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Crazy Taxi: World Tour

Keeping The Faith

There are so many reasons to be pessimistic about the future of the video games industry (constant layoffs, price increases, genAI, etc) what is something that keeps you optimistic? – The5Starman via BlueSky

It has certainly been a rough stretch in the games industry. Seemingly every other week, we hear of new layoffs or studio closures, and, as you mentioned, this already-expensive hobby continues to get pricier due to a confluence of events related to trade policies, component shortages, and ongoing global conflicts. It’s easy to get jaded, but we here at Game Informer are still absolutely in love with this medium.

The easy answer is that the creativity and passion that developers – whether at triple-A studios or one-person indie operations – put on display every single day is rejuvenating. As you’re reading this, our team is just returning from Summer Game Fest, an event that is perhaps the busiest and most exhausting time for us each year. But ask anyone who goes to SGF, and they’ll tell you we return from this event (and others throughout the year) absolutely on fire. Seeing the folks who make the games we either love or are excited about passionately talk about their work puts a sheen of humanity on this industry that is often lost when all we see is the anger that fuels social media platforms.

But it goes deeper than that. For us, games deliver a feeling that no other medium can. We love movies, music, television, and books, but video games can transport us to places we never even dreamed of. Whether you’re traveling through a fantastical world as the prophesied hero, building your very own community of Pokémon friends, or stepping up to the plate in the World Series, games put us in situations we would never find ourselves in otherwise. And no amount of corporate nonsense can take that away from us.