This is a really long, really interestingly researched article. As someone who just survived a layoff cycle last week (not in games), it's really frustrating to see the way executives think.
In this letter, Riot publicly admitted a problem that's been quietly festering across the entire games industry: there’s something deeply wrong with how video game executives are choosing to spend their money, and rank and file developers keep paying the price for it.
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While the sources I spoke to at Epic did largely praise the company for at least trying to take other cost-cutting measures to avoid layoffs, other developers told me their companies seemed content to spend freely until the last possible moment.
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A former Riot Games employee expressed frustration that layoffs were management’s answer to a need to save money, rather than corporate paycuts or reduction of unnecessary benefits, such as the office’s “luxurious cafeteria” and a “boba bar” in one of the company’s newer offices.
This is a really long, really interestingly researched article. As someone who just survived a layoff cycle last week (not in games), it's really frustrating to see the way executives think.
A couple of things that also contribute, which are discussed widely in the software industry but less in the gaming sphere: Interest rate hikes are chilling venture funding and other business...
A couple of things that also contribute, which are discussed widely in the software industry but less in the gaming sphere:
Interest rate hikes are chilling venture funding and other business loans. If credit is less of a good deal, liquidity goes down. That's why online services are all in an enshittification avalanche, and it's why new product development is slowing.
Trump admin tax changes went into effect that disincentivize R&D. Instead of being able to list developer payroll as an expense in the year it occurred, it now has to be amortized over five years, which effectively gives the federal government a big zero-interest loan at the company's expense. Liquidity goes down and developer payroll suddenly looks less appealing.
That second one (section 174 of the IRS code) is a huge driver of tech layoffs. There's a bill the House passed recently that's in the Senate that rolls that change back. Hoping they pass it soon.
That second one (section 174 of the IRS code) is a huge driver of tech layoffs. There's a bill the House passed recently that's in the Senate that rolls that change back. Hoping they pass it soon.
A large amount of layoffs is always a failing at the upper management level, because either: Your hiring strategy is fucked and you hired people not suitable for their positions over a longe...
A large amount of layoffs is always a failing at the upper management level, because either:
Your hiring strategy is fucked and you hired people not suitable for their positions over a longe period
You planned your finances wrongly and now you are out of money
Your big release bombed and your war chest is too small to survive because thanks rampant growth
And yet it's always the little guys that pay for it. I'm reminded of the Bungee layoffs and a reporter asking the spokesperson if they planned any changes or pay cuts for higher ups and they replied "Nah."
Although many problems are foreseeable, this seems a bit much. As the saying goes, predictions are hard, especially about the future. Who predicted the pandemic, for example?
Although many problems are foreseeable, this seems a bit much. As the saying goes, predictions are hard, especially about the future. Who predicted the pandemic, for example?
No one did, but the companies now laying large chunks of people off all flourished in the pandemic and now are now eating shit. And with all due respect, if you work in the higher levels in such a...
No one did, but the companies now laying large chunks of people off all flourished in the pandemic and now are now eating shit.
And with all due respect, if you work in the higher levels in such a company making important decisions and you don't realize that the once-in-a-century event that that has everyone stuck inside and trying out new hobbies that only happen inside is going the end eventually and these hundreds to, in some cases, thousands of people hired are bad investment, you suck at your fucking job.
Did some people discover gaming and stick with it? Sure. Were all of the people playing games going to stick with it? Fuck no. What those companies did is textbook overextension of your financial assets; Investing for a market that will not need you in the future. In some cases these are not people who have risen through the ranks with practical experience. They have instead gone to uni, studied something like Business Management and are supposed to do nothing but make those decisions.
As for companies that ate shit because of the pandemic, I sympathize with them to some extent, but having something like a warchest you can rely on has fallen out of fashion due to the rampant constant growth demanded. There was an interview with the owner of one of the larger chocolate factories in the country and he essentially said "If you can't run your business at zero to a loss for at least one year, you are stupid and should not have the job."
The only companies I really sympathize with are the guys who started up just before the pandemic hit. That was something completely, entirely out of their power.
Unfortunately they don't see it like that. Layoffs aren't a sign of bad management for them. It's just a tool to use whenever convinient. The gold rush of the pandemic for media is over, the...
if you work in the higher levels in such a company making important decisions and you don't realize that the once-in-a-century event that that has everyone stuck inside and trying out new hobbies that only happen inside is going the end eventually and these hundreds to, in some cases, thousands of people hired are bad investment, you suck at your fucking job.
Unfortunately they don't see it like that. Layoffs aren't a sign of bad management for them. It's just a tool to use whenever convinient. The gold rush of the pandemic for media is over, the layoff axe comes out.
Shareholders don't even see it like that since often times layoff news gives a tiny bump in stock. So at this point it's culturally engrained as at least "not bad". And it's not like these companies are even reporting huge losses to begin with! They are profitable but just not profitable enough.
I want to hope a reckoning is coming because this attitude has already lead to a recession, and is nearly leading to a 2nd one. But the people in policy are also profiting, so who knows at this point?
The pandemic is just one of many unpredictable events. There are many: the 2008 recession, Trump getting elected, Russia invading Ukraine, the attack on Israel and the counterattack, and so on....
The pandemic is just one of many unpredictable events. There are many: the 2008 recession, Trump getting elected, Russia invading Ukraine, the attack on Israel and the counterattack, and so on. Last year being the year AI becomes trendy. Inflation suddenly becoming a thing again and the rise in interest rates.
And also a bunch of smaller events, any of which may or may not matter to any given business.
Often, the strongest companies do fine after any of these changes, while the weaker ones that weren't doing so well anyway could decide to pack it in after anything bad happens. Something like an unexpected rent increase might be enough.
So it all depends. Sure, in some cases, it was bad management, but deciding who's to blame without investigating, as a general rule that's supposed to apply in every case without doing any homework or even knowing which company we're talking about, is bullshit.
We are talking in the context of video game development about video game companies reacting to a "sudden" downturn after the pandemic surge. We are already in a pretty specific context. My point...
So it all depends. Sure, in some cases, it was bad management, but deciding who's to blame without investigating, as a general rule that's supposed to apply in every case without doing any homework or even knowing which company we're talking about, is bullshit.
We are talking in the context of video game development about video game companies reacting to a "sudden" downturn after the pandemic surge. We are already in a pretty specific context. My point is that all of these companies expanded like crazy somehow expecting that the surge would last forever and very predictably, it did not.
Absolutely, but a failing on such a broad level, not just within the gaming sphere but within the tech sphere with Google, Microsoft etc. all letting people go, it indicates a broad failing within...
Absolutely, but a failing on such a broad level, not just within the gaming sphere but within the tech sphere with Google, Microsoft etc. all letting people go, it indicates a broad failing within the incentives of those companies when it comes to hiring practices.
Rereading the comment chain, I do realise that I used some harsh words, that while not directed at you, still played in potentially agitating the discussion. I would like to state that I value your comments and they did make me think about this topic more thoroughly. Thanks :]
Imo: regardless of whether those conditions were predictable or not, I’d imagine that Grzmot’s point is that they’re still upper management’s problem to solve (although please don’t let me put...
Imo: regardless of whether those conditions were predictable or not, I’d imagine that Grzmot’s point is that they’re still upper management’s problem to solve (although please don’t let me put words in your mouth if this is a bad take!). In principle, their role is to manage the company’s resources, and failing to allocate it appropriately is still failing. It isn’t necessarily 100% their fault, but going by that logic, (imo) no one fails anything ever since we’re all affected by the consequences of someone else’s action.
To your second point — who predicted the pandemic — imo this is a very interesting question! Since this isn’t the first time we’d seen outbreaks, officials had been warning about the marked increase in severity and frequency of infectious disease for a while (notable example). Talking about impacts from the supply chain effects of the pandemic, we already knew that just in time manufacturing is dramatically more susceptible to supply chain failures, but management often pushes for it anyways (it’s cheaper not to pay for warehouse space). Finally, we’ve even seen bike shops failing recently due to a predictable drop in sales after everyone predictably returned to work.
