The Unseen Gatekeeper

In any competitive activity, there’s bound to be some sort of barrier for entry. In any sport, some level of athleticism is required. In any board game, the ability to analyze rules and tactics quickly goes a long way. The world of gaming is no different, but is that level of gatekeeping too intense? Allow me to ask a simple question. Which game is it easier to get your non-gamer friend to play: Elden Ring or Mario Party? If you took even the SLIGHTEST moment to consider it, you’re lying to me and to yourself. Mario Party is much more friendly to the non-gamer, but does that mean that Elden Ring is a bad game? It’s honestly one of my favorites, and it sold more copies than Mario Party. So does that mean we shouldn’t care about the non-gamer when making video games? There’s a lot going on here, and it’s quite confusing. The truth of the matter is that this isn’t the only example of gatekeeping in the gaming world. It seems to me like, unless you’ve been a part of it for a while, the world of gaming is an elite club with an intense initiation process. Let’s start with the most obvious.

The Skill Gate

I touched on it a bit in my previous post, but I’ll go into more detail here: a lot of great games are made with the hardcore gamer in mind, and to hell with the rest. I’m sure there are people who would like to argue this point. CERTAINLY game developers aren’t directly against non-gamers, right? Well, perhaps not. I’m not here to say that I can read anyone’s thoughts or intentions, or that any specific game studio is bad/mean/evil. But I’d like to address a similar question to the one I asked before: How easy is it to get your non-gamer friends to play your favorite games with you? Let me ask that a step further: How easy is it to get them to play again after the first time? I don’t think this is an inherently bad thing, but I feel like we can do better.

The concept I’m talking about is what gamers call the “skill floor.” Basically, how good do you have to be before you can be effective? The other term is “skill ceiling” which asks how effective you can be once you’ve mastered the concept. Let’s use a common game to explore this: Monopoly. Since you can do pretty ok with Monopoly on your first game, given that there’s a decent level of luck involved, we could say that the skill floor is pretty low. You don’t have to be a pro at Monopoly in order to last a while or even to win. There are statisticians out there who have crunched the numbers on which properties give them the best return on investment based on how many players are in the game, and there are particular strategies that allow you to bring your opponents down more safely. Knowing these things definitely gives you an edge, but to some extent there’s still an element of luck that you can’t control. How can you buy all the orange properties if you never land on them, and everyone else has the money to buy them when they land on them? This means that while you’ll make better decisions, and still probably win, the skill ceiling is not drastically high either. It is my opinion that, to make a great game, there needs to be a low skill floor and a high skill ceiling. Does every game need to be like this? No, but allowing everyone in between the floor and ceiling feel accomplished says a lot about a game.

Why does this matter? Shouldn’t it be the case that if you’re not good at something you don’t do well? Furthermore, why care about the skill ceiling? Should we really be planning on capping off how good someone is allowed to be? Well, yes and no to both questions, honestly. When it comes to the skill floor, we have to remember one simple concept: it’s a game. It’s literally a thing to use for having fun. If we forget the fun is the point, I can officially say you’ve missed something. Hard games are fun, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not like I’m trying to hire someone to protect my family with that ancient sword, it’s just there to kill a bad guy who’s effectiveness can ultimately be nullified by turning off the game. I want you to play the game, so I’d rather you feel good about swinging said sword. I don’t want you to feel useless upon pressing “play,” I’d rather you feel accomplished. Before you start thinking I mean that every game should be easier, let’s also keep in mind that if there’s no challenge, ANYONE would get bored. There’s a delicate balance, but I can pretty safely say that my wife will never want to play Apex Legends with me. I can’t see a path, within a single, solid session of gameplay, where she feels accomplished. This is the problem with high skill floors. We’re dealing with games. They’re supposed to be fun. If you’re not having fun, you stop. Why work to be good at something that you don’t need to be good at? Therein lies the issue. The value of playing Apex Legends is not worth reaching the skill floor, for my wife.

The ceiling is a different story. I feel as though nobody intends to limit someone’s potential to be good at something, nor how much better someone can be than someone else. In the spirit of competition, if you work harder at something I want you to do well. The issue we come across with the skill ceiling is not that it’s being programmed in, it’s that we are limited by what the code allows. If you wanted to win a weight lifting contest, you’d lift weights every day. I’m simplifying, but in that simple way, the one who does it more will win. Furthermore, the potential is almost limitless. There isn’t a direct barrier saying how much a person can lift aside from the physics that say at which point your bones break beneath the pressure. Unlike reality, video games have limits because there’s only so much they can handle. I don’t care how good of an engineer you are, you can’t develop a better gun than what you have in-game. It doesn’t matter how much you work on your swordsmanship, once you upgrade everything all the way and use every buff, your damage can’t go higher. There is, planned or not, a certain point where you can’t do any better. Every game has these limits. Whether someone finds them or not is a completely different article. So, is this good or bad? Well, in my opinion, it’s a necessary evil. If everything is made limitless, then we get back to the skill floor issue where the only way to win is to spend more time playing. At that point, there’s no reason to start. What if World of Warcraft was eternally PvP (more so than it already is) and there wasn’t a level cap? Well… Get ready Captain Lvl1, because this guy has been playing since vanilla, and he’s level 1,420,069 and doesn’t care about your fun. On the other side of that argument, if things are limited too much, the content is limited. If I master something to the point that I can’t lose, eventually one of two things will happen. Either I’ll lose interest, or nobody will want to play with me. Either way, I stop doing it. So as I said, I don’t think all games should be easy, or even have an easy mode. I just think that we should be striving for games that are easy to pick up on, but have a long journey ahead of them.

