Polygon’s Editor’s Letter is a column from Editor-in-Chief Chris Plante that reflects on the video game and entertainment industries, their communities, and Polygon itself. New editions appear in the first week of each month.

Let’s start with a spoonful of sugar: Making a video game is faster, cheaper, and easier today than it has been at any point in history.

The internet’s tummy has been so generously stuffed with developer-friendly videos, podcasts, Discord channels, freely available academic courses, Github pages, and cheap ebooks that it could enjoy a long hibernation. Video game engine licensors have all but removed the financial barrier to entry, taking their fees on the back end. Skeptical of megacorps? Devs can pick from an expanding roster of indie engines, too — some of them totally free. And when it’s time to publish, Steam and Itch.io will host a game and provide everything required to convert ludological art into cold cash for a nominal cut.

We live in an age of opportunity. Which, ironically, is part of the problem. Change has been exponential and at the worst possible time. Over the past decade, video game developers — increasing exponentially — have flooded the market faster than the industry (from AAA publishers to independent studios) could adapt.

Within that flood, a nightmare economic scenario began to swirl: The COVID-19 pandemic created a temporary spike of interest that attracted misplaced investment from video game outsiders and overspending from video game insiders. Venture capitalists got suckered into imaginary “high-ceiling” opportunities in blockchain, esports, and VR, rather than more established (but presumed “low-ceiling”) studios making traditional, single-player experiences. And then, with all of those bubbles fully inflated, fear of a recession launched U.S. interest rates. Rates rocketed so high they now appear to be stuck in orbit, meaning the average game studio or investor will be deeply hesitant to borrow money to fund a new project.

Voila: the video game industry of 2024. Since January, industry leaders have been murmuring the mantra “Survive to ’25.” But I fear the long-term forecast is Cloudy with a Chance of Fucked.

Consider, if you can muster the sympathy, the AAA video game publisher. Where in the past, a publisher’s individual games would compete against a few dozen releases a year, they now compete against dozens a week. (Plus........

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