating Cuts at Bethesda by Wesley Yin-Poole (May 7, 2024), IGN.

All other sources are linked at relevant points in the article.