The Game Developers Conference has released the results of the 10th annual State of the Industry survey, revealing the opinions of more than 2,700 people who work in and around games. It includes insight into how developers are responding to gaming topics like NFTs, the metaverse, and the industry’s toxicity crisis.
The survey, which has been around for a decade now, is releasing its results just before this year’s GDC conference, which will take place later this year in March. The survey polls games professionals on their thoughts on everything from workplace harassment to NFTs to the emerging idea of the metaverse, and the results were enlightening.
According to highlights from a GDC press release, more game studios than ever are taking steps to combat workplace toxicity. 38% of State of the Industry respondents said that their company took the initiative and “start[ed] a conversation” about how harassments and toxicity in the workplace are handled within the industry. Though the other 62% of respondents said that their company took no action, the numbers still signal that developers are thinking more about how to make their workplaces better for everyone involved, particularly in the wake of very public lawsuits at companies like Activision Blizzard.
Despite the constant chatter and flow of news around cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens, 72% of game developers said that neither they nor their studios are interested in integrating crypto payments into their games. 70% said the same of NFTs. Only 1% of respondents said that their studio currently uses either crypto or NFTs, showing that widespread adaptation within games is still a long way off.
Developers seem to feel similarly about the metaverse, with 83% of developers saying that they are not involved in the development of content and experiences for user-generated content platforms like Roblox and Minecraft. Content creation for these two titles is some of the more popular current expressions of the metaverse.
While PC is still the most popular platform to develop for — 63% of developers are working on a PC game this past year — PlayStation is beating out Xbox as the most popular console for developers to make games for. Every year since the second year of the survey, more developers have been working on PlayStation games than Xbox titles: last year, 31% of developers were working on a PS5 title, while 29% were working on an Xbox Series X/S title.
On the smaller side, 20% of developers were working on a Switch title, a number that’s risen significantly since the days of the Wii U and 3DS. 30% of developers were working on a game for phones or mobile devices, down from 55% in 2013. New platforms are still met with uncertainty among many developers. 47% are unsure that the Steam Deck will be a viable platform in the long run.
