Boy oh boy, do video games love a high score! Blasting all those bad guys and getting to see your name on the leaderboard sure is fun, isn’t it, folks? What a rush to know you’re moving up the ranks! That’s why it must be so exciting for video game companies right now: they’re working extra hard in 2024 to beat last year’s high score for layoffs! Oh, they haven’t done it yet. It’s still pretty early! But if I know one thing about conglomerates, it’s that they’re going to spend nights and weekends figuring out a way to ruin their own development teams.

Now, achieving the high score of firing creative and QA staff could be its own reward. After all, business executives need to show they’ve done something other than obliterating legacy studios by forcing them to make live-service games. If they can sink a popular IP while they’re at it, all the better! Faceless shareholders are watching their accounts hoping - no, praying - that those video game companies can cut as many jobs as possible. Because if they do: DING DING YAY! Bonus round! Grab all the coins before a recently-acquired developer collapses in on itself! Embracer Group wins! Fatality!

Executives fire people and social media managers catching all the strays as they post an image with text about layoffs. Because if you’re going to force thousands of people to consider switching careers, it’s a little easier to filter any online rage at a 23-year-old who had no say in the decision. But that doesn’t mean executives can’t do more to cut back on expenses and increase profits! Forget leaving behind a skeleton crew; it’s time to rip out all the bones and leave a bag of flesh on the floor.

The Solution: Let Executives Make Their Own Games

Think about it. What’s the worst part of any creative project? That’s right, the people who think up the idea. And the people who design a gameplay system around the idea. And the people who write, score, and draw the idea. And the people who test the idea. And the people who fix the idea. And the people who help market the idea. And the people who keep the office running so everyone can finish the idea. Those are all worthless human beings who take a paycheck for essentially doing nothing. It’s the executives who do the real work by daydreaming during a meeting and then suddenly saying: “We need to make our own Fortnite! We can announce it five years early with a viral video!”

When you think about it, all those subhuman employees are just in the way of true genius and success. With a staff of one - maybe two if you include the executive’s assistant who will end up doing all the work while being yelled at - anything is possible! I mean, hell, a lot of them already make as much as entire development teams combined! And if they’re paid that much, I think we can all agree that one executive is just as useful and creative as one hundred staff members. Get rid of those parasites already!

Of course, a few executives are going to have more of an advantage than others. Some people at the top of their companies actually made games back in the day when computer towers had a button that said “Turbo.” Programming for Windows 95 is absolutely no different than programming for four or five different platforms that came out over thirty years later. The rest will have to learn how to code, paint, compose music, write, design, market, and implement online features. Don’t believe in their ability to do all that? Ummmm, they wore a jean jacket over a t-shirt during a press conference where they announced a game that never ended up being released. What have you done?

AI Just Does Everything, Right?

This isn’t to say that executives would have to learn all those skills. Or any of them! Even the proudest Stern School of Business graduates can admit that sometimes they need a hand. But when the option is between an experienced game industry veteran who has a thorough understanding of their craft or a machine learning algorithm that spits out generic art in which every background character looks like they’re melting, you gotta go with the second one! AI can do it! “Make a hit game” is a pretty easy prompt. Plus, it allows executives to do what they do best: making sure as few people as possible benefit from a company’s success. It’s win-win: if some hapless marks buy the game, the executive did it! If the game is a horrifying failure that doesn’t work, the AI wasn’t too good! No way to avoid that. Probably a former employee’s fault.

And even when they use AI, those brilliant busy business bees are going to have so much fun stitching the disparate parts of the game together all by themselves! It’s not that hard. You just finish level three and tighten up the graphics a little bit! Every piece of every modern video game snaps together with the ease of Legos. It takes, what, eight days to make a triple-A video game? Nine if you’re lazy and see your kids? Executives are going to realize that it’s bizarre these companies took years to release a complex open-world adventure that spans multiple cities. They’re really about to show us all how it’s done! And as they say, the first draft is the last draft: who needs a robust quality assurance group when your games are completely bug free to begin with?

Best of all? Every single one of the executive’s ideas can be implemented. No more pushback from game designers telling you what their fans “like or don’t like.” Ugh! Yuck! Business people know much better what the fans want. And if the fans don’t want it? If the fans hate it and say so over and over again? Must’ve been the fault of those idiots on the dev team for doing it wrong. Every player wants the same thing: An always-online live-service game that has ten different types of currency which are all used to buy different types of currency. If you’re a gamer reading this, you know I’m not lying!

Personally, I’m excited for the people up there in the C-Suite. This is their big chance to prove to their shareholders that they don’t need any employees at all. I think executives would agree that the vast majority of the people who make video games - experienced veterans and hungry rookies alike - have no purpose other than being numbers in an Excel document. They coulstatic.aayyy.com/topic/dn/’t possibly serve a role in the game design process. Most workers probably aren’t even sentient. After they’re finally allowed to leave at 2am, they probably go into a box and charge up like automatons or something.

So congratulations, video game conglomerates! I know you’ve been criticized for throwing the very people who made you a success under the bus. But at the end of the day, the important thing is you’re also driving that bus and you could definitely make some great games all by yourself with no help whatsoever. Better get to it!