Gaming leaders see an industry under pressure from stalled growth, rising production costs and fierce competition for players’ time. Their case for better days is not that those problems will disappear: it is that distinctive, enjoyable games—and new ways to make and play them—could create the next wave of growth.
That outlook comes from a GamesBeat roundtable published March 17, 2025, and updated June 18, 2025. Dean Takahashi moderated the discussion on the eve of the Game Developers Conference, drawing on a 224-slide analysis by Matthew Ball. The participants were former Nexon CEO Owen Mahoney, former Benchmark Capital general partner Mitch Lasky, Ludeon Studios founder Tynan Sylvester and former Kleiner Perkins general partner Bing Gordon. Their conversation combines industry experience, interpretation and forecasts; it is not a comprehensive statistical survey.
Why the industry is struggling
The panel described a difficult period following pandemic-era growth. They pointed to slower growth in mobile and online PC, a glut of venture-backed live-service games, and an increasingly crowded contest for players’ time. In their view, rising budgets make those pressures more consequential: a costly project has more to lose if its idea resembles existing games or fails to find an audience.
Mahoney said publishers facing higher risk often gravitate toward sequels, familiar concepts and licensed brands. Lasky described a squeeze on mid-budget games, caught between major franchises and lower-cost projects that find success. These are the speakers’ explanations of the market, not independently established causal findings.
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What the figures do—and do not—show
The roundtable used several figures to illustrate the scale of the challenge. They should be read as attributed remarks from that discussion, not as a single independently verified set of current industry measurements.
| Figure | Attribution and qualification |
|---|---|
| About $100 million | Mahoney described this as a table-stakes AAA development cost around 2018–2019. |
| About $150 million | Mahoney described this as the cost discussed roughly two and a half years before the 2025 conversation. |
| About $300 million | Mahoney’s estimate of the cost of developing a new AAA game at the time of the roundtable. |
| 34,000 layoffs over two and a half years | Takahashi cited this figure in the GamesBeat article, attributing it to Ball’s industry analysis; the transcript does not independently verify it. |
| 17,000 titles per year on Steam | Takahashi cited this annual release-volume figure during the discussion. |
| 30% year-over-year growth for MapleStory | Mahoney described this as the growth in the last year he ran Nexon, more than two decades after the game began. |
| 95 out of 100 proposals | Mahoney’s anecdotal estimate that proposals he reviewed looked similar to something already released; it is not a measured industry statistic. |
| About $200 billion for the global games business; about $100 billion for mobile | Figures used by Lasky in discussing technology-driven market growth; they are not a current independently checked market estimate. |
Why familiar pitches can be a risky response
When a new game is expensive to develop, a recognizable franchise or genre can seem like a safer bet. But the panel’s concern is that many similar projects compete for the same audience. Mahoney recalled reviewing proposals and said, “The demo starts the greenlight process.” His point was that a polished presentation can help a project win approval without proving that the finished game will be compelling to play.
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That tension is especially acute for mid-budget games, in Lasky’s account. They may lack the spending power and audience reach of major franchises while still carrying more financial exposure than a small experiment. The roundtable did not present a universal formula for where a project’s budget should land; it argued against treating scale or familiarity as a substitute for a distinct player experience.
What the panel thinks could make better games
Make the experience distinctive
The speakers urged developers to look for ideas that offer players something recognizably different rather than simply reproducing a successful formula. Mahoney pointed to Minecraft and Lethal Company as examples of games he considered fun; these were examples raised in the discussion, not a formal comparison of commercial performance.
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Put play ahead of presentation
Sylvester argued that interactivity and room to experiment can matter more to players than visual polish alone. Mahoney’s comment about demos reflects a related concern: the game should work as an experience, not only as a persuasive pitch. Their emphasis was on fun and player choice, rather than on production spectacle by itself.
Do not assume more people or money means a better result
The contrast the panel drew was not simply “large games bad, small games good.” Large productions and smaller teams face different risks and can serve different audiences. Their argument was that a bigger team or budget does not automatically improve a game; focused experiments may offer a way to test unusual ideas with less exposure, while major franchises can operate at a different scale.
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Technology may open the next growth wave—but no platform is guaranteed
The speakers recalled earlier shifts in graphics hardware, online play and mobile as technologies that enabled new forms of play, business models, audiences and companies. They said virtual reality, metaverse projects, web3 and blockchain, and esports had not delivered comparable growth by the time of their 2025 conversation. That is their assessment of those waves, not a prediction that these technologies have no future.
They were more open to artificial intelligence as a possible enabler of creativity, especially for smaller teams, but its effects on production and employment remained uncertain. AI is therefore a possibility in the panel’s outlook, not an established solution to budgets, layoffs or weak growth. Roblox and Unreal Editor for Fortnite also came up in the discussion, but the roundtable did not offer a specific product recommendation.
What “the best days are still ahead” means
The panel’s optimism rests on the possibility that games can grow again when developers find new ways to make play distinctive, accessible and fun. Its prescription is not to spend through the downturn or wait for a technology trend to rescue the business. It is to preserve experimentation, offer meaningful player choice and avoid confusing the cost or polish of a production with the strength of its idea.
That is a hopeful forecast, not a guarantee. The discussion offers reasons the speakers believe gaming can renew itself, but it does not establish when growth will return or which technology, business model or kind of game will lead it.
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