This is drivel that doesn't warrant a comprehensive critique, so I must be really bored.

>At about this time next year, we’ll have a pretty good idea of what the next generation of video games will look like.

The current Sony and Microsoft consoles seemed to have few games worth owning and then released incompatible versions recently, yet a new version is warranted?

>as studios shuttered, developers burned out, and toxic work culture fostered environments hostile to marginalized people.

The only one of these that's valid is the developer overworking. A studio closing and ''sexism'' don't even come close, but anything to conflate the real issues, I suppose.

>When you adjust for inflation, the retail cost of video games has never been cheaper, and it’s been this way for some time. The $60 price point for a standard big-budget release has held steady for nearly 15 years, unadjusted for inflation even as the cost to make big-budget video games has risen astronomically with player expectations.

Sixty dollars is already high enough for a game and yet the next few paragraphs discuss ways companies increase the price by selling an incomplete product. Well, if the price ever rises, these companies would have no reason to stop, so you'd have higher prices and the same garbage. Anyone who tells you the price of a product such as this really isn't enough is likely a mindless drone.

>In short, the single-player game was not sustainable. So why should we think the current model is?

Why should I care if a type of video game is deemed ''sustainable''; what makes this claim valid, anyway? If there are games that don't appeal to me, I won't purchase them. Why would I ever think ''Gee, there aren't any new games that appeal to me; I guess I'll buy one that doesn't.'' when there is such a breadth of video games over several decades? That would be like buying a fashion magazine because the book store didn't have any programming books you wanted. If only ''Indie'' groups are releasing games I want, why would that be an issue?

>In short, the single-player game was not sustainable. So why should we think the current model is?

If you're a capitalist, you can only figure the market will eventually correct itself, on its own, so why care? The article then spends several paragraphs discussing climate issues, which are irrelevant.

>Video games cannot do this forever. If any of these things were to collapse—the people who make them, the economy they’re sold in, the ecosystem we’re all a part of—it would be catastrophic. All of them at once? That’s a disaster we need to talk about, openly. Because there are solutions to these problems.

Again, why should anyone care, considering the breadth of current games available? Should I give a damn if a publisher is struggling, considering there are more books, and about topics I like at that, than I could ever read in my lifetime?

The article then suggests all of the children and men with nothing better to do who regularly read Kotaku call their politicians about climate issues. The last few paragraphs of this article are a mess.

>It’s unlikely that video games will ever truly go extinct. We’ll probably always have something called “video games,” but what those games will look like is still very much in flux. There’s no guarantee that the way games are currently made will remain viable for another 10 years—games aren’t even made today the same way they were 10 years ago.

This is such a stupid paragraph. This is clearly written for a lowbrow audience they expect to easily manipulate.

>They will look different. They will change because they can, and because they must. Hopefully, all the ways games change will be on our terms—otherwise disaster will change them for us.

This is an entertainment medium, one that has a lot of garbage in it, at that. This is about video games and some idiot was paid to write this.

In closing, this isn't a great critique, but the article was garbage. I dislike there were enough cretins to put this on the front page, while interesting material written by interesting people goes entirely ignored. Those are my thoughts.