There's been a lot of "doom talk" in the gaming industry following studio closures, regular layoffs at big and small companies alike, and rising game development times and budgets. In late March, John Romero and Brenda Romero opined that the current state of the industry is even worse than the infamous 80s crash, which saw the revenue collapse by 97% between 1983 and 1985 in North America. However, not everyone shares their opinion. Speaking on the latest episode of The Game Business, Christian Svensson, VP, Head of 2nd/3rd Party Content Ventures & Strategic Initiatives at Sony Interactive Entertainment, expressed strong […]

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Veteran game designer Jake Solomon, known mostly for XCOM: Enemy Unknown, XCOM 2, and Marvel's Midnight Suns, announced the closure of Midsummer Studios. Solomon had founded the development team after leaving Firaxis. In 2024, I interviewed him to learn more about his next game, a narrative-driven life simulation for which he had already raised $6 million in seed funding. Rather than going for a traditional sandbox-like approach in the vein of the king of the genre, The Sims from Maxis, the game was conceived around player-driven storytelling. It was a systems-based approach where conflict, relationships, and consequences would combine to […]

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