So, due to covid, is the drought supposed to start now?

[justiceiro]

From what I remember, when covid started, there was a consensus in game executives that we would only feel the impact on the industry some months down the line, since production of AAA games relies on stuff that can't happen in work at home models, like voice acting and motion capture.

Since big games released at the end of the last year anyway, I wonder if now is when will start to really feel the impact.

How do you feel about the incoming releases?

 

[KillLaCam]

I've felt the impact all year with no Elden Ring news

 

[razt99]

While there's a lot im looking forward to, Q1/Q2 does seem pretty lite with Big hitters than typical years. Early 2019 we had Anthem/DMC5/RE2/KH3/MK11/Days Gone/Metro etc. Even 2020 had a great first 4/5 months. I imagine RE8 and Ratchet will fill out April/May, but seems a lot is going to be the fall.

 

[Quinho]

I'm feeling the impact of covid all year.

 

[Fire Bocchi]

voice acting can definitely be done from home,

 

[ghostcrew]

There's not gonna be a solid start of end date to any 'drought'. Every game and project is going to have been affected in a different way and we're gonna feel that for some time.

I think the 'it'll be affecting 2021' point was more to highlight to people how it'll still continue to affect releases long after the peak of the pandemic (when we all though that was last summer...) because these things have knock on effects.

 

[ClickyCal']

There are games with mocap being worked on.

 

[FisherTea]

Maybe some people with experience can chime in but I got the impression from devs I followed on Twitter that a decent portion of game dev work can be done while working from home.

 

[BobbeMalle]

voice acting can definitely be done from home,

Click to shrink...

Not without specific equipment. The Hades dev documentary shows this.

 

[kingslunk]

Elden Ring, SF6, I'm sure there's even more. Prolly BOTW2

 

[Powerofthecloud]

Games will maybe roll out slower but game dev will continue.

 

[Sword Familiar]

I feel kinda indifferent about incoming releases. Have yet to hop on the next-gen train and I'm not really looking forward to much right now. There will be no drought for me though, since I buy older games regularly and have lots to play. For the ones of you who are experiencing a drought, maybe wait a year before next-gen starts to actually relase some games.

 

[Quinho]

I have a (probably dumb, but honest) question regarding this.

Did the cyber attack on capcom happen due to covid making almost everyone work from home? Like the credentials being stolen from an employee due to social engineering and such?

 

[Cheesecakebobby]

Not sure why Japanese games would be so affected. The current state of emergency barely amounts to more than asking restaurants which serve beer to stop doing so by 7pm (in several prefectures). I don't know if game companies have taken to telework to the same, less or greater degree than the average company but the main difference is probably fewer drinking parties after work...

 

[ghostcrew]

I'll stick a specific example of how 2021 releases in my industry are continuing to be impacted, not because it's 100% relevant to games but because I think it's interesting.

I work in music. One of the artists that I work with was supposed to have an album released this month. January 2021. The original plan was for them to be in the studio (in another country) in May 2020. That obviously got canned, because they weren't able to travel (or be in a room with that many people, realistically) so we put the record back to a tentative Autumn 2021 with a plan to get into the studio whenever it was deemed safe and responsible to do so. Straight away that's a 8-9 month delay.

We finally managed to get in at the end of the Summer 2020 (by massively reducing the amount of people we'd have in the studio and rigorously making sure everyone had quarantined/been sensible) and got all of that done. We gave ourselves x months to get the rest of the recording finished from home studios/remotely and then get it mixed and mastered. In a typical year, when you send a record off to get pressed/manufactured, you'd give three months for that process. That's three months for the pressing plants to press the vinyl. It sounds like a lot (and it is!) but there aren't many plants and there are a lot of records queued up waiting for pressing every week of ever year.