So yeah, many folks with boots on the ground or a desire to learn could’ve predicted — if not literally COVID — an event which would similarly impact the business.
There was lots of planning for an eventual pandemic - it's actually pretty predictable that it will likely happen someday. (And it will likely happen again.) But not the timing. Nobody knows...
There was lots of planning for an eventual pandemic - it's actually pretty predictable that it will likely happen someday. (And it will likely happen again.)
But not the timing. Nobody knows whether it will happen next year. There are similar issues for earthquakes, and there are other looming disasters (a tsunami in Oregon, volcanic eruptions, and so on.
I'm not saying that a free bar is more portant than someone's job, but for some members of staff perks like that are crucial to their enjoyment of a job. Where I worked they laid people off, and...
I'm not saying that a free bar is more portant than someone's job, but for some members of staff perks like that are crucial to their enjoyment of a job.
Where I worked they laid people off, and the dip in morale killed the bar anyway as who wants to stay at a place that's just axed your friends? But that's not to say that killing the bar wouldn't have caused the same voluntary exodus as the redundancies and firings did. Perks like those can be core to the culture of a workplace, and their value can easily be understated, their cost overstated.
It's also a question of budgets and rising costs. 10 developers at 65k each is not just 650,000 saved right now, it's 10 people's worth of overhead. No more raises, less benefits, less HR, etc....
It's also a question of budgets and rising costs.
10 developers at 65k each is not just 650,000 saved right now, it's 10 people's worth of overhead. No more raises, less benefits, less HR, etc. Employee's are often WAY more expensive than anything, and really must justify their costs, and companies frequently over hire.
That's not to say that there's a TON of dead weight middle management and upper management, but people overestimate how many jobs "not building the bar" is going to save. It's a lot, but probably not a significant number in the face of these massive layoffs.
Sadly the answer here seems to be to fire US workers and once again resort to outsourcing for jobs they do in fact need (see the QA example in the article). It's not a matter of cutting now...
Sadly the answer here seems to be to fire US workers and once again resort to outsourcing for jobs they do in fact need (see the QA example in the article). It's not a matter of cutting now un-needed bloat, it's simply another scheme to minimize pay in an industry that already underpays employees.
More and more companies are turning towards just hiring software consultants versus hiring full-time due to the consultanting companies handling the brunt of healthcare/benefits/HR. A trend that I...
More and more companies are turning towards just hiring software consultants versus hiring full-time due to the consultanting companies handling the brunt of healthcare/benefits/HR. A trend that I am starting to catch onto though is that many of these companies are selling their contracts with cheaper developers from Eastern Europe and India. US companies no longer want to pay 65k for a junior US based dev when they can get a senior dev for half the cost from abroad. The landscape feels brutal now if you are early in your career.
Games industry salaries are notoriously low compared to general tech salaries. I don’t have numbers so this could still be too low but I’m almost positive the true number would be shocking. That...
Games industry salaries are notoriously low compared to general tech salaries. I don’t have numbers so this could still be too low but I’m almost positive the true number would be shocking.
That said this conversation may have outgrown the original post’s context.
it varies very widely on the studio, location, size, etc. For reference, my first gig was as a relatively well known "indie studio" working on [highly anticipated game] and my pay was $28/hr, So...
it varies very widely on the studio, location, size, etc. For reference, my first gig was as a relatively well known "indie studio" working on [highly anticipated game] and my pay was $28/hr, So we're talking maybe 55k/yr for an entry level programmer (pretty sure my yearly income was lower, but hourly and I had a lot of health issues back then). But that was still in a high CoL state.
To be honest, lots of programmers make livable wages. It's more that games arguably work programmers harder, for longer times, for less money than managing a website (and not even a website in a tech company). And despite all that specialized knowledge they have less job security.
Is that frustration rightly placed though? Of course that employee that was laid off would have rather seen the boba bar cut instead, but the real question is whether the employee was delivering...
Is that frustration rightly placed though?
Of course that employee that was laid off would have rather seen the boba bar cut instead, but the real question is whether the employee was delivering more value than the boba bar. If that employee's project was cut and the company was overstaffed then keeping him would have been a waste of money. Presumably the boba bar is a perk that helps retain the employees the company needs to keep.
Probably, but an employee is likely more expensive than a boba bar. Bars are for morale, and morale is the last thing companies care about in downturns. They know the fear in the market willl keep...
but the real question is whether the employee was delivering more value than the boba bar
Probably, but an employee is likely more expensive than a boba bar.
Bars are for morale, and morale is the last thing companies care about in downturns. They know the fear in the market willl keep most people in, even if they lose some of their best workers as they walk out. In some sense, the bar itself is now a waste of money, but it's also not like they are restocking a bar in these times.
This is an interesting article, but I don't think it does a very good job of delivering on this thesis. It's an interesting collection of disconnected stories from disgruntled former employees,...
there’s something deeply wrong with how video game executives are choosing to spend their money, and rank and file developers keep paying the price for it.
This is an interesting article, but I don't think it does a very good job of delivering on this thesis. It's an interesting collection of disconnected stories from disgruntled former employees, nothing more.
But those games are releasing into a market that is becoming increasingly unforgiving for games that are simply “fine.” And when those imperfect, merely adequate games fail, developers inevitably lose their jobs
This conclusion doesn't line up to the premise of the article either.
It's still true, but I don't necessarily think there's a problem here. I game far less these days because I have far less free time, and so anything that isn't great might as well not exist. To me developers are losing jobs they never should have had in the first place, because an adequate game is unnecessary.
Seems like a rather selfish interpretation of a multi-billion dollar industry, just because you personally don't play most games. Most people don't play most games. But tastes are so varied, that...
To me developers are losing jobs they never should have had in the first place
Seems like a rather selfish interpretation of a multi-billion dollar industry, just because you personally don't play most games. Most people don't play most games. But tastes are so varied, that many different kinds of games can succeed at the same time.
It's not even a beneficial interpretation to have. You may not play something like COD, but odds are COD will launch in 2024 while a dozen other projects are cancelled. The games that will survive this are probably not what you'd consider "great".
I think another core issue I have with this sentiment (outside of my bias as a game dev who's been laid off amidst 2023... twice), is that great games don't just spawn out on the first try. The Souls series is a great example when you remember that the original Demons Souls game is very rough... it very much started as a throwaway early gen 7 project that was not traditionally "fun". A game like Demon Souls in 2023 would never get a chance to iterate into Dark Souls a few years later and become one of these "great games" (and even then a very selective kind of "great" game. It very much isn't for everyone).
You don't make "great" games on the first try and you need experience to build up towards that. But with these huge downturns, constant turmoil for training juniors, and a general lack of respect for compensating talent, I don't know how that talent is going to form in the next decade. When those industry vets who forged the 90's/00's start to leave the industry or retire, I'm unsure of how we're going to replace that talent.
And that's the most frustrating part of it all. It's like I'm watching brain drain in real time. Naturally most people won't notice much for this year, next year, maybe not even 5 years. But people can forget the industry is young and that the conditions on which they grew into the industry just doesn't exist now. An engine programmer 20 years ago more or less programmed half the engine, not a subset of a part of the engine. Where's the former's knowledge going to go for future architects of modern engines?
Demon’s Souls couldn’t have been made at that time period either. It wasn’t some one off from a nobody developer. It was an iterative design from a team that had experience making dozens of games...
Demon’s Souls couldn’t have been made at that time period either. It wasn’t some one off from a nobody developer. It was an iterative design from a team that had experience making dozens of games prior and was built upon the things they have learned with those titles, most famously their King’s Field series - which, to my memory, was the first video game they made, and it was practically a launch title for the original PlayStation.
