'Stop F**king Firing My Friends’ - DICE Award Winners on the Industry’s Biggest Challenge Today
Earlier this month, the games industry gathered in Las Vegas, Nevada to celebrate the 27th annual D.I.C.E. Awards, honoring the best of video games in 2023. It was a great time, and a lot of really excellent games won well-deserved prizes.
But it’s also been a rough year for the games industry. We’ve written about the current upheaval elsewhere, and it didn’t go unremarked upon onstage, either. Even in a time of well-earned joy, a number of developers onstage were there having lost fellow team members who should be celebrating with them. Even those lucky enough to have avoided layoffs were accepting their awards in front of an audience of peers rocked by job loss, funding uncertainty, and apprehension.
Backstage, we had the opportunity to chat with almost every person who accepted an award that night. And while we asked them a number of celebratory questions and cheered with them on their victories and incredible games, we also asked them, candidly, what they felt the biggest challenge facing the games industry was in the year ahead. Overwhelmingly, the mass layoffs were the most common answer, but it also wasn’t the only thing we heard. Some developers brought up other struggles that they have been reckoning with at their own studios, or even smaller causes that ultimately have lead back to the larger industry struggles we’re seeing play out week after week.
So, from the developers of the best games of 2023, here are the biggest challenges the games industry faces in the year ahead:
Scott Hanau
Senior score producer for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, winner of Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Composition
“I would say all the layoffs probably, a lot of restructuring, reorganization, trying to keep all the teams together as best we can and go forward and make great games. It's pretty daunting sometimes.”
Rod Fergusson
General manager of all things Diablo including Diablo 4, winner of Online Game of the Year
“I think we hear a lot about the notion around how you
Read more on ign.com
