Posted August 8, 2025 by Martin
I spent some time recently reflecting on the moment we find ourselves in, and about my vision for a path forward.
I have this condition where sometimes a fully formed idea pops into my head, uninvited, and then my thoughts take a moment to arrange themselves around the idea like metallic particles suspended in a liquid, aligning with magnetic field lines and gradually bringing a hidden shape into focus. A sudden understanding producing language to express itself.
Walk with me here as I line up my thoughts.
In the wake of the Microsoft layoffs on July 2, 2025, the main talking point has been that the gaming industry is broken. I couldn’t agree more. I’ve seen people on LinkedIn and elsewhere making excellent observations about how and why, and I appreciate all the clear-eyed and rigorous analysis. These are smart people making smart points. I’d like to add a bit of an unorthodox take to the mix that’s maybe not as smart, just my very personal view: I think the industry is broken in part because we’ve allowed it to be treated like industry.
Art is how humans relate and connect with each other
Games are art. Full stop. To me, there’s no debate here. If you work in gaming in any capacity, congratulations, you’re an artist. You participate in the creation of art. The most human thing any of us can do is express ourselves through whatever our specific craft or medium may be, turning our griefs, anxieties, joys, ecstasies, failures, triumphs, and any other part of what it means to be alive into something we can share with others. Art is how humans relate and connect with each other.
You can see this function of art in the games we make. From the day we’re born, play teaches us how to be people. I never expected that playing peekaboo with my kids when they were little would be so much fun. That moment of undimmed delight when daddy reappears out of nowhere (“He was GONE, I tell you! And then he just CAME BACK!”), that’s hard to describe. It’s like watching the lights turn on behind their eyes, kindling a fire inside of them that burns brighter every day just by playing with them. At the beginning of the pandemic, I started a weekly board gaming family night as a way to light a candle when the world all around us grew dark. We played Gloomhaven until the map was cluttered with stickers and every character was unlocked (except Bonesaw, still working on that one). I don’t know that gaming saved us, but it helped us connect and be there for each other, finding strength we didn’t know we had. Art and play go hand in hand.
The problem we makers of games are faced with at this moment, as I see it, is that we’re losing sight of why we’re making games. I’m as excited as anyone to see artists rewarded for their hard work, and money is a damn fine reward. But by focusing on the bottom line, always looking for more ways to squeeze water from a stone, we’ve industrialized the art form, and this is the result. We’re told to chase growth at any cost, and failure to deliver is met with apocalyptic consequences. Look around. Do you see it? We’re told to sell ourselves, to curate our personal brand, to commodify our lived experience. Like we’re goods, not people. How do you monetize the soul? You can trade your labor for money in a way that doesn’t dehumanize you, but that requires you to first recognize that this idea that the optimal way to produce a complicated piece of art like an interactive video game is to assemble it in a machine-like, conveyor belt production line style environment, that idea is a figment. The business has to make sense, of course, but we let business trump art at our own peril.
Our craft is art down to the marrow, and art must breathe because life without art is just a clock, ticking.
A tidal wave of talent has just been unleashed on the world
I’m out of a job right now. Maybe you’re out of a job right now, too. In the immediate aftermath of the layoff, I didn’t know what was next for me, and that’s a daunting thought. But I did know that whatever road I’m on, I’ll continue to make art, express myself, connect with others, and breathe. My first instinct was to create.
Games are art. Art is how we connect with each other. Art and play go hand in hand.
Take care of yourselves. Heal. It’s natural to be scared; these are scary times. But never let that scare you out of sharing your art. A tidal wave of talent has just been unleashed on the world, still unsure of itself, yet to discover the freedom it now possesses. Freedom to create, relate, and connect.
The tools are all here. I’m putting them to work right now, using an open-source platform to create content I intend to share freely with whoever is willing to tune in, showcasing how I’m using other free, open-source tools to build things. That’s the mission statement. This act of sharing what I make is inherently joyful to me, and if even one person is inspired by something they saw here, one single spark of creativity, then this was all worth it.
I can’t wait to see what we’ll build.
