The Stochastic Game
Ramblings of General Geekery

Matthew Ball’s “State of Video Gaming” is out (in a preview edition) and while I have issues with the way he frames some things, there’s still a lot of really good, seemingly well researched stuff in there. TL;DR: the video game industry is fully enshittified, and fucked.

Number of game releases per year... around 8,000 games released in 2019, and 20,000 games released in 2025. This is madness.
Gamer participation surveys... there's a bump during COVID lockdowns, but the trend is for less gamers now than before COVID, as they're pulled away to social media, video streaming, gambling, sports, etc.
Gamer engagement graph that compares the most popular Roblox titles with "traditional" games. These Roblox games have as many users (or more!) as Counterstrike, DOTA, or all Blizzard titles combined. Crazypants stuff.

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