We’re finally in 2022!! and my guts tell me that 2022 is going to be a great and pivotal year of the gaming industry.
Remember when there was a boatload of delays owing to pandemic production issues at the start of 2021?? Eventually, all of those titles will have to be released at some point.
Other than the highly anticipated Elden Ring and the as-yet-unannounced successor to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, there seem to be several important challenges that the industry will have to tackle in 2022. Here are the questions I’d want to know the answer to.
So, that being said here are a few big questions that need solving this year.
What does the future hold for Activision Blizzard?
There were a lot of people who believed Bobby Kotick was cooked as Activision Blizzard Inc. CEO after the Wall Street Journal revealed that he had been privy of the company’s sexual misbehavior concerns for years and that he, too, was guilty of some wrongdoings.
But Kotick has been able to hang around since the board of Activision Blizzard is comprised of his old friends. But how long can Kotick last? According to some LinkedIn sleuthing, Activision Blizzard looks to be losing a key worker every single day.
Activision is now being sued by the state of California for alleged sexual misconduct & discrimination, and employees have begun organizing and handing out union cards as part of the process.
Yosuke Matsuda on the inclusion of NFT
On New Year’s Day, Yosuke Matsuda, president of Square Enix Inc., penned a lengthy letter in favor of blockchain in gaming, outlining some of the company’s plans to experiment with non-fungible tokens. Unfortunately, that did not go over well.
“I realize that some people who ‘play to have fun’ and who currently form the majority of players have voiced their reservations toward these new trends, and understandably so. However, I believe that there will be a certain number of people whose motivation is to ‘play to contribute,’ by which I mean to help make the game more exciting.”
Many players are enraged by the rise of cryptocurrencies in video games, mainly because they don’t wish to see their pastimes turn into a source of income. Scams are common in the NFT sector, making it seem like a get-rich-quick plan that will leave many people out of pocket.
Who’s going to organize?
Attempts to unionize the gaming industry by a tiny group named Game Workers Unite made news in 2018. Even if it didn’t work out, video game employees throughout North America are already forming their unions four years later.
The First North American video game firm to join a union was Video Games, which made headlines in December. There is no doubt in my mind that other independent enterprises will follow. Bigger businesses like Activision are in the same boat.
What will be the outcome of the unionization push at Activision? What other firms will follow? And what shape will video game industry unions take? Do employees form groups based on their companies, professions, or even based on their video gaming teams?
There are tons of unanswered questions. Perhaps this year will provide us with the answers we’ve been seeking.