In reality when you are looking at major corporate video game companies we haven’t had a healthy market for creativity in a very long time. We are no longer in a position where a small group of people can band together to make a game that will rock the industry.
The good news is that the market has taken note and so there is now a big market for indie games. While they may not be as profitable they can get some pretty big cultural cachet. Look at games like Undertale or Celeste, or small companies like Finji or Supergiant Games. The things they make are basically impossible for the big players to produce because they aren’t interested in the risk, even though the production costs can be smaller by several orders of magnitude. Even if they were willing to invest in these projects the development cycles these games go through is fundamentally incompatible with the expectations of the management in charge of these companies.
Personally speaking, I have essentially given up on so-called “mainstream gaming”. While I wouldn’t say that big releases are bad, per se, they generally don’t appeal to me and I find the culture that grows around it to be exasperating at best and toxic at worst. I find the cycles of hype before release and the masturbation about how great they are post release to be very irritating, and that is amplified by the media about it.
Well of course it's a selfish interpretation, I was talking about my perspective. Obviously not everything that exists has to exist for me, and there are plenty of people who have a greater time...
Well of course it's a selfish interpretation, I was talking about my perspective. Obviously not everything that exists has to exist for me, and there are plenty of people who have a greater time budget and need more to consume. But IMHO society would be better off with a much smaller entertainment industry.
To pivot to TV for a second, a brilliant show like Succession not only is worth watching, it's also going to be worth watching for years. It's going to be worth re-watching for years. A new comedy has to not only be better than anything else on TV but also better than just watching The Office again. The space for mediocre entertainment is shrinking as the back catalogue of elite entertainment is growing.
This applies to games too, because for most people entertainment is somewhat fungible. I will watch more TV if there are better shows on TV, or shift to movies, sports, games, or anything else depending on what's compelling at the time. Entertainment is getting more competitive, and developers should be working on projects that can compete. Getting canned from something that was never going to be great isn't good for a particular developer, but it's good that resources are no longer being poured into such a project and can now be focused elsewhere.
Yes, and I not only pointed out the selfish perspective but pointed out it is self-destructive to your own goals. I don't know exactly what games you like, but you can substitute in your favorite...
Well of course it's a selfish interpretation, I was talking about my perspective.
Yes, and I not only pointed out the selfish perspective but pointed out it is self-destructive to your own goals. I don't know exactly what games you like, but you can substitute in your favorite series to understand why it's self-destructive.
You can have personal desires while also being empathetic. I don't understand the Vtuber market at all, for example, but I don't want to dismiss it with "well I don't care if it all dies tomorrow it sucks" just because I don't care for it. There are still dozens of talent entertaining millions of people. Who am I to judge as I sit down and play Pokemon on my TV, while watching a retrospective of Yu-Gi-Oh?
To pivot to TV for a second....
media ages as well, sometimes for better, sometimes for the worse. I think the Cosby Show is the most obvious example of aging worse than milk. Comedy is a product of its time as well. Some may just want to re-watch the office, some want to try and find more new comedy, even if the Office remains their favorite. That's what being a genre enjoyer entails.
As for me, I love animation and I COULD just go back to watching more Avatar: the Last Airbender, but I do also prefer to see other perspectives and how other express their art. So I venture out to try and watch other stuff, even if it's not as tight nor as strong in characters nor as well animated. So I get a variety of taste be it from the surreal humor of Chowder or Regular Show, the most progressive lessons of Steven Universe, or simply something more lax like slapstick comedy from Spongebob. I wouldn't want to be stuck watching Avatar forever even if I probably could rewatch it dozens of times.
This is essentially the analouge for why the Indie market in games succeed (though, very few pieces of indie animation pop up on streaming service). You don't need to be the cream of the crop to succeed, and capturing 0.1% of a 100m+ market can still pay off very well.
Entertainment is getting more competitive, and developers should be working on projects that can compete.
once again, "what competes' varies immensely, and honestly what competes often doesn't align with what enthusiasts on social media complain about. I'm glad Activision doesn't take your advice because they'd just cancel Spyro/crash projects and throw the devs into Diablo/COD... again. Blizzard already cancelled an announced but unnamed survival game, a genre popular in indie circles but are wondering why AAA studios haven't gotten into.
What competes is established IP's, licensed games, and sequelitis... and lo and behold how the gaming landscape has looked the past 5 years. what was the last successful IP to come out of a AAA studio? Perhaps Splatoon from Nintendo in 2016 2 generations ago?
What's self destructive? I want great games. Yes, there's a learning process by which great games get made, and that process results in games that aren't great being made along the way. But if a...
What's self destructive? I want great games. Yes, there's a learning process by which great games get made, and that process results in games that aren't great being made along the way. But if a project looks like it'll fall short then cutting off the investment saves resources to put into the next attempt at a great game and everyone involved learns from what didn't work without having to crunch out something mediocre.
I'm not going to play mediocre versions of those games because my time is better spent consuming non-mediocre other forms of entertainment. And I think everyone else would be better off with the same approach — not necessarily preferring the same genres of games of course, but broadening their entertainment consumption when there's nothing great in their genres of choice.
Of course there's value in watching a new comedy instead of just rewatching The Office, but the fact that The Office exists raises the competitive bar for every show that comes after it. Take a show of the exact same quality and release it before The Office and it will have a greater chance of success simply because the people interested in comedy won't have the option of binging one of the greatest shows ever made. Release it today and you have to compete with rewatches of Veep too! And that's not counting those still great but just a tier behind shows like Parks and Rec, Modern Family, Life in Pieces, etc. There will always be room for something fresh, but the space for new but mediocre content is shrinking as the back catalogue grows.
This is a good thing! The more we can be entertained by things which already exist the fewer resources need to be put into making new entertainment.
Well the fact that: This already isn't happening. Cancelled projects don't lead to great games, they lead to safe games. As we see right now; Deus Ex probably isn't getting another attempt at...
What's self destructive?
Well the fact that:
But if a project looks like it'll fall short then cutting off the investment saves resources to put into the next attempt at a great game
This already isn't happening. Cancelled projects don't lead to great games, they lead to safe games. As we see right now;
Deus Ex probably isn't getting another attempt at being a great game unless the IP holder sells the IP. They will either hunker down on whatever embracer has left or just be shut down as a whole, like Volition. On that note, Volition won't have any chances to make up for it's not great final release
Blizzard won't make another potentially great survival game, they will double down on the mixed reception of Overwatch 2 or Diablo 4.
Ubisoft cancelled 7 games last year. Meanwhile, Skull and Bones comes out due to a governmental mandate, not because anyone at this point believes it's a great game. It being a 70 "AAAA" Games as a Service doesn't provide confidence
Games as an industry have always been tumultuous, but these times are especially bad and it won't result in better games. The decades of rotating and burned out talent is going to catch up hard to games this decade, and the results are worse for nearly everyone except those who's favorite franchises are those safe bets (which to be fair, is a lot. But not necessarily gaming enthusiasts).
I'm not going to play mediocre versions of those games because my time is better spent consuming non-mediocre other forms of entertainment.
Good for you, I guess. Other medium aren't exactly scratching the itch either. Animation has had the same issue at the turn of the decade and still hasn't really recovered. Music has long turned stale. Social media is just a battleground instead of an exchange of thoughts, ideas, and hopes. "mediocre games" are simply a higher bar that most other media these days. And there isn't enough "great media" to consume if you're more like me and want to see the new and recent. I'm not interested in going back and watching The Wire, nor listening to Random Access Memories (yet).
The more we can be entertained by things which already exist the fewer resources need to be put into making new entertainment.
