Nuclear Throne producer Rami Ismail: the games industry's fear of risk is its biggest risk

Vlambeer cofounder and Nuclear Throne producer Rami Ismail ran a workgroup at this year's DevGAMM Madeira Games Summit, and the conclusion was blunt: the industry's fear of risk is currently the largest risk it faces. The session, titled "We're moving fast and losing what made us good (creativity, craft & the future)", brought together developers, publishers, and financiers to talk about how to put creativity back at the center of game development.

Ismail argued that risk-averse instincts push the industry toward homogenous, box-ticking games that end up insincere and uninspiring. "Courage is a consistent factor of most hit titles; in funding, in publishing, in marketing, and in investment," he said. The group pointed to Peak, Balatro, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 as recent proof — each succeeded because the people making them followed personal conviction rather than trend-chasing or market analysis. The workgroup also made the case that avoiding fear-driven development sometimes means killing a project early, rather than burning years and millions on a fundamentally broken idea.

The broader industry context makes this argument hard to dismiss. Publishers are doubling down on sequels and remakes, and Xbox has explicitly said it's recommitting to proven franchises like Halo, Fallout, and The Elder Scrolls — a strategy that has so far coincided with mass layoffs, studio closures, and Xbox's worst financial quarter in years. Sony's live-service push is another cautionary tale: the company spent the better part of a console generation chasing a slate of live-service titles, most of which never made it out the door or flopped on arrival. Playing it safe, in other words, has not been delivering the stability it promised.

The counterexamples keep piling up. Meccha Chameleon — a multiplayer hide-and-seek game — earned more money in June than every game on the market except Fortnite, a result almost no market analysis would have predicted. If the industry needed a recent reminder that unexpected bets can outperform the safest ones, that's a pretty loud one.