The Career Gate

Now, before I start sounding like some guy who's just butthurt, allow me to play devil's advocate. I've been a part of the entertainment industry for a very long time. I sing, I act, I very much enjoy stand-up comedy, and I've considered each as a career choice. Running a company that produces entertainment as it's main source of income is a risk, and it's difficult. The thing that people don't seem to think about is this: While they may have a lot of money and time to recover, any studio is a flop away from folding. Let me supply some business basics, at a simplified level. Let's say a studio has already obtained and paid off all their hardware. This means that a vast majority of their upkeep cost is paying their employees. Let's also imagine that this studio doesn't have a game out yet. Studios only make money when someone spends money on their game. This means that, until that first game comes out, either the employees work for free, or the studio needs investment. That's fine, let's say they get invested. Let's say the studio has a director/designer, two devs, two artists (in whatever discipline they specialize), and one musician. That's a total of six people who need to be paid. Let's say the studio is paying the bare minimum that these people should be making at $60,000/yr (it should be closer to the hundreds of thousands, given the amount of work to be done). Now, given that no game sells itself (a future article) there will also need to be a marketing budget. Add all this up and we're talking about needing $450,000 to stay alive for a single year. Can they complete the project in one year? Do they have to pay back whomever fronted them the $450,000? Will that project make enough to keep them going? This is the risk of the entertainment industry. There isn't a give and take like if they made, for example, potato chips. The only way you make money is by investing as much as you can into a project and praying that people buy it. The gaming industry has a massive gate, just like the games do, in terms of experience.

Like I said, I hope I don't just sound like a butthurt guy who didn't get hired, but it's very true to say that entering the gaming industry (career wise) is vastly difficult. When looking for a job, it's not uncommon to find a listing that says that they expect X years of experience, and that can be challenging. For someone who's been working for a while, it's not as difficult because a lot of skills are transferrable. However, in the gaming industry, a vast majority of listings require not only X years specifically in the gaming industry, but also X titles shipped. This is where the problem comes in. Again, devil's advocate, it makes a lot of sense. With what's at stake with each project a studio takes on, it's obvious that getting the best talent is crucial! Why hire three newcomers to the industry at $60,000 each (a total of $180,000) when you could hire one seasoned pro who can do the same work, and more, for only $120,000? It's a no brainer! I'm not here to tell you that industry professionals should lower their expectations to give newcomers a chance. If I'm being completely honest, I'm one of the biggest proponents of sound business practices like that. It's efficiency with your costs to ensure that your business can continue to provide its product to the public; A+.

So what's the problem, then? Like... Ok, so the gaming industry is a challenging one to be a part of and only the most skilled and most worthy get in. Doesn't that mean that the games we play are being made by the best of the best? Well, yes and no. See, the gaming industry is an interesting part of the entertainment world, an amalgamation of the arts and sport. In either of the other two industries (arts and sport) there's a pretty solid difference in the employment structure than there is in any other industry: pure skill. I don't mean proven skill, I don't mean a portfolio, and I certainly don't mean degrees and certifications. What I mean is if you can run faster, you've got a spot on the track team. If you have better bat-eye coordination, you have a better shot at playing baseball. If you have a voice that a producer can use to make music, you get the record deal. To a certain extent, even the tech industry (arguably another very similar skillset) will accept "equivalent experience" on applications. So why does the gaming industry gatekeep its career path so much? Well, call me naive, but I think there are a couple of possibilities.

The first of which being rather simple: it's just business. Finding only those who have proven that they can bring great success in the industry to work for you means that you're getting the best of the best. It's hard to argue with that. My fear, with that concept, leads me back to art and sport. If that same standard were set with those industries, who knows how many talented and skilled people would go overlooked? My question to game studios becomes this: How many amazing artists, in whatever their craft, are going by unnoticed because they need their start? Perhaps we'll never know. There are plenty of amazing singers who never get discovered either. The second reason, that I postulate, is fear. Like I said before, in an industry like this, anyone is one poor project away from serious issues. Why take risks? For larger studios, it could just be the case that the risk of a less experienced employee isn't worth the reward. In this sense, who am I to say that they should change their minds?

Opening the Gate

Now you're probably asking what comes next, right? My last article was about the future, and now I'm talking about what blocks it. What's the point? Well, let me close with some important points. Within the last year, gaming has witnessed mass layoffs. VGChartz estimates around 9,000 people lost their gaming jobs. The market for gaming workers is FLOODED with ridiculous talent. Some of those people are having trouble finding work, so what chance does anyone else have? Why did those layoffs happen in the first place? I don't know, to be completely honest. We can read reports, we can hear it straight from the horse's mouth, but we'll never really know what led to it all. For people like me, the world builders and those with passion but no experience, hope for an interview is low, and for good reason. Perhaps it's time to take that passion and turn it into creation. Perhaps the next step is a new studio. One that focuses on tearing down gates that keep people out, and instead create pathways for everyone to enjoy what this industry has the potential to bring. We'll just have to wait and see.