You see this as a good thing and I see it as the death of a medium. I've laid out several comments elaborating, but if you don't understand why less people being able to work in art is bad, I don't have much left to say (but I'll emphasize that it is selfish). I hope you enjoy the past as long as you can.
How old are you? As someone that's just hit middle age, I've found my preference towards legacy content has shifted rather quickly. I have a mental catalogue of all the things that were really...
How old are you? As someone that's just hit middle age, I've found my preference towards legacy content has shifted rather quickly. I have a mental catalogue of all the things that were really well done and a general sense of disappointment that I've wasted my time exploring something that doesn't measure up. These days I get a lot of pleasure from revisiting old favourites, whereas in my early 30s I was still all about discovering new content. Rewatching The Wire was something I was just thinking about recently.
if you don't understand why less people being able to work in art is bad
I explicitly said that I didn't mean that.
I don't want fewer people making games. I want fewer crappy games. It's like people in the craft beer industry bemoaning that breweries are closing because the boom is over, but for the consumer it doesn't matter unless you're losing the beer you actually want to drink. The place that brews the 6th best lagers in town surely has some fans, but switching to consuming drinks from the top 5 producers supports a better product in a challenging time for the market while cutting down on the amount of diacetyl one is consuming. Cutting the chaff isn't a bad thing.
I don't want fewer people making games. But I want them to be working on moonshots, not Fortnite Knockoff VII.
Cancelled projects don't lead to great games, they lead to safe games.
This seems a thread worth pulling on. Deus Ex hits me where it hurts, the original is still my favourite game ever. I hadn't realized Embracer owned Square Enix now, that's rather scary.
Deus Ex is interesting because the sequels seemed to show such a poor understanding of what made the original game great in the first place. I've never thought of that in terms of them being safe choices, to me it just felt like incompetent leadership.
I'm sorry but I'm absolutely floored by this being your perspective. People who make art should never have been hired because the art they make isn't always Great? It's impossible for all games to...
To me developers are losing jobs they never should have had in the first place, because an adequate game is unnecessary.
I'm sorry but I'm absolutely floored by this being your perspective. People who make art should never have been hired because the art they make isn't always Great? It's impossible for all games to be great, and even if it weren't, the more great games there are out there the higher your standards have to be to choose the cream of the crop for your limited free time -- I suspect this has actually been a contributor to the increasingly unforgiving market the quote from the article is discussing. As @raze2012 says in more detail in their comment, this sentiment is diametrically opposed to the environment needed for people to actually create great art (in this case, games).
Furthermore, the idea that these devs shouldn't have been hired in the first place due to the quality of the final product is extremely anti-worker. Developers obviously contribute to the quality of the final product, but there are a million reasons outside any individual dev's control that a game may not end up being great. Maybe the fundamental concept the game is based on is flawed. Maybe aspects of development have been hindered by decisions from higher up. Maybe the game gets cancelled entirely because the business side of things doesn't think it's marketable enough. Maybe devs aren't given enough time to polish their work. Maybe management-ordained crunch time causes the quality of their work to go down due to exhaustion. There are endless reasons that an extremely skilled developer can work on a game that ultimately ends up sucking or even being cancelled, much less releasing as just an adequate game. The idea that these devs shouldn't have had their jobs in the first place based on the final product devalues the labor they contributed, which was valuable regardless of the quality of the final product.
Society doesn't benefit from anyone's labour being put into a crappy product. Of course there are tons of reasons why a game might end up being one, almost none of them being any developer's...
Society doesn't benefit from anyone's labour being put into a crappy product. Of course there are tons of reasons why a game might end up being one, almost none of them being any developer's fault, but that doesn't mean it should continue like some giant make-work project. I'm not saying the developers are at fault and shouldn't have other jobs as developers, I'm saying the developers shouldn't have jobs at projects that are doomed to mediocrity at best. I probably could have expressed that better.
Listening to the Smartless podcast over the last year or two, I've been struck at the hosts' seemingly genuine appreciation for projects which... sucked. And yet the hosts praise each other or their guest for it, sharing joy that they were able to make it and even occasionally just that they managed to do something and get paid for it. Nothing lasting or worthwhile was created. Everyone's time working on this could have been spent elsewhere. Everyone's time who ever consumed such products could have been better spent elsewhere. All of the resources put into making them could have been invested far better elsewhere. And yet, for someone insular enough within the community, none of that matters.
I guess I would ask by what metric? Popularity? Where do you draw the line? I think you can probably easily find thousands of people who love some shovelware games, I don't think this is something...
Nothing lasting or worthwhile was created.
I guess I would ask by what metric? Popularity? Where do you draw the line?
I think you can probably easily find thousands of people who love some shovelware games, I don't think this is something as clear cut as how you're trying to define it.
Obviously drawing the line would be a fool's errand, but one of the instances that struck me was definitely a reference to one of Arnett's many failed post Arrested TV projects. Pick any metric...
Obviously drawing the line would be a fool's errand, but one of the instances that struck me was definitely a reference to one of Arnett's many failed post Arrested TV projects. Pick any metric you like, it failed on the balance sheet, with the public, and with the critics.
Sure, there are people who enjoy crap entertainment just like some enjoy junk food. I don't think either are healthy. So long as there's a business case for junk snacks, shovelware, crappy sitcoms, or b-rate video games then obviously there's a good argument to be made that they should exist, but I'm not going to bemoan mediocre projects being cancelled anymore than I will Frito-Lay closing down a potato chip factory.
we all say this until our favorite potato chip is cancelled. As a JRPG player, it's easier to count what remaining franchises still exist to this day and aren't lost in IP hell (Lots of monolith...
but I'm not going to bemoan mediocre projects being cancelled anymore than I will Frito-Lay closing down a potato chip factory.
we all say this until our favorite potato chip is cancelled. As a JRPG player, it's easier to count what remaining franchises still exist to this day and aren't
lost in IP hell (Lots of monolith soft games once NIntendo aquired them. Including Baiten Kaitos)
dormant for 15+ years with no sign of interest (Wild Arms. At best getting a JP only mobile game that barely lasted a year. At least some of the creators are going indie after all this time and making a spirtual successor)
just plain ol' defunct (Shadow Hearts' devs have been shut down multiple time at this point. Surprisingly most IP's aren't truly dead, just dormant).
And if you don't like the remaining 5 major series, you hope at least for new IPs.
It's always been an issue. Really surprised about Epic though. They had lots of money from Fortnite and I assume their game store front. Lots of money to throw at devs to make games time exclusive...
It's always been an issue. Really surprised about Epic though. They had lots of money from Fortnite and I assume their game store front. Lots of money to throw at devs to make games time exclusive (guess it couldn't last eh ? No I'm not a steam fan either). Watch YongYeas YT videos .. Very insightful commentary on stuff happening in game industry...
Epic getting a 1.5b dollar investment from Disney 6 months later really shows how much they "needed" to size down. It's just business. Even Epic wasn't immune to trend chasing and backing down...
Epic getting a 1.5b dollar investment from Disney 6 months later really shows how much they "needed" to size down.
It's just business. Even Epic wasn't immune to trend chasing and backing down when money was no longer free.
Never have, likely never will without major reform in the US. layoffs are just a tool in the box to be used when needed, not necessarily an emergency button saved for when all fails. Activision...
Never have, likely never will without major reform in the US. layoffs are just a tool in the box to be used when needed, not necessarily an emergency button saved for when all fails. Activision cut 2000 jobs but we know Diablo and Overwatch will keep going and most of Microsoft's projects are probably still in the pipeline
I haven't read the article, sorry. I still have a theory though. It was quite recently when I finished one ten year old game from major series from major developer. Credits were 20 minutes long!...
I haven't read the article, sorry. I still have a theory though.
It was quite recently when I finished one ten year old game from major series from major developer. Credits were 20 minutes long! Twenty minutes! What's worse - I have played more games with such lengthy credits, probably even longer.
