John and Brenda Romero – award winning game developers and founders of Romero games – have spoken about the state of the games industry following the radical downsizing of their Galway-based studio.
Speaking to Gamesindustry.biz ahead of the Dark and Doomy in Wakefield last week, Brenda Romero said the following: “I feel like the industry’s in a really horrible place. I mean, we were there in the 80s for the crash, and this is definitely crashier. There are so few people that have not been affected, or their partner’s affected, or they’re worried about being affected. It’s a really difficult time right now.”
During the early 1980’s, the American games industry suffered dramatically due to a flood of games on multiple systems that were deemed low quality. This on top of waning interest for consoles while personal computers rose in popularity resulted in substantial woes, which thankfully recovered with the introduction of the NES.
John Romero pointed to Battlefield 6 as an example of the dire state of the industry, telling Gamesindustry: “I don’t understand what that’s all about.” He pointed to the high sales for the latest EA shooter, and the layoffs following this substantial success.
Brenda and John’s studio, which is still in operation, had its funding pulled as part of Microsofts sweeping cuts last year. The studio survived this ordeal, and the shooter under-development was rescued too (albeit drastically redesigned). They’ve gone from a team of around 110 people, to nine developers, in the wake of a lengthy redundancy process.