“I think that the AAA industry is structurally at its end. And without a serious rewrite of the ways we go about making games, it’s going to end in more disaster than it has already,” Mahoney says. “How come it was so unobvious that Embark was a great deal for Nexon until about three weeks ago? What does it say about the industry?
It reminds me of when Minecraft came out of nowhere and every single belief, bromide, and cliche that we had about high-fidelity graphics was blown out of the water once again. Clash Royale came out, and suddenly everybody realized that you could have synchronous online PVP play, whereas the day before people said, ‘Nobody wants that on mobile.’
These are the things that the industry grapples with. They believe one thing until someone shows them different. That is an indication of where the industry’s head is at right now. Everybody’s so busy trying to execute on today’s business, they’re having a real hard time thinking about tomorrow’s business.”