I have also played many games where credits fitted on one screen and you could read them in under a minute. And those were great games too - example being Jagged Alliance 2 and more recent Stardew Valley.
I think gaming industry is being hit with he same thing as movie industry is - too much people everywhere. It is throwing absurd amount of money at developement (and probably even more at distribution)marketing or whatever as many people in the credits don't work on the game itself) while struggling to get the money back. Maybe it should return back to the roots, back to ground, touh the grass... I have played and enjoyed many recent (say post-2010) games that were developed by just a bunch of people if not by a single person and some were as good as AAA titles, some I have enjoyed even more. It got to the point where I rather replay something older than buy new game.
There are exceptions of course. Not many of them, but they exist.
Too bad that people that should be held.accountable for that won't ever realize where the error is. They will lay-off staff and then think why they are still not making more money not realizing anything. There is only so much benefit of buying-off competitors and other studios...
The game in question is AC: Black Flag. That one got me thinking and wwtching more closely who all the people in the credits are and how crucial their positions are that they are listed there. Ot shows how much people eats up the money we spend on the games and raises the question "Do we really need that much people to create and sell the game?"
Sorry if this sounds aggressive, but what's the point of commenting on an article if you haven't read the article? It's not even paywalled or anything, and it's not that long. The article itself...
Sorry if this sounds aggressive, but what's the point of commenting on an article if you haven't read the article? It's not even paywalled or anything, and it's not that long.
The article itself goes into a lot of it. Yeah there's some bloat, but there's so much more than just that. Executives mismanaging money for one, and it goes into things like the Embracer Group buying up too much before collapsing under it's own weight.
You are right about not reading the article. I should do that. Yet you have already proved some points of mine when you mentioned what parts of the article are about - execs f**k ups and getting...
You are right about not reading the article. I should do that.
Yet you have already proved some points of mine when you mentioned what parts of the article are about - execs f**k ups and getting too big by buying too much. And then the bloat itself. No wonder small indie games can do as good as triple-As these days.
In fairness, I found your comment an interesting read, and you did provide a warning in the very first sentence that you'd not done the assignment. We're not exactly drowning in conversation yet...
In fairness, I found your comment an interesting read, and you did provide a warning in the very first sentence that you'd not done the assignment. We're not exactly drowning in conversation yet on Tildes so I'm a fan of whatever content I can get my beady little eyes on.
The biggest mistake in my commnt was not adding that I wanted to write down my thought before actually reading the article - make it a guessing game from my point of view.
The biggest mistake in my commnt was not adding that I wanted to write down my thought before actually reading the article - make it a guessing game from my point of view.
a few indie games get acclaim similar to a AAA project... by having a AAA sized staff and dev time. The only difference is that those studios tend to not be based in the US. the labor for a game...
No wonder small indie games can do as good as triple-As these days.
a few indie games get acclaim similar to a AAA project... by having a AAA sized staff and dev time. The only difference is that those studios tend to not be based in the US. the labor for a game like Baldur's Gate 3 woulda probably been another 300m dollar project just by being located in a different place. But labor in Belgium is much cheaper.
truly small indie games don't do as well, but don't have as much staff. It's a tradeoff, and it doesn't seem like AAA studios want to just play the figurative penny slots.
We may look at indie vs. triple-A in "acclaim per labor". The Stradew Valley was basically made by one person and sold (probably tens of) millions before another person got on board. If we measure...
We may look at indie vs. triple-A in "acclaim per labor". The Stradew Valley was basically made by one person and sold (probably tens of) millions before another person got on board. If we measure it by this, then it may easily be the most successful game ever made. And it didn't have 100 million budget with 5000 people behind it (be it developers ot bloat).
I don't know how much developers cost in different parts of world. To be honest I never thought about it.
I think Notch still takes that title. Probably made a few million with a very small staff then cashed out to microsoft for a few billion. But still, outliers are just that. They metaphorically won...
If we measure it by this, then it may easily be the most successful game ever made.
I think Notch still takes that title. Probably made a few million with a very small staff then cashed out to microsoft for a few billion.
But still, outliers are just that. They metaphorically won the lottery in terms of timing of release which ultimately made them stand out over their peers. The small team indie market is in a very different position right now.
I don't know how much developers cost in different parts of world. To be honest I never thought about it.
It's one of the many factors causing the US layoffs. From the article:
“It was cheaper to export my work to a third party than it was to maintain my hourly rate and benefits,” said one former Bungie tester. “Before I was laid off, I was told to automate my work so that anyone could do the job without prior knowledge and so I put myself out of a job. Now they can give some random person the documentation I wrote and the scripts I created to do my job.”
and it should be noted that QA as is, is already one of the lower paying parts of games, an industry that underpays to begin with.
But to go back to the Larian example: Larian has 450 employees and Baldur's gate 3 reportedly had a $100m budget. Based on the Insomniac leaks, Spider Man 2, an impressive but much smaller scale game (that could reuse some of its assets) had a budget of $300m. American labor is just very expensive, and it kind of has to be just because of the cost of living in the US.
This is a really long, really interestingly researched article. As someone who just survived a layoff cycle last week (not in games), it's really frustrating to see the way executives think.
A couple of things that also contribute, which are discussed widely in the software industry but less in the gaming sphere:
Interest rate hikes are chilling venture funding and other business loans. If credit is less of a good deal, liquidity goes down. That's why online services are all in an enshittification avalanche, and it's why new product development is slowing.
Trump admin tax changes went into effect that disincentivize R&D. Instead of being able to list developer payroll as an expense in the year it occurred, it now has to be amortized over five years, which effectively gives the federal government a big zero-interest loan at the company's expense. Liquidity goes down and developer payroll suddenly looks less appealing.
That second one (section 174 of the IRS code) is a huge driver of tech layoffs. There's a bill the House passed recently that's in the Senate that rolls that change back. Hoping they pass it soon.
A large amount of layoffs is always a failing at the upper management level, because either:
And yet it's always the little guys that pay for it. I'm reminded of the Bungee layoffs and a reporter asking the spokesperson if they planned any changes or pay cuts for higher ups and they replied "Nah."
Although many problems are foreseeable, this seems a bit much. As the saying goes, predictions are hard, especially about the future. Who predicted the pandemic, for example?
No one did, but the companies now laying large chunks of people off all flourished in the pandemic and now are now eating shit.
And with all due respect, if you work in the higher levels in such a company making important decisions and you don't realize that the once-in-a-century event that that has everyone stuck inside and trying out new hobbies that only happen inside is going the end eventually and these hundreds to, in some cases, thousands of people hired are bad investment, you suck at your fucking job.
Did some people discover gaming and stick with it? Sure. Were all of the people playing games going to stick with it? Fuck no. What those companies did is textbook overextension of your financial assets; Investing for a market that will not need you in the future. In some cases these are not people who have risen through the ranks with practical experience. They have instead gone to uni, studied something like Business Management and are supposed to do nothing but make those decisions.
As for companies that ate shit because of the pandemic, I sympathize with them to some extent, but having something like a warchest you can rely on has fallen out of fashion due to the rampant constant growth demanded. There was an interview with the owner of one of the larger chocolate factories in the country and he essentially said "If you can't run your business at zero to a loss for at least one year, you are stupid and should not have the job."
The only companies I really sympathize with are the guys who started up just before the pandemic hit. That was something completely, entirely out of their power.
Unfortunately they don't see it like that. Layoffs aren't a sign of bad management for them. It's just a tool to use whenever convinient. The gold rush of the pandemic for media is over, the layoff axe comes out.
Shareholders don't even see it like that since often times layoff news gives a tiny bump in stock. So at this point it's culturally engrained as at least "not bad". And it's not like these companies are even reporting huge losses to begin with! They are profitable but just not profitable enough.
