"If some number of people are playing Fortnite for some massive amount of time, well, that’s a lot of people who aren’t even opening their Steam client. “
- Devolver Digital's Nigel Lowrie points out another factor devs deal with when competing for player attention
A recent story on Polygon seeks to chart the struggles and changes that have occurred as game platforms continue to become more and more saturated with new releases by talking with devs and members of the game industry that have experienced that shift first hand.
While discoverability issues are already a huge struggle for developers, Devolver Digital’s Nigel Lowrie points out that the changing way players interact with games has made time a significant commodity as well.
Concerns that potential players only have the budget to pick up a set number of games per month have been replaced by the fact that there just aren’t enough hours in the day for players to invest into new titles.
“Even if the most hardcore gamer plays 14 hours a day, that’s still a finite amount of time. And if you’re spending 10 of those in a PUBG, or a Fortnite, what does that leave for the rest of us?” says Lowrie. “It’s true that timing of release is critical, sure, and I don’t think that single-player, smaller-scope games are going to go away; there’s always going to be room for that. But time is something that you really can’t move, and you have to account for that when people move into these long-term relationships with games.”
“If some number of people are playing Fortnite for some massive amount of time, well, that’s a lot of people who aren’t even opening their Steam client,” he continues “If you’re a developer out there complaining that you can’t get your game on the front page of Steam, well, this is a whole new thing you have to worry about.”
Lowrie elaborates on his sentiments in the full story on Polygon alongside comments from developers like former id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead, Housemarque’s publishing head Mikael Haveri, and more.