Did This Decade Old Indie Game Predict the Cyberpunk 2077 Debacle?

I wasn’t always a fan of Steam. Okay, I’m sure there are more than a few people saying “you’re not a fan of Steam, you seem to hate them,” but that’s just not true. Although I admit I wasn’t impressed with the way they foisted themselves upon me with the release of Half-Life 2.

For those who aren’t aware, the physical copy of Half-Life 2 required the installation of Valve’s Steam launcher, which I assume was a way of protecting their games from piracy back in the day. In 2021, it feels as though every game publisher and their mother have their own launcher, but back in 2004 it was totally new.

So I didn’t discover Steam until many years later, instead choosing to browse strange and weird websites for strange and weird indie games. Then, I found it, a game about running a games development studio: Velocigames’ Gamebiz 3. I loved Football Manager style text management games, and was a huge fan of business management as a genre. I’d also held a desire to make games since childhood, something that it would appear I cannot get my head around in real life.

It’s 2010, and I am entering my payment details for this game that I’d never heard of with a company I’d never heard of, but, surprisingly, all goes well. I fired it up, and yup, it was as indie as indie can be. A small window ran the game, which opened menus in other windows. These text management games often have various glitches and are unplayably buggy (we’re looking at you, Music Wars) in some cases, but I was pleasantly surprised to discover a seemingly bug free experience. The UI was janky as hell, but there weren’t as many ‘games development business’ games in 2010 as there are today.

I started my tiny development studio, MasonSoft, and we began producing games in the 1980s, developing games for the likes of Atari (or whatever the in-game equivalent of Atari was). My small team and I were able to turn around games quickly, only a few weeks in some cases, and our first few games were sales successes. This gave me the confidence to hire more staff, and sort them into different teams, which in turn could make more games and generate more profit.

During the NES era, we became one of the key figures in gaming, and were owners of several very lucrative IPs. We expanded, hiring more staff and had 12 teams all working on different titles. We ruled the SNES era over the likes of Konami, Capcom, and Squaresoft — nothing and nobody compared to us. We swaggered into the PlayStation era with a truck load of titles we could work with, and carried on as we always had. Then, something happened.

The complexity of making games for these new consoles proved a little tricky, and our teams struggled to produce their games in a timely manner. It was a difficult business decision, so we cut our 12 teams down to 8, and moved the staff into other teams. We cancelled 6 of our 12 planned PlayStation/Saturn/N64 titles. It wasn’t only the production of these games that proved tricky, as porting them to different consoles also took longer. Some games were rushed to market and undersold. Other games had their ports cancelled entirely.

One positive was that more people were buying gaming consoles than ever before, so we did indeed make money off creating fewer games, but this would be a warning of what was to come. As consoles started handling more complex titles, games began to take longer to develop, and cost much, much more. By the time the PlayStation 2 and co rolled around, we only developed games that we knew would be a smash hit, and could ill-afford to take chances that we had in the past.

By the dawn of the PlayStation 3 era, we were already down to 6 teams, once again with the workers from the two abandoned teams fitting in where they could. We continued on, but games were taking years to develop — no matter how big a hit we had, we’d spend years losing money, waiting for the next money train to pull into the station. That’s when they hit me: remasters.

Back in 2010, the art of remastering a game wasn’t really seen very often. These days, older titles get a total remaster (or a splash of paint like Kingdoms of Amalur) seemingly every other week, but a decade ago, it was rather an unheard of practice. Now, I must say that Gamebiz 3 didn’t actually have a feature that allowed you to ‘remaster’ games, I’m taking some creative licence here. Instead, I opted to port older games to newer consoles, which to me feels like the same thing.

Down to 4 teams who all had important jobs. Two teams would build our new games, each working on a different franchise. Another would handle bugs and ports of titles to other consoles. Our final team would be lumbered with porting those old games to new consoles, and boy did I raid our back catalogue. While these ‘remaster ports’ didn’t bring in anywhere near as much money as they did when the game originally released, they did mean we had a constant trickle of money into the bank, as many remasters could be completed fairly quickly.

Developing for the PlayStation 4 has left us struggling. Development costs are higher than ever, and we continually find ourselves spending more than we were making. Our latest Yoyo the Rabbit game lands with a splash; its sales are good, but in the end only makes a small profit after around 5 years of development. It’s also terribly buggy — the game would take some work to finish yet.

We move down to 3 teams, one huge team working on a new game, and two cranking out remasters of any old tosh we can throw out to make some money. Championship Wrestling 7 goes into production, and we knuckle down for years of development. Targeted for a PlayStation 4 release, it’s nowhere near ready when the PlayStation 5 is announced, and we shift priority to that console.

Meanwhile, our remaster teams have run out of older games to remaster. I attempted to remaster PS4’s Yoyo The Rabbit, but frankly, it’s taking too long. I fire the two remaster teams, as the cost of development simply isn’t worth it, and spending less on a wage budget is more agreeable for the company. Development on Championship Wrestling 7 is dragging on and on. We could release early, but would be knowingly putting out a game that is broken beyond belief. If it doesn’t sell, the game would stay broken. Nope, we’re going to finish this one.

Seven years on and we’ve probably got another year to go — this is development hell. Money is dwindling, and there’s not much I can do about that, just hoping that the game is in a releasable state before we go bust. The PlayStation 6 gets announced and I consider switching development, knowing that many fans might move over to that console. Instead, I stay put — all I want to do is get this final game out.

Three months away from earliest release, and we go bust. The world will never see the groundbreaking (or groundbreakingly buggy) Championship Wrestling 7. Despite this being a tiny indie game from a decade ago, I do recall feeling rather sad I never got the game out.

And it’s strange that a decade on from what was probably my sole playthrough of this game, I can’t help but see the parallels with the real gaming world. The increase of old ports to new systems, endless remasters and re-releases. Buggy broken games being released, just like Cyberpunk 2077, then having to be frantically patched by overworked employees.

In a strange way, it gives me more respect for major developers, which I am sure many people reading this feel they don’t deserve. I immediately think of Konami, with their reliance on Pro Evolution Soccer and Pachinko machines, along with the years of expense put into Metal Gear Solid 5. Companies have had to rely more and more on live services games that bring in a continual stream of income, be it for financial support or to keep shareholders happy. These sorts of changes aren’t reflected in Gamebiz 3, so it cannot ever be a full prediction of gaming’s future.

Gamebiz 3 probably isn’t worth playing in 2021, by the way, which is no disrespect to its developer. It was once an interesting curio but the ‘game dev tycoon’ genre has many different games to choose from these days, complete with (mostly) modern user interfaces. Gamebiz 3 isn’t a real prediction on the future of gaming, but it has got a lot right from the industry during the past decade.

Seeing the release of Cyberpunk 2077 brought back memories of my non-existent games company trying to crank out my final game, and I do think of CD Projekt Red trying to do the same thing, but for real. Gamebiz 3 didn’t predict everything, but what it did predict leans towards a bleak outlook for gaming, especially single player gaming. It is a future I hope does not come to pass.

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