In news that will make a bunch of people instantly forget what a dismal failure Too Human turned out to be, Silicon Knights’ Dennis Dyack has just totally dissed social gaming.
“The trend that I see is it’s probably going to be one of the biggest bubbles and explosions that our industry’s seen in a long time and I think when it crashes it’s going to crash very hard,” he tells IndustryGamers. “I don’t think there’s an economy there.”
He reckons that the revenues generated simply don’t match up with the amount of cash invested in development. He’s also a bit of an industry expert in that area.
“I don’t know about [Farmville dev] Zynga – I think that’s a big micro, but I think that the amount of venture that’s being poured in, in general, that’s most of the video game industry investment.
“It looks like marketing to me. It doesn’t look like real gaming. And maybe it’ll change, I don’t know. It looks very, very dangerous.
“I think Zynga’s valuated more than some traditional publishers right now that have been in the industry for decades,” he adds. “I’m sorry, but I just don’t see it. It seems imaginary to me… it doesn’t look long term healthy to me.
“And right now you’re seeing a lot of influx in venture and you’re seeing a lot of excitement and a lot of pie in the sky ideas, but when games actually have to start showing pure revenue and real ‘here’s how much we made and here’s how much it cost’… I think that industry is going to not last very long.”
For the moment, at least, Zynga’s social gaming empire is valued at around $5.5 billion. Maybe it’s time Dyack thought hard about a Too Humanville spin-off.