I want to hope a reckoning is coming because this attitude has already lead to a recession, and is nearly leading to a 2nd one. But the people in policy are also profiting, so who knows at this point?
The pandemic is just one of many unpredictable events. There are many: the 2008 recession, Trump getting elected, Russia invading Ukraine, the attack on Israel and the counterattack, and so on. Last year being the year AI becomes trendy. Inflation suddenly becoming a thing again and the rise in interest rates.
And also a bunch of smaller events, any of which may or may not matter to any given business.
Often, the strongest companies do fine after any of these changes, while the weaker ones that weren't doing so well anyway could decide to pack it in after anything bad happens. Something like an unexpected rent increase might be enough.
So it all depends. Sure, in some cases, it was bad management, but deciding who's to blame without investigating, as a general rule that's supposed to apply in every case without doing any homework or even knowing which company we're talking about, is bullshit.
We are talking in the context of video game development about video game companies reacting to a "sudden" downturn after the pandemic surge. We are already in a pretty specific context. My point is that all of these companies expanded like crazy somehow expecting that the surge would last forever and very predictably, it did not.
Okay, it does make more sense in that specific context. I still think understanding company-specific issues would result in more insight.
Absolutely, but a failing on such a broad level, not just within the gaming sphere but within the tech sphere with Google, Microsoft etc. all letting people go, it indicates a broad failing within the incentives of those companies when it comes to hiring practices.
Rereading the comment chain, I do realise that I used some harsh words, that while not directed at you, still played in potentially agitating the discussion. I would like to state that I value your comments and they did make me think about this topic more thoroughly. Thanks :]
Yeah, at one point I was overly harsh too. Sorry about that!
Imo: regardless of whether those conditions were predictable or not, I’d imagine that Grzmot’s point is that they’re still upper management’s problem to solve (although please don’t let me put words in your mouth if this is a bad take!). In principle, their role is to manage the company’s resources, and failing to allocate it appropriately is still failing. It isn’t necessarily 100% their fault, but going by that logic, (imo) no one fails anything ever since we’re all affected by the consequences of someone else’s action.
To your second point — who predicted the pandemic — imo this is a very interesting question! Since this isn’t the first time we’d seen outbreaks, officials had been warning about the marked increase in severity and frequency of infectious disease for a while (notable example). Talking about impacts from the supply chain effects of the pandemic, we already knew that just in time manufacturing is dramatically more susceptible to supply chain failures, but management often pushes for it anyways (it’s cheaper not to pay for warehouse space). Finally, we’ve even seen bike shops failing recently due to a predictable drop in sales after everyone predictably returned to work.
So yeah, many folks with boots on the ground or a desire to learn could’ve predicted — if not literally COVID — an event which would similarly impact the business.
There was lots of planning for an eventual pandemic - it's actually pretty predictable that it will likely happen someday. (And it will likely happen again.)
But not the timing. Nobody knows whether it will happen next year. There are similar issues for earthquakes, and there are other looming disasters (a tsunami in Oregon, volcanic eruptions, and so on.
I'm not saying that a free bar is more portant than someone's job, but for some members of staff perks like that are crucial to their enjoyment of a job.
Where I worked they laid people off, and the dip in morale killed the bar anyway as who wants to stay at a place that's just axed your friends? But that's not to say that killing the bar wouldn't have caused the same voluntary exodus as the redundancies and firings did. Perks like those can be core to the culture of a workplace, and their value can easily be understated, their cost overstated.
It's also a question of budgets and rising costs.
10 developers at 65k each is not just 650,000 saved right now, it's 10 people's worth of overhead. No more raises, less benefits, less HR, etc. Employee's are often WAY more expensive than anything, and really must justify their costs, and companies frequently over hire.
That's not to say that there's a TON of dead weight middle management and upper management, but people overestimate how many jobs "not building the bar" is going to save. It's a lot, but probably not a significant number in the face of these massive layoffs.
Sadly the answer here seems to be to fire US workers and once again resort to outsourcing for jobs they do in fact need (see the QA example in the article). It's not a matter of cutting now un-needed bloat, it's simply another scheme to minimize pay in an industry that already underpays employees.
More and more companies are turning towards just hiring software consultants versus hiring full-time due to the consultanting companies handling the brunt of healthcare/benefits/HR. A trend that I am starting to catch onto though is that many of these companies are selling their contracts with cheaper developers from Eastern Europe and India. US companies no longer want to pay 65k for a junior US based dev when they can get a senior dev for half the cost from abroad. The landscape feels brutal now if you are early in your career.
I'm sure they're making way more than that.
Games industry salaries are notoriously low compared to general tech salaries. I don’t have numbers so this could still be too low but I’m almost positive the true number would be shocking.
That said this conversation may have outgrown the original post’s context.
Riot pays better than the traditionally lower game industry salaries. A mid-level engineer makes ~$188k in total comp and a senior ~$237k. Source
it varies very widely on the studio, location, size, etc. For reference, my first gig was as a relatively well known "indie studio" working on [highly anticipated game] and my pay was $28/hr, So we're talking maybe 55k/yr for an entry level programmer (pretty sure my yearly income was lower, but hourly and I had a lot of health issues back then). But that was still in a high CoL state.
To be honest, lots of programmers make livable wages. It's more that games arguably work programmers harder, for longer times, for less money than managing a website (and not even a website in a tech company). And despite all that specialized knowledge they have less job security.
Now artists.... that's where the tragedy starts.
I am as well which is why I ball-parked the low end to show the absolute best case.
Is that frustration rightly placed though?
Of course that employee that was laid off would have rather seen the boba bar cut instead, but the real question is whether the employee was delivering more value than the boba bar. If that employee's project was cut and the company was overstaffed then keeping him would have been a waste of money. Presumably the boba bar is a perk that helps retain the employees the company needs to keep.
Probably, but an employee is likely more expensive than a boba bar.
Bars are for morale, and morale is the last thing companies care about in downturns. They know the fear in the market willl keep most people in, even if they lose some of their best workers as they walk out. In some sense, the bar itself is now a waste of money, but it's also not like they are restocking a bar in these times.
This is an interesting article, but I don't think it does a very good job of delivering on this thesis. It's an interesting collection of disconnected stories from disgruntled former employees, nothing more.
This conclusion doesn't line up to the premise of the article either.
It's still true, but I don't necessarily think there's a problem here. I game far less these days because I have far less free time, and so anything that isn't great might as well not exist. To me developers are losing jobs they never should have had in the first place, because an adequate game is unnecessary.
Seems like a rather selfish interpretation of a multi-billion dollar industry, just because you personally don't play most games. Most people don't play most games. But tastes are so varied, that many different kinds of games can succeed at the same time.
It's not even a beneficial interpretation to have. You may not play something like COD, but odds are COD will launch in 2024 while a dozen other projects are cancelled. The games that will survive this are probably not what you'd consider "great".
I think another core issue I have with this sentiment (outside of my bias as a game dev who's been laid off amidst 2023... twice), is that great games don't just spawn out on the first try. The Souls series is a great example when you remember that the original Demons Souls game is very rough... it very much started as a throwaway early gen 7 project that was not traditionally "fun". A game like Demon Souls in 2023 would never get a chance to iterate into Dark Souls a few years later and become one of these "great games" (and even then a very selective kind of "great" game. It very much isn't for everyone).
You don't make "great" games on the first try and you need experience to build up towards that. But with these huge downturns, constant turmoil for training juniors, and a general lack of respect for compensating talent, I don't know how that talent is going to form in the next decade. When those industry vets who forged the 90's/00's start to leave the industry or retire, I'm unsure of how we're going to replace that talent.
And that's the most frustrating part of it all. It's like I'm watching brain drain in real time. Naturally most people won't notice much for this year, next year, maybe not even 5 years. But people can forget the industry is young and that the conditions on which they grew into the industry just doesn't exist now. An engine programmer 20 years ago more or less programmed half the engine, not a subset of a part of the engine. Where's the former's knowledge going to go for future architects of modern engines?
