What’s that question you haven’t asked and probably don’t care about?  So what has been up in the gaming industry?  A lot of doom and gloom is the short answer.  There hasn’t been a month gone by where the headlines haven’t carried word of another studio closure, retailer going under, or publisher falling short on expected sales.  Really nothing too happy to say these days.  As of late, when items like this fall into my inbox I would rather not write about them.  Everyone knows the economy is shit, recession, depression, or what ever you want to call it.  If you need me telling you, than you need to get out more often.  The question that might make a difference to you dear reader is, what will this bring to you, the gamer?

As studios like Free Radical and Ensemble Studios go under there are many skilled programmers, designers, and producers dumped into the job market.  Now try to hold back those tears, a good number of these people have received severance packages.  I’m not trying to trivialize the massive life changing event of someone losing their job, I just want to make sure you are aware some of these people got a paycheck as they were showed the door.  I have heard of some companies, outside of gaming, pay severance of one month of salary for each year of service, which can be a sizable amount of money for some, especially in an industry where contractual and cyclical employment means people need to (or rather should) save for those times they are between jobs.

So there a large number of people who are unemployed and have a few dollars and are probably thinking they can do a much better job than their previous employers.  Lets call this case 1.  Case 1 will result in a few new studios popping up, like in the case of Ensemble Studios and the two new studios spawning from it’s ashes.  Historically, case 1 has been popular with situations like Looking Glass Studios breaking into start-ups of Ion Storm, Valve, Irrational Games and more.  These splits have given us studios producing some new IPs, but many focused on improving existing franchises that they are already very knowledgeable with.  Improving cash cows is something that publishers will be happy to back and help get a new studio started.  This is something that may be happening right now with Crackdown 2 and Ruffian/Realtime Worlds.

Another trend which has shown itself as a strong contender in options of unemployed game creators, and our case 2, is going indie.  Indie developers were typically identified as programmers chasing their dreams, making games that appeal to them, being original and pushing themselves on their own time.   Indie development is really what started the game industry so many years ago when distribution was via dial-up bulletin board systems, mailed (snail mail that is) discs, and shareware floppies.  These days indie underdogs have a new weapon in their distribution arsenal, the Internet, but that’s a little outdated at this point; just setting up a website and having people download your title doesn’t cut it anymore.  Now there are specialized distribution systems in the shape of Steam and Impulse to help serve up a professional and safe distribution method for smaller indie developers with high quality products in need of publishing.  There are further opportunities for these indie warriors, online distribution for consoles, PSN, WiiWare, and Xbox Live.  In the past year there has been a massive increase of downloadable titles and with Microsoft rolling out the XNA Community on Live, providing the tools and environment to everyone, only more titles are to come from indie space.  Indie developers have the freedom to create as they wish, which may be of great attraction to people after losing their job and something that has already begun with some from the ashes of Ensemble going on to make iPhone games.  With low start-up costs, low barriers to entry, and lots of talent available, indie will be seeing a resurgence in 2009.

Case 3 could be an interesting one.  Talent will be disillusioned with the industry which just spurned them so they will  go on to develop other types of software.  Maybe with this influx of gaming talent into the corporate world there will be trend of taking game-like developments, features, and level of entertainment to the normal software we are forced to use every day.  A little bit of user interface can go a long way, so please game developers, help break the corporate mold/stranglehold of bland and difficult to use software.  What ever happened to the old fashioned Easter Egg?  I would love to have the a flight sim back in Excel, or Pinball in Word.  It would make work much more bearable.

Regardless of which case becomes the most prevalent, the shape of the game industry is changing.  The question is what form will it take?  My opinion is the type of games that will come in 2009 will be re-boots and expansions of existing franchises from the big guys, and sleeper titles and underdogs from small time indie developers.  Hopefully there won’t be another dozen AAA titles hitting at the holiday season, but every developer and publisher will be trying to make their year end final numbers work.  And of course you can expect one or two butchered IP’s that someone picked up in a firesale from a now defunct studio.  Any bets on where 2009 will take us?