This year’s Game Developers Conference (GDC) kicks off next Monday, and a controversy has already emerged following today’s LinkedIn outburst by industry veteran Greg Costikyan.
First things first, though: context. While not a household name among gamers like Hideo Kojima or Todd Howard, Costikyan is a renowned game designer whose career spans tabletop roleplaying games, board games, wargames, video games (he worked from 2019 to 2023 on Stars Reach, the upcoming sci-fi sandbox MMO by Playable Worlds, as Game Design Lead), and more. He also wrote four novels.
A friend of Warren Spector (Ultima, System Shock, Deus Ex, Thief, Epic Mickey) since high school, his most famous works are probably the tabletop RPGs Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game and the dystopian sci-fi franchise Paranoia, which got a video game adaptation in 2019, the cRPG Paranoia: Happiness is Mandatory.
Costikyan is also famous for his essays and talks, such as the article “I Have No Words & I Must Design”, originally published in 1994 in Interactive Fantasy #2, a British roleplaying journal. During GDC 2005, he joined Spector, Chris Hecker, Brenda Laurel, and Eric Zimmerman in a legendary session called “Burning Down the House: Game Developers Rant”, in which he attacked publisher dominance, the AAA cost spiral, and what he saw as the death of innovation. Two years later, at GDC 2007, he would receive the Maverick Award, a prize given to those who take risks by experimenting with unconventional methods, “for his tireless efforts to create a viable channel for indie games”.
Now, though, he has criticized the current organizers of the GDC for supposedly sweeping under the rug all the issues that the industry is going through, which he believes is at its most dire point since the Atari crash (1983-1985), and trying to be “upbeat” with their rebrand of the convention as the “Festival of Gaming”.
I spent some time today going through GDC’s agenda, and I was appalled. I now understand why my proposed talk was rejected, and also why GDC is rebranded as “Festival of Gaming.”
Every talk is either technical or upbeat: how to pitch your game, how to deal with issues. Not a thing deals with the fact that 25% of developers have been laid off in the last 2 years, or that we face dire issues with player disengagement, AI layoffs, or the fact that, given industry issues, there’s almost zero pipeline for recent graduates to find work in the field.
It’s all technical talks or happy happy fun stuff. “Festival of Gaming.” Never mind that we are at the most dire point in our industry since the Atari crash. This repulses me.
The GDC 2026 agenda can be freely browsed on this page, so you can make up your own mind on that count. Costikyan is definitely right about the massive number of layoffs (and regular studio closures) that have occurred in the last few years, between the consequences of consolidations, the struggles of AAA game development, and the so-called “extinction level event” caused by the Embracer Group’s $2 billion failed deal with the Savvy Group, not to mention the looming shadow of AI tools.
That said, we should also note that the aforementioned 1983 Atari crash caused a 97% revenue drop throughout the industry, whereas nowadays revenue continues to grow (albeit primarily on mobile and PC), as reported recently by games data firm Newzoo. So, the situation is certainly troubling, but not quite comparable to that industry-wide crash.
It will be interesting to see whether any game developers comment on Costikyan’s statement, either to agree, disagree, or offer an entirely different perspective. If anything relevant pops up, we’ll be sure to report it.
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