Because COVID has affected the pressing plants (both through shutdowns/restrictions but also because of staff health problems directly related to the pandemic) we're now being told that we need to deliver the finished, mastered record seven months before we need them in hand to send out to our distributors. SEVEN MONTHS. That's now putting in jeopardy our Autumn 2021 release and maybe push the record back to early 2022. All the time during which the artist is unable to tour or play festivals to earn their living, which is where the vast majority of their income would typically come from.

This is madness. But, yeah, knock-on effects. And just highlighting that 'working from home' (or not being able to get into the office) is only a small part of a much larger issue for a lot of projects.

Basically, this is gonna be hindering the process differently for different projects but it'll continue to be hugely disruptive for a long time.

 

[Deleted member 56752]

Idk about drought but a lot of games are going to be delayed

 

[GooberDooberCBC]

Idk about drought but a lot of games are going to be delayed

Click to shrink...

yeah I completely expect this as well.

 

[RoKKeR]

I'll stick a specific example of how 2021 releases in my industry are continuing to be impacted, not because it's 100% relevant to games but because I think it's interesting.

I work in music. One of the artists that I work with was supposed to have an album released this month. January 2021. The original plan was for them to be in the studio (in another country) in May 2020. That obviously got canned, because they weren't able to travel (or be in a room with that many people, realistically) so we put the record back to a tentative Autumn 2021 with a plan to get into the studio whenever it was deemed safe and responsible to do so. Straight away that's a 8-9 month delay.

We finally managed to get in at the end of the Summer 2020 (by massively reducing the amount of people we'd have in the studio and rigorously making sure everyone had quarantined/been sensible) and got all of that done. We gave ourselves x months to get the rest of the recording finished from home studios/remotely and then get it mixed and mastered. In a typical year, when you send a record off to get pressed/manufactured, you'd give three months for that process. That's three months for the pressing plants to press the vinyl. It sounds like a lot (and it is!) but there aren't many plants and there are a lot of records queued up waiting for pressing every week of ever year.

Because COVID has affected the pressing plants (both through shutdowns/restrictions but also because of staff health problems directly related to the pandemic) we're now being told that we need to deliver the finished, mastered record seven months before we need them in hand to send out to our distributors. SEVEN MONTHS. That's now putting in jeopardy our Autumn 2021 release and maybe push the record back to early 2022. All the time during which the artist is unable to tour or play festivals to earn their living, which is where the vast majority of their income would typically come from.

This is madness. But, yeah, knock-on effects. And just highlighting that 'working from home' (or not being able to get into the office) is only a small part of a much larger issue for a lot of projects.

Basically, this is gonna be hindering the process differently for different projects but it'll continue to be hugely disruptive for a long time.

Click to shrink...

Just popping on to say this is a fascinating anecdote about another industry I'm also interested in!

 

[justiceiro]

I'll stick a specific example of how 2021 releases in my industry are continuing to be impacted, not because it's 100% relevant to games but because I think it's interesting.

I work in music. One of the artists that I work with was supposed to have an album released this month. January 2021. The original plan was for them to be in the studio (in another country) in May 2020. That obviously got canned, because they weren't able to travel (or be in a room with that many people, realistically) so we put the record back to a tentative Autumn 2021 with a plan to get into the studio whenever it was deemed safe and responsible to do so. Straight away that's a 8-9 month delay.

We finally managed to get in at the end of the Summer 2020 (by massively reducing the amount of people we'd have in the studio and rigorously making sure everyone had quarantined/been sensible) and got all of that done. We gave ourselves x months to get the rest of the recording finished from home studios/remotely and then get it mixed and mastered. In a typical year, when you send a record off to get pressed/manufactured, you'd give three months for that process. That's three months for the pressing plants to press the vinyl. It sounds like a lot (and it is!) but there aren't many plants and there are a lot of records queued up waiting for pressing every week of ever year.

Because COVID has affected the pressing plants (both through shutdowns/restrictions but also because of staff health problems directly related to the pandemic) we're now being told that we need to deliver the finished, mastered record seven months before we need them in hand to send out to our distributors. SEVEN MONTHS. That's now putting in jeopardy our Autumn 2021 release and maybe push the record back to early 2022. All the time during which the artist is unable to tour or play festivals to earn their living, which is where the vast majority of their income would typically come from.

