IT'S TIME TO GROW UP

Summer Game Fest/E3 Season this year struggled to get out from under a dark cloud of its own making. More than any year prior, it felt as if the blinders of commercial-inspired giddiness had fallen off revealing the Glasgow Wonka Experience that the game industry has become1. Amidst mass layoffs and the overwhelming sense that platform powers are looking to squeeze consumers for every bit of disposal income they have (while cutting costs on their end), the ‘Fun Time’ hobby of playing videogames is not feeling very ‘Fun’. I have long contended that the game industry is immune to the Legitimacy Gap. What this means in theory is that stakeholders of gaming publishers should be wary not to exhibit “a discrepancy between an organization's actions and society's expectations of this organization”. The reality in 2026 is that discrepancy does not interfere with good business. The original conception of the Legitimacy Gap in 1975 posited that it was worth closing because the discrepancy…