How's the Job outlook for new environment artists?
polycounter lvl 7
Just out of curiosity with the new consoles and everything are job opportunities for environment artists improving? How's the Job market in general for the industry? Still an atmosphere of heavy laying off? It's been a while since I looked.
Thanks
Avi
Thanks
Avi
Replies
It seems like the studios having the hardest time are the publisher owned studios. The privately owned and smaller studios seem to be doing ok if they can make the numbers work, which is easier to do if aren't trapped in publisher development cycles.
Look at the way things have been going...
Publishers float big studios a lot of cash to make a game, they spend it all on development and when the game launches the profits go to pay back the loan with interest. Because they're owned by the publisher they normally have a really crap deal and have to rely on the pub to give them more business. It could be Dora the Explore or it could be a hawt FPS sci-fi shooter, whatever they get next it better sell, or the pub breaks their legs.
How things went back in the day and seem to be headed now...
Small studios fund the cost of development often starting really small and building up as profits and success builds. A game that would be considered a publisher disaster (only making a million on a 1/2 million dollar investment) would actually be enough for that studio to do something else. At the publisher they get shut down, ie junction point.
Personally it seems like the industry is reverting back to the days before the big publishers took over. Studios working on their own to make content they are passionate about, instead of being part of hierarchy that assigns games to studios and demands that they get passionate about whatever game they are tasked with making.
It seems to me the large publisher model was build on an unsustainable business model. One that relied on the acquisition of studios so a near monopoly could be built. Through that dominance they could dictate how the industry worked. But that seems hard to maintain unless they continually snatch up studios as they spring up. Which was a problem even back then, what they grabbed was more often than not an empty shell or a studio title. Studio heads would often sell to a publisher, leave and start up a new studio with the talent that they really liked. Leaving the publisher holding the bag.
Once the investor capital dried up and the credit limits where reached the rapid growth couldn't be sustained and the monopolies have started to crumble.
It seems like we are headed to a slightly smaller but more diverse industry, were the passion drives what the studio does instead of the other way around, like it was before the publisher wars started. Riskier employment but with a better chance of greater reward. It might not be well suited for people looking for stable 9-5 employment, 401k's and benefits but there is a chance it might turn into that, but it will only happen with games that are a success instead of through investors pumping money into something they hope to harvest.
I think there will be more successful studios in the future, because the decision making will be made more on the ground level and the goals won't be so ridiculously high to get funding for the next game.
same can be said for anything.
none of that superceeds having a bomb folio though, just the other side of the coin of being an art gangsta