Demon’s Souls couldn’t have been made at that time period either. It wasn’t some one off from a nobody developer. It was an iterative design from a team that had experience making dozens of games prior and was built upon the things they have learned with those titles, most famously their King’s Field series - which, to my memory, was the first video game they made, and it was practically a launch title for the original PlayStation.
In reality when you are looking at major corporate video game companies we haven’t had a healthy market for creativity in a very long time. We are no longer in a position where a small group of people can band together to make a game that will rock the industry.
The good news is that the market has taken note and so there is now a big market for indie games. While they may not be as profitable they can get some pretty big cultural cachet. Look at games like Undertale or Celeste, or small companies like Finji or Supergiant Games. The things they make are basically impossible for the big players to produce because they aren’t interested in the risk, even though the production costs can be smaller by several orders of magnitude. Even if they were willing to invest in these projects the development cycles these games go through is fundamentally incompatible with the expectations of the management in charge of these companies.
Personally speaking, I have essentially given up on so-called “mainstream gaming”. While I wouldn’t say that big releases are bad, per se, they generally don’t appeal to me and I find the culture that grows around it to be exasperating at best and toxic at worst. I find the cycles of hype before release and the masturbation about how great they are post release to be very irritating, and that is amplified by the media about it.
Well of course it's a selfish interpretation, I was talking about my perspective. Obviously not everything that exists has to exist for me, and there are plenty of people who have a greater time budget and need more to consume. But IMHO society would be better off with a much smaller entertainment industry.
To pivot to TV for a second, a brilliant show like Succession not only is worth watching, it's also going to be worth watching for years. It's going to be worth re-watching for years. A new comedy has to not only be better than anything else on TV but also better than just watching The Office again. The space for mediocre entertainment is shrinking as the back catalogue of elite entertainment is growing.
This applies to games too, because for most people entertainment is somewhat fungible. I will watch more TV if there are better shows on TV, or shift to movies, sports, games, or anything else depending on what's compelling at the time. Entertainment is getting more competitive, and developers should be working on projects that can compete. Getting canned from something that was never going to be great isn't good for a particular developer, but it's good that resources are no longer being poured into such a project and can now be focused elsewhere.
Yes, and I not only pointed out the selfish perspective but pointed out it is self-destructive to your own goals. I don't know exactly what games you like, but you can substitute in your favorite series to understand why it's self-destructive.
You can have personal desires while also being empathetic. I don't understand the Vtuber market at all, for example, but I don't want to dismiss it with "well I don't care if it all dies tomorrow it sucks" just because I don't care for it. There are still dozens of talent entertaining millions of people. Who am I to judge as I sit down and play Pokemon on my TV, while watching a retrospective of Yu-Gi-Oh?
media ages as well, sometimes for better, sometimes for the worse. I think the Cosby Show is the most obvious example of aging worse than milk. Comedy is a product of its time as well. Some may just want to re-watch the office, some want to try and find more new comedy, even if the Office remains their favorite. That's what being a genre enjoyer entails.
As for me, I love animation and I COULD just go back to watching more Avatar: the Last Airbender, but I do also prefer to see other perspectives and how other express their art. So I venture out to try and watch other stuff, even if it's not as tight nor as strong in characters nor as well animated. So I get a variety of taste be it from the surreal humor of Chowder or Regular Show, the most progressive lessons of Steven Universe, or simply something more lax like slapstick comedy from Spongebob. I wouldn't want to be stuck watching Avatar forever even if I probably could rewatch it dozens of times.
This is essentially the analouge for why the Indie market in games succeed (though, very few pieces of indie animation pop up on streaming service). You don't need to be the cream of the crop to succeed, and capturing 0.1% of a 100m+ market can still pay off very well.
once again, "what competes' varies immensely, and honestly what competes often doesn't align with what enthusiasts on social media complain about. I'm glad Activision doesn't take your advice because they'd just cancel Spyro/crash projects and throw the devs into Diablo/COD... again. Blizzard already cancelled an announced but unnamed survival game, a genre popular in indie circles but are wondering why AAA studios haven't gotten into.
What competes is established IP's, licensed games, and sequelitis... and lo and behold how the gaming landscape has looked the past 5 years. what was the last successful IP to come out of a AAA studio? Perhaps Splatoon from Nintendo in 2016 2 generations ago?
What's self destructive? I want great games. Yes, there's a learning process by which great games get made, and that process results in games that aren't great being made along the way. But if a project looks like it'll fall short then cutting off the investment saves resources to put into the next attempt at a great game and everyone involved learns from what didn't work without having to crunch out something mediocre.
I'm not going to play mediocre versions of those games because my time is better spent consuming non-mediocre other forms of entertainment. And I think everyone else would be better off with the same approach — not necessarily preferring the same genres of games of course, but broadening their entertainment consumption when there's nothing great in their genres of choice.
Of course there's value in watching a new comedy instead of just rewatching The Office, but the fact that The Office exists raises the competitive bar for every show that comes after it. Take a show of the exact same quality and release it before The Office and it will have a greater chance of success simply because the people interested in comedy won't have the option of binging one of the greatest shows ever made. Release it today and you have to compete with rewatches of Veep too! And that's not counting those still great but just a tier behind shows like Parks and Rec, Modern Family, Life in Pieces, etc. There will always be room for something fresh, but the space for new but mediocre content is shrinking as the back catalogue grows.
This is a good thing! The more we can be entertained by things which already exist the fewer resources need to be put into making new entertainment.
Well the fact that:
This already isn't happening. Cancelled projects don't lead to great games, they lead to safe games. As we see right now;
Games as an industry have always been tumultuous, but these times are especially bad and it won't result in better games. The decades of rotating and burned out talent is going to catch up hard to games this decade, and the results are worse for nearly everyone except those who's favorite franchises are those safe bets (which to be fair, is a lot. But not necessarily gaming enthusiasts).
Good for you, I guess. Other medium aren't exactly scratching the itch either. Animation has had the same issue at the turn of the decade and still hasn't really recovered. Music has long turned stale. Social media is just a battleground instead of an exchange of thoughts, ideas, and hopes. "mediocre games" are simply a higher bar that most other media these days. And there isn't enough "great media" to consume if you're more like me and want to see the new and recent. I'm not interested in going back and watching The Wire, nor listening to Random Access Memories (yet).
You see this as a good thing and I see it as the death of a medium. I've laid out several comments elaborating, but if you don't understand why less people being able to work in art is bad, I don't have much left to say (but I'll emphasize that it is selfish). I hope you enjoy the past as long as you can.
How old are you? As someone that's just hit middle age, I've found my preference towards legacy content has shifted rather quickly. I have a mental catalogue of all the things that were really well done and a general sense of disappointment that I've wasted my time exploring something that doesn't measure up. These days I get a lot of pleasure from revisiting old favourites, whereas in my early 30s I was still all about discovering new content. Rewatching The Wire was something I was just thinking about recently.
I explicitly said that I didn't mean that.
I don't want fewer people making games. I want fewer crappy games. It's like people in the craft beer industry bemoaning that breweries are closing because the boom is over, but for the consumer it doesn't matter unless you're losing the beer you actually want to drink. The place that brews the 6th best lagers in town surely has some fans, but switching to consuming drinks from the top 5 producers supports a better product in a challenging time for the market while cutting down on the amount of diacetyl one is consuming. Cutting the chaff isn't a bad thing.
I don't want fewer people making games. But I want them to be working on moonshots, not Fortnite Knockoff VII.
This seems a thread worth pulling on. Deus Ex hits me where it hurts, the original is still my favourite game ever. I hadn't realized Embracer owned Square Enix now, that's rather scary.
