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Origin Systems opened Ultima Online on September 24, 1997. Tens of thousands of subscribers shared a fantasy world with housing, crafting, a player-driven economy and few restrictions on attacking one another.
Persistent online worlds became a commercial industry rather than a research topic. The subscription business proved sustainable at a scale large publishers could not ignore, and the social problems the game exposed set the design agenda for the entire genre that followed it.
Maxis published Will Wright's domestic life simulation on February 4, 2000. Players furnished houses and managed the moods and careers of ordinary people, with no score to chase and no way to win.
Commercial success on this scale, from a game with no enemies and no ending, undercut the assumption that the medium belonged to young men who liked competition. It widened the market and gave publishers a reason to fund projects aimed at people the industry had ignored.
After post-pandemic overexpansion, rising costs and consolidation, studios worldwide cut jobs on a scale that independent trackers put well above ten thousand positions during 2024, alongside studio closures at several large publishers.
A sector that had grown almost continuously for two decades experienced a sharp correction, exposing how much of its expansion had rested on unusual pandemic-era conditions and cheap capital. The event reshaped career expectations and accelerated organizing efforts among developers.
