And like I said that film industry number takes account of shit like popcorn sales, you aren’t skeptical of the film industry numbers because they cover the stoned teen handing you your ticket sales. These things aren’t totally divorced either. You’re taking a very limited look at the games industry as just devs, and from the prospective of indy devs.
But interesting quirk here. One of the few expanding aspects of film and television, one of the few fields there with a growing number of jobs, rising wages, and serious job stability. Is digital effects. The companies that do that work are not studios or production companies, but 3rd parties doing contract work.
And often those companies also do contract work for games. Sometimes they’re game companies. I’ve seen Take 2 Interactive listed in the credits of films. A lot of audio studios now do the bulk of their work for game voice overs. And whether motion capture is done for Star Wars or Read Dead, it’s often the same companies doing it.
To the extent that there’s a reason to be skeptical of numbers I think it’s honestly in this direction. If you look at count of jobs provided/created by the video game business. They tend to exclusively quote publishers, often not even devs. But the industry as a whole is a hell of a lot broader than that (and yes hardware counts).
If you recall the friend I mentioned who took over and saved a family business. It was a bindery and paper goods company. He did that by getting into specialty packaging for DVDs. These days that aspect is mostly dead. But they do a shit ton of higher end boxes for physical copies of games, game merch etc. All for smaller operations and short runs.
Which is valid. But you have a very grass is always greener look at other media industries. A lot of what your describing is just “entertainment business”. It exists to the exact same extent in other ends of it, always has, and represents a shifting target of how the fuck to get paid for this sort of thing. The particular issues in any given industry are unique to that industry. But nothing you’ve pointed out, true as it is, sounds characteristically different than anywhere else.
Those other streams often haven’t increased dollar wise, or provide far, far less income than they replace. To a large extent it is replacement, not an add on, and in most of these businesses people are scrambling to cobble together a combination that’ll make it stable. You can look at Music streaming, where even the artists at the top of the global charts typically pull down a pittance in actual fees. The reasons for that are complicated. But look at whatever industry right now and what you’ll see is traditional revenue streams decreasing. While new revenue streams either never materialize, or just aren’t able to offset. Often because those new revenue streams come from new middle men, and the “disruption” they’re predicated on being focused on capturing a bigger piece than the previous middle men. Or cutting out workers.
Games wise from what I’ve seen sales, the traditional revenue stream. are increasing. But the economies of it are eroding for other reasons. Additional revenue streams would help with that. Though less so than fixing the structural problems. I just keep hearing from people in the games business that such and such over in film, or radio or publishing is so much more money and it could solve the problem. But having seen it first hand, it’s sure as shit not solving the problem for film or radio or publishing.
Welcome to jobs. Whatever industry you’re in, a writers job skills transfer to fewer places than a programmer or an HR guy (remember game companies need HR people, book keepers etc). I know doctors who haven’t managed to maintain employment as doctors. But just anecdotally. I don’t see too many people who wash out of the games industry spending the next decade of their life waiting tables. And I’ve worked at restaurants where the entire staff were former media people. I’ve worked at production companies where most of the employees also worked in restaurants.
