The Maxis Game Club letters are a short series of letters I wrote back and forth with fellow designer Matt Yang about our video game experiences in 2019. Read the previous letter here.

Dear Matt,

I was thinking about the absolutely wild number of games released on Steam in 2019 that you pointed out, and I think it reflects on the real evolution of the democratization of game-making. It’s interesting to consider that early games were developed by a single designer/engineer only to have the industry create mega-studios to dominate the space, which then caused creative burnout and the rise of the indie game.