Oddworld creator: Capitalism will be the death of games

The need for growth that fundamentally underpins capitalist business structure is killing the development sector.

That’s according to Oddworld founder Lorne Lanning, who told Games Industry that the big successes of the highest grossing triple-A titles is shaping the decision making of publishers throughout the entire production train.

"I’d say it’s more of a capitalism trend, which means all those companies need growth,” he said. “If you’re a public company you need to have constant growth and you need to conquer more territory, and the day you’re not, your shareholders bail. That’s it.

"Inevitably someone starts building a $100m title and then they kill it and then someone else goes, ‘Well, we need to be there too next year because we know X number of people are going to buy racing, X number of people are going to buy shooters, X number of people are going to buy football and soccer next year, these are aces in the hole. Someone’s going to be grabbing the billion and a half dollars in those sectors. We’ve got to go after it.’ The competition is getting more fierce."

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