This is madness. But, yeah, knock-on effects. And just highlighting that 'working from home' (or not being able to get into the office) is only a small part of a much larger issue for a lot of projects.

Basically, this is gonna be hindering the process differently for different projects but it'll continue to be hugely disruptive for a long time.

Click to shrink...

Wow, this is really fascinating.

I also mentioned voice acting because I imagine actors gave be extra careful since covid affects their means of work. They can't risk permanent damage.

 

[Diarrhea Day-Lewis]

Imo there is only a drought if you think there is. There are plenty of games coming out everyday, especially from indies. Just try something new, outside your comfort zone, and you'll never really experience a drought for games at all.

 

[Deleted member 63122]

Imo there is only a drought if you think there is. There are plenty of games coming out everyday, especially from indies. Just try something new, outside your comfort zone, and you'll never really experience a drought for games at all.

Click to shrink...

That;s what I did on Switch this year, and ended up loving other genres and series.

 

[RomanticHeroX]

We've been in the drought. Things didn't seem as bad with a few big games hitting soon after March but the back half of 2020 made it one of the weakest years in recent memory.

 

[Ferrio]

Imo there is only a drought if you think there is. There are plenty of games coming out everyday, especially from indies. Just try something new, outside your comfort zone, and you'll never really experience a drought for games at all.

Click to shrink...

Yep, not really such a thing as a video game drought anymore. I'm overloaded with stuff that came out/coming out on PC.

 

[Madao]

if you were into Nintendo first party releases, the "drought" already hit like 5 months ago and has no signs to change anytime soon.

it's also a good time to finally tackle years-old backlogs.

 

[TheBaldwin]

Not a drought per say but the effect this whole year and into 2022 is going to be quite large.

Just means that more people will of course have to buy Hitman 3, as they should ;)

 

[Classybro]

XBox literally launch a console without a single first party game I say the effects of COVID have been happening

 

[Betty]

I have enough in my backlog to last me the year.

Hitman 3 + all the missions in VR + Mario 3D world is more than enough to carry me through to summer.

 

[Xeonidus]

It may actually give an opportunity for smaller games to find an audience that may have been drowned out in the past. I think a lot of small scale indie games may be able to switch to work from home more easily compared to larger and more complicated projects.

It might even give games like The Medium and Returnal room to shine. All of a sudden these are the biggest games to look forward to for the first bit of the year.

 

[Thera]

The bigger the project is, the bigger the delay will be.

 

[Lord Fanny]

I mean, there's always draughts at certain times of the year. Will COVID make those draughts longer and more obvious? Very well could, yeah. It seems so far the beginning of 2021 is looking pretty solid with some big stuff on the AAA and indie level. The shakiness is going to come when we start getting into like the midpoint of the year

 

[Vareon]

Video games are actually on the better side of things because the only thing that's impacted is just the production (and for consumers, it will have almost no effect because tons of games are still getting released every month, and old ones are still getting updated). We never experience draught, so to speak.

My friends work in the film industry, who had trouble producing AND releasing their products. It's a mess. Finishing that last 1% of something you don't even know how to release is disheartening.

 

[YuriLowell]

We had the launch of two new consoles with only one next generation game.
We have been feeling covid for awhile.

 

[GuEiMiRrIRoW]

If younreally think about it, what's next ps5 game? Ratchet in july? August?

 

[Chaos2Frozen]

The perfect time to get into gacha to keep my mind off these things XD

 

[RochHoch]

The drought already started a long time time ago for Switch owners

 

[smurfx]

if there really is gonna be a drought then i have no reason to buy a ps5 this year. the longer i wait the lower the prices of the launch games and others as well.

 

[Gay Bowser]

If younreally think about it, what's next ps5 game? Ratchet in july? August?

