Another great looking game I look forward to downloading and not finding the time to play

Like most of my quick posits, this one acts as more of a conversation starter than a fully fledged article, as sometimes my schedule doesn’t allow for time to cook up a more elaborate write up, but I simultaneously also feel extraordinarily weird when I don’t write about video games everyday in some capacity, so this is the best compromise I have landed on. Editors note: an ideal compromise is when no one is happy, so in this instance, I’m not totally stoked at the write up I’m throwing out there, just like you are probably wanting a more robust amount of research or style attached to the though,t so rejoice all involved in boarding the struggle bus of whimsical tragedy.

To my point: with the crazy amount of layoffs that have occurred well over the past year, to reading articles about games under performing, like Blades of Fire getting good feedback from press and gamers alike, and yet suffering from substandard sales, to Split Fiction 2 “unlaunching” due to the developer having to make cutbacks, to original Doom designer John Romero discussing how indies are the future of development, a statement he made just before his own studio got funding cuts due to the massive amount of Microsoft layoffs, all of this and more in-conjunction with so many other studio shutdowns and complaints from publishers about under performing games at launch, it leaves me wondering if a downsizing of the video game industry is unavoidable at this point.

Maybe we are in the midst of this reality, so we are all already there, present, and accounted for, as the industry goes through some rough growing pains, as it faces the harsh reality that perhaps the industry as a collective got too bloated, too sure of it’s self, and too over indulgent about what it thought could be accommodated, and it’s just going to take a little while longer for us to come to terms with the downsizing of the industry en masse before we move on from the horrendous loss of jobs, the missed opportunities of meaningful growth, and abandoned IPs before the dust settles, and we gather ourselves and move forward with what’s left.

Ultimately, I want to see success from so many in the industry, even games and studios I don’t even follow or have a serious interest in, but when I look around at the conglomeration of how many that continue to struggle, can’t keep up, or an overly stacked release schedule, and all of this is before tariffs start to really impact the industry in a bigger way, AI continues to take its toll due to a lack of regulation involved, and larger publishers continue to cut costs where necessary and shut down developers who do well but not amazingly so, and you’re looking at a bleak rest of the year…and a possible continuation into 2026.

This is all prompted by so many different factors and ideas floating around my head, and honestly (as previously mentioned), only the start of a much longer conversation, when I look around at how many games, pieces of hardware, and developers I still have to get around to experiencing that’s on my to do list, with an ever growing backlog that never seems to reduce, and financial restrictions that keep me from enjoying an even greater breadth of content. Keeping in mind, I’m someone who not only plays games daily, but writes about video games regularly, and I still can’t find the time or money to get to even half of it?

The writing might be on the wall, sadly…but a worthy topic of further discussion either way.

~Pashford