Deus Ex is interesting because the sequels seemed to show such a poor understanding of what made the original game great in the first place. I've never thought of that in terms of them being safe choices, to me it just felt like incompetent leadership.
I'm sorry but I'm absolutely floored by this being your perspective. People who make art should never have been hired because the art they make isn't always Great? It's impossible for all games to be great, and even if it weren't, the more great games there are out there the higher your standards have to be to choose the cream of the crop for your limited free time -- I suspect this has actually been a contributor to the increasingly unforgiving market the quote from the article is discussing. As @raze2012 says in more detail in their comment, this sentiment is diametrically opposed to the environment needed for people to actually create great art (in this case, games).
Furthermore, the idea that these devs shouldn't have been hired in the first place due to the quality of the final product is extremely anti-worker. Developers obviously contribute to the quality of the final product, but there are a million reasons outside any individual dev's control that a game may not end up being great. Maybe the fundamental concept the game is based on is flawed. Maybe aspects of development have been hindered by decisions from higher up. Maybe the game gets cancelled entirely because the business side of things doesn't think it's marketable enough. Maybe devs aren't given enough time to polish their work. Maybe management-ordained crunch time causes the quality of their work to go down due to exhaustion. There are endless reasons that an extremely skilled developer can work on a game that ultimately ends up sucking or even being cancelled, much less releasing as just an adequate game. The idea that these devs shouldn't have had their jobs in the first place based on the final product devalues the labor they contributed, which was valuable regardless of the quality of the final product.
Society doesn't benefit from anyone's labour being put into a crappy product. Of course there are tons of reasons why a game might end up being one, almost none of them being any developer's fault, but that doesn't mean it should continue like some giant make-work project. I'm not saying the developers are at fault and shouldn't have other jobs as developers, I'm saying the developers shouldn't have jobs at projects that are doomed to mediocrity at best. I probably could have expressed that better.
Listening to the Smartless podcast over the last year or two, I've been struck at the hosts' seemingly genuine appreciation for projects which... sucked. And yet the hosts praise each other or their guest for it, sharing joy that they were able to make it and even occasionally just that they managed to do something and get paid for it. Nothing lasting or worthwhile was created. Everyone's time working on this could have been spent elsewhere. Everyone's time who ever consumed such products could have been better spent elsewhere. All of the resources put into making them could have been invested far better elsewhere. And yet, for someone insular enough within the community, none of that matters.
I guess I would ask by what metric? Popularity? Where do you draw the line?
I think you can probably easily find thousands of people who love some shovelware games, I don't think this is something as clear cut as how you're trying to define it.
Obviously drawing the line would be a fool's errand, but one of the instances that struck me was definitely a reference to one of Arnett's many failed post Arrested TV projects. Pick any metric you like, it failed on the balance sheet, with the public, and with the critics.
Sure, there are people who enjoy crap entertainment just like some enjoy junk food. I don't think either are healthy. So long as there's a business case for junk snacks, shovelware, crappy sitcoms, or b-rate video games then obviously there's a good argument to be made that they should exist, but I'm not going to bemoan mediocre projects being cancelled anymore than I will Frito-Lay closing down a potato chip factory.
we all say this until our favorite potato chip is cancelled. As a JRPG player, it's easier to count what remaining franchises still exist to this day and aren't
And if you don't like the remaining 5 major series, you hope at least for new IPs.
It's always been an issue. Really surprised about Epic though. They had lots of money from Fortnite and I assume their game store front. Lots of money to throw at devs to make games time exclusive (guess it couldn't last eh ? No I'm not a steam fan either). Watch YongYeas YT videos .. Very insightful commentary on stuff happening in game industry...
Epic getting a 1.5b dollar investment from Disney 6 months later really shows how much they "needed" to size down.
It's just business. Even Epic wasn't immune to trend chasing and backing down when money was no longer free.
So capital doesn't bare the risks? Interesting...
Never have, likely never will without major reform in the US. layoffs are just a tool in the box to be used when needed, not necessarily an emergency button saved for when all fails. Activision cut 2000 jobs but we know Diablo and Overwatch will keep going and most of Microsoft's projects are probably still in the pipeline
I haven't read the article, sorry. I still have a theory though.
It was quite recently when I finished one ten year old game from major series from major developer. Credits were 20 minutes long! Twenty minutes! What's worse - I have played more games with such lengthy credits, probably even longer.
I have also played many games where credits fitted on one screen and you could read them in under a minute. And those were great games too - example being Jagged Alliance 2 and more recent Stardew Valley.
I think gaming industry is being hit with he same thing as movie industry is - too much people everywhere. It is throwing absurd amount of money at developement (and probably even more at distribution)marketing or whatever as many people in the credits don't work on the game itself) while struggling to get the money back. Maybe it should return back to the roots, back to ground, touh the grass... I have played and enjoyed many recent (say post-2010) games that were developed by just a bunch of people if not by a single person and some were as good as AAA titles, some I have enjoyed even more. It got to the point where I rather replay something older than buy new game.
There are exceptions of course. Not many of them, but they exist.
Too bad that people that should be held.accountable for that won't ever realize where the error is. They will lay-off staff and then think why they are still not making more money not realizing anything. There is only so much benefit of buying-off competitors and other studios...
The game in question is AC: Black Flag. That one got me thinking and wwtching more closely who all the people in the credits are and how crucial their positions are that they are listed there. Ot shows how much people eats up the money we spend on the games and raises the question "Do we really need that much people to create and sell the game?"
Sorry if this sounds aggressive, but what's the point of commenting on an article if you haven't read the article? It's not even paywalled or anything, and it's not that long.
The article itself goes into a lot of it. Yeah there's some bloat, but there's so much more than just that. Executives mismanaging money for one, and it goes into things like the Embracer Group buying up too much before collapsing under it's own weight.
You are right about not reading the article. I should do that.
Yet you have already proved some points of mine when you mentioned what parts of the article are about - execs f**k ups and getting too big by buying too much. And then the bloat itself. No wonder small indie games can do as good as triple-As these days.
In fairness, I found your comment an interesting read, and you did provide a warning in the very first sentence that you'd not done the assignment. We're not exactly drowning in conversation yet on Tildes so I'm a fan of whatever content I can get my beady little eyes on.
The biggest mistake in my commnt was not adding that I wanted to write down my thought before actually reading the article - make it a guessing game from my point of view.
a few indie games get acclaim similar to a AAA project... by having a AAA sized staff and dev time. The only difference is that those studios tend to not be based in the US. the labor for a game like Baldur's Gate 3 woulda probably been another 300m dollar project just by being located in a different place. But labor in Belgium is much cheaper.
truly small indie games don't do as well, but don't have as much staff. It's a tradeoff, and it doesn't seem like AAA studios want to just play the figurative penny slots.
We may look at indie vs. triple-A in "acclaim per labor". The Stradew Valley was basically made by one person and sold (probably tens of) millions before another person got on board. If we measure it by this, then it may easily be the most successful game ever made. And it didn't have 100 million budget with 5000 people behind it (be it developers ot bloat).
I don't know how much developers cost in different parts of world. To be honest I never thought about it.
I think Notch still takes that title. Probably made a few million with a very small staff then cashed out to microsoft for a few billion.
But still, outliers are just that. They metaphorically won the lottery in terms of timing of release which ultimately made them stand out over their peers. The small team indie market is in a very different position right now.
It's one of the many factors causing the US layoffs. From the article:
and it should be noted that QA as is, is already one of the lower paying parts of games, an industry that underpays to begin with.
But to go back to the Larian example: Larian has 450 employees and Baldur's gate 3 reportedly had a $100m budget. Based on the Insomniac leaks, Spider Man 2, an impressive but much smaller scale game (that could reuse some of its assets) had a budget of $300m. American labor is just very expensive, and it kind of has to be just because of the cost of living in the US.