Click to shrink...

Returnal in March? And presumably MLB The Show will be sometime in Q2 as well, depending on when Opening Day ends up being.

 

[Deleted member 22750]

play Skyrim
or rock some donkey kong country

 

[Qurupeke]

A lot of companies are affected. Even if it's to a minor degree. We don't really have any idea how much the schedule has changed for a lot of them. The fact that both consoles launched when intended doesn't mean much considering how much other aspects of them may have been affected. It's not like you'll stop seeing games for the next 10 months or anything like that, but there will be delays or changes.

 

[Sesha]

Probably. Play a long ass RPG or five. You'll have enough to keep you busy.

I personally don't care since I don't have a next gen console. I'm primarily looking forward to Little Nightmares 2. Everything else I'm keen on (Psychonauts 2, RE8, Elden Ring) don't have release dates. Not to mention I didn't play any 2020 games, and barely any 2019 ones. I just now finished Claire A in RE2, and I still have Blasphemous to finish, and Sekiro to start. Not to mention Monster Hunter World. I've played only a couple of the big indies in the last 5-6 years, including every indie Metroidvania. And I've never played any cRPGs, much less stuff like Pathologic, Fallout New Vegas or Witcher 3. I've also been meaning to replay JRPGs I loved in my kid years for ages now. Some of them in Japanese, for the first time. Oh, and I've never finished Dark Souls 1 or 3 or Bloodborne.

 

[EvilBoris]

It's going to start slowing down - companies won't want their own Cyberpunk incident.
For Next gen exclusive games you have the hardware shortages and small user base to contend with Also. So you send your game to a commercial death or do you hold it back?

 

[KtotheRoc]

It's definitely already started.

 

[Rosebud]

There's never a drought unless you only play specific AAA games from specific publishers and genres, and only at release.

 

[texhnolyze]

What drought? I'm drowning in games to play, old and new.

There's never a drought unless you only play specific AAA games from specific publishers and genres, and only at release.

Click to shrink...

This.

 

[steviestar3]

There's never a drought unless you only play specific AAA games from specific publishers and genres, and only at release.

Click to shrink...

Yep

 

[CRIMSON-XIII]

My concern at the moment is May - September is extremely dry on trailers and events. Ideally, we get more Summer Game Fest. We get folks announcing E3 digital events in a more reformed E3. With Crash 4, Mafia Remake, Tony Hawk Remastered, already out. Games like Mass Effect Trilogy already revealed. I am not quite sure what things can be spread out this spring and summer for reveals.

As far as drought goes for buying new content and games? I am not worried about lack of new games to buy. I am worried about them not having trailers or content to show generally. Also, we have huge backlogs. I think kena, Returnal and Mass Effect are literally enough this spring, but that is just me personally. I don't think Ratchet and Clank needs to come out in the next 3-4 months.

 

[Jaded Alyx]

Imo there is only a drought if you think there is. There are plenty of games coming out everyday, especially from indies. Just try something new, outside your comfort zone, and you'll never really experience a drought for games at all.

Click to shrink...

There's never a drought unless you only play specific AAA games from specific publishers and genres, and only at release.

Click to shrink...

Been saying this forever. The idea of a drought in this hobby is ridiculous in my mind.

Picked up Hitman III today and would like to get Scott Pilgrim tomorrow but will likely hold off. Besides that, I still have a ton of games to play that I already own and a bunch more that I don't.

 

[Deleted member 1003]

I'm feeling the side effects of Covid for sure. Fatigue mostly.

 

[Mesoian]

I feel like if you're only interested in AAA titles, you'll be in for a hard time.

But I also think there will be more than enough to play that's new, and I'll have plenty to go through as per my 2020 backlog.

 

[J75]

I'm gon' be eating this 28th with the Yakuza ports. But after that, yeah, I'm def gonna feel it. I'm pretty picky and selective with what I play and my tastes so I rarely feel like I'm drowning with games anyways.