The Hollow Middle: Why the Industry Can No Longer Afford the 'Singular Experience'

### The Ghost of Anglerfish

In the 1990s, the puzzle adventure title *Myst* was more than a hit; it was a cultural phenomenon that sold over 6 million copies and, as Wired first reported, helped drive the widespread adoption of CD-ROM technology. For years, it held the title of the bestselling PC game of all time until it was eventually surpassed by *The Sims* in 2002. But the legacy of the franchise recently hit a wall that no amount of nostalgia or prestige could scale.

Cyan Worlds, the oldest surviving independent game studio in the United States, recently unveiled a trailer for a new entry in the series codenamed *Anglerfish*. The project promised a darker direction for the franchise, casting the player as a hostage to a temperamental writer. The role was brought to life through a high-production performance by Noshir Dalal, an actor recognized for his work in *Ghost of Yōtei*, *Horizon Forbidden West*, and *Red Dead Redemption 2*.

Despite ecstatic reactions to the trailer on YouTube, *Anglerfish* is dead. According to Wired, the project collapsed months ago because funding could not be secured. Eric A. Anderson, the creative director at Cyan Worlds, noted that even publishers who were personally passionate about the game could not convince their superiors to release the funds. After developing a playable demo and pitching to over a dozen publishers at the Game Developers Conference and the Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain (D.I.C.E.) Summit, Cyan looked for a funding deal ranging from $1 million to $10 million. They left empty-handed, leading to the layoff of 12 employees—roughly half of the studio's staff.

### The Double-A Death Spiral

*Opinion: The tragedy of Anglerfish is that it represents the erasure of the 'middle' of the gaming industry. We are witnessing a market that has forgotten how to value the singular, finite experience in favor of a high-volume, low-risk treadmill.*

As Wired reports, the industry is currently mirroring a collapse seen in mid-budget cinema and mid-list publishing. The market has bifurcated into two extremes. At the top, triple-A giants like Bungie (*Marathon*), Naughty Dog (*The Last of Us*), and Rockstar (*Grand Theft Auto VI*) operate with budgets often exceeding $200 million for development and marketing. At the bottom, micro-indie developers operate on shoestring budgets, often under $1 million.

For example, Tonda Ros, the developer of the *Myst*-inspired *Blue Prince*, funded his project using personal savings and ad revenue from a *Magic: The Gathering* website. Ros told Wired via email that he only approached publishers after the game was already complete, seeking support for release, porting, and marketing.

Between these poles once existed a thriving double-A ecosystem supported by publishers such as EA Originals, Adult Swim Games, and Private Division. However, that middle ground is evaporating. Doug North Cook, CEO and creative director at the publisher-developer hybrid Creature, told Wired that the space between $2 million and $15 million has become incredibly difficult for developers to navigate. While PlayStation, Xbox Game Pass, and various publishers previously propped up this segment, most have now shifted toward much smaller budgets.

### The Math of Risk and 'Slop'

Why has the appetite for the mid-budget prestige game vanished? The answer is partly found in the macroeconomic climate. North Cook points to the end of the era of zero-interest money. During the Covid-19 pandemic and the years following the Great Recession, low interest rates encouraged investors to take larger risks. However, when the Fed rate benchmark climbed above 5 percent in 2023, venture capital funding for gaming plummeted by more than 75 percent—dropping from a $12 billion peak in 2021 to less than $3 billion in both 2023 and 2024.

John Eternal, former global lead of partner development at PlayStation, explained to Wired that borrowing became too expensive, forcing publishers to become conservative and stretch their remaining cash.

This financial caution is compounded by a crisis of discovery. Steam, once a vital hub for indie and double-A visibility, is now saturated with low-quality content. The AI Transparency Index reports that more than 18,000 games on Steam now include AI usage disclosures. North Cook argues that this influx of "slop" and advertisements has eroded user trust in platform stores as curators, making it more expensive and difficult for a mid-budget game to stand out.

Consequently, publishers are no longer betting on curated prestige. John Austin, founder of Pontoco (*The Last Clockwinder*), told Wired that publishers are now "pulling the slot machine" in hopes of finding another *Balatro*—a deck-building roguelike created by a single developer in his spare time that sold over 5 million copies in its first year and became profitable within an hour of release. In this environment, studios are forced to either shrink their ambitions or shut down entirely.

### Searching for New Routes

As traditional publisher deals vanish, developers are forced to look toward unconventional funding models. Masi Oka, founder of the studio behind *Outer Wilds*, noted to Wired that the big publisher deals feel gone, necessitating a shift toward nontraditional routes. *Outer Wilds* itself was made possible through a combination of publisher investment and crowdfunding.

Without a return to the mid-market, the industry risks losing the ability to produce games like *Anglerfish*—projects that aren't designed to be infinite services or micro-budget gambles, but singular, authored experiences.