In this video I sit down with a GameDeveloper.com article and do a proper “2023 game dev review” vibe check: was it the best year, or the worst? My own year was honestly quite nice, but the industry-wide picture is messy. We had brutal layoffs, the Unity drama, and the AI wave hitting everything from programming to asset creation to even game design. At the same time, 2023 also shipped a ridiculous lineup of big releases (Baldur’s Gate 3, Zelda, Starfield, Hogwarts Legacy, and more), so it’s that weird contrast: great games, rough reality for the people making them. I talk a lot about where I think this is heading: continued downsizing, smaller teams, and more automation. I’m pretty blunt here—I’m not against streamlining. If fewer people can do the job, then fewer people should do the job, and I’d rather see multiple small, focused teams than one bloated studio with tons of infrastructure overhead. I’m also genuinely excited about AI (unlike crypto hype), but I want responsibility to be clear—like Steam pushing legal responsibility for AI-generated content onto developers. And yes, I rant a bit about forced return-to-office policies: for game dev work like programming, I see near-zero benefit versus remote/hybrid, and my productivity from home is just way higher.