Yet more Sony layoffs!
polycounter lvl 11
http://www.videogamer.com/ps4/driveclub/news/evolution_studios_guerrilla_cambridge_and_sce_london_studio_hit_by_layoffs.html
Even with the PS4 selling well, who does Sony think will make games for there system with no first party devs? Another hint that AAA is failing.
Best of luck to those affected.
Even with the PS4 selling well, who does Sony think will make games for there system with no first party devs? Another hint that AAA is failing.
Best of luck to those affected.
Replies
Cool bro, see you at the Destiny launch.
Previously worked at Guerrilla Cambridge too.
Sorry to all those affected.
Good question. I don't think AAA (or the future of) is as bad as a lot of people make it out to be. There are a fair few layoffs happening (the recent situation with Irrational being a good example,) but there's also a lot of promising titles coming up - the Division, The Order: 1886, Shadow of Mordor to name a few. The reason I posted was that I hear a lot about how the future of AAA is doomed on a constant basis, when I personally think that's a little over the top.
I guess its difficult to say what is AAA and Indie now as the difference between both is becoming less and less apparent - very small teams able to output titles with amazing quality. I'm very interested to see how these small teams do with the next-gen tech.
A lot of problems with AAA development for sure but I don't buy it when people say its about to disappear.
Who exactly wants to pay top dollar for video games? NES games retailed for $60.00 USD in 1990, and we are still selling video games at the same price over 20 years later regardless of inflation or ballooning development costs. At some point this widening disconnect between consumer expectation and developer cost won't make business sense anymore.
But it's not improving either, and AAA studios aren't exactly pooping up at the rate at with the ones are being shut down.
All the layoffs and studios shutting down, if this keeps it course over the next few years, I think they will be going somewhere then!
This industry is project based. The media likes to pretend it's not, but it is. Sometimes you're kept on for the next project, sometimes you're let go. If it's badly managed, the project fails and everyone goes. It sounds like two of the studios mentioned had finished major projects in the last six months, with the third being poorly managed. (Hence the delays.)
AAA will always be around, but because the major publicly available engines are targeting indies, and since digital distribution isn't fringe anymore, it wont be the Mecca of the industry it is now. I think the average developer will seek work at a mid-sized studio, probably formed from a successful indie, that does slightly smaller and more manageable projects. If a situation comes up where they can work on a AAA title than great, but it wont be worth jeopardizing your lifestyle to enter an even less stable part of the industry.
wow! someone with common sense, that's so crazy and rare to see on this forum. i cant comment on anything at sony, i work here, but its totally not a big bad company being a big meanie to the poor people that make games.
you have a project, you work on the project, if project doesn't meet the scope of your funding, or doesn't live up to standards then it gets cancelled unless you can negotiate a new budget and or contract. there are so many people that can cause this to happen and its almost never the big bad company, its the people in charge of budgeting funding, its the creative director not pulling through, or not being very creative, its the team not delivering things on time or up to a quality level expected, its heads of studios and marketing pissing away capital on cocaine and hookers, its artists who cant keep up with the standards set by the industry, its designers failing to make something fun. its engineers that cant keep a game running at a decent frame-rate, stop blaming the people putting up the cash to fund big ideas and start blaming the people responsible for not coming through on a contractual agreement.
ugh, don't get so excited
I actually know there's going to be some turbulence but I think its fucking fantastic, these companies aren't worth shit these days, sure they pay a "stable" wage but these studios are becoming less and less stable, but there is hope! we can finally reclaim our talents and skills and produce meaningful products, away from the men in suits who say why can't our game be like wow, or we should be making a flappy bird clone...
Now it seems the execs think they can just use and abuse us hire and fire, but at last we can finally reclaim our culture, and make meaningful games and sell them off the back of our own labour.
[ame="
not at all, i am pretty indifferent of whether i work for a corporation or a small indie studio, i have done both, but most people just assume that these companies are going through layoffs because someone greedy is not making enough money, its not the case.
lets say my friend asks me to borrow 20 bucks because he needs the money to buy materials to start a lemonade stand and i can have a portion of the lemonade profits, well he finds out that he doesn't know how to build the stand and needs to hire a builder so actually he needs 40 dollars not 20, i say okay, but the builder actually sucks and the stand falls down so i have to pay more to hire another builder, but then he realizes that nobody is going to know about the stand so he needs 80 dollars for free samples to promote the stand and money to print flyers. after giving him 4 times the amount he said he needed i taste the lemonade and it tastes like crap and is brown and smells bad. i will not be giving him anymore money for his lemonade dreams, sorry if he is out of work, nothing personal, but i cant just keep giving him money hand over fist for no reason.
with a large company we are not talking about the difference between 20 and 80 dollars, we are talking about 40 to 100 million. so your telling me if a company puts up 50 million to fund a project, and they cant deliver then they should just be nice and give the studio 80 million more because they couldn't do what they said they were going to with the money they were given?? if there is a moral obligation to the employees its not coming from the people giving out the funding, its coming from the people in the studio not doing what they were suppose to with the money they were given. you cant survive as a company if you just keep giving all your money away to be nice, if you do eventually its not going to be 100 layoffs here or there, its going to be 100,000 layoffs and no company to start new teams and spawn new companies.
Sry for the bad news folks hope all is well and perhaps you start your own company.
Damn rights my orgasms are real !
Seems like there's a lot of people who are just anti corporate. It's easy get why and I think with a lot of people under 45 (which I bet a good number of people on the forum are) have that mentality. I don't agree with lots of it, but I understand it and corporate greed is a real thing. Just go ask the US Government why most corporations don't pay the amount of tax they should (or any taxes at all).
But arshlevon and his example is completely spot on. That's how it works and Sony is no different. Something to keep in mind about Sony too is that even though the PS4 is doing very well overall, it might be sold at a loss since most home consoles were sold at losses previously. Sony also as an overall large company is in the middle of making cuts everywhere to return to being fully profitable. Hard to pay people when you don't make a profit. Driveclub is a mess and Gorilla Cambridge and SCE Liverpool were coming off of projects (I think) so you get that VFX model kicking in too.
It's going to get harder and harder to survive at a AAA studio for a while it seems. February was a bad month and March has turned into another bad month too. Seriously, good luck everyone!
Being a CG orientated forum, I see this comparison a lot. I'd like to remind people that most of these games studios that we're hearing about are not an outsourcer like VFX companies; they are usually internal studios within a larger entity. This is an important distinction in that whilst an outsourcer must work on a project-to-project basis as their services are demanded, an internal studio is perfectly capable of planning ahead and ensuring that there is an appropriate project for staff to move across to as and when their skills are required (there may always be one or two people who are lost in this transition). The only reason this doesn't happen is because of how these studios are managed, and often how it is externally managed.
The above is constantly spouted, yet does not take into account supply and demand. The audience for games has grown significantly since the 1990s across the world. So this I believe offsets your points above. Dont forget there was the cost of makimg the physical cartridges in the 90s.
Edit: Post job openings EU peoplez.
Yes, this is true. I didn't respond with it this time around though as I don't have my usual array of numbers to back myself up with! Some games now ship as many as 10 million copies - it's an economy of scale.
..because they live in the recruitment forums!
I agree that there are plenty of variables that keep the price point where it is, and surely consumer expectation is one of them. My point is mainly that gamers typically want even lower prices and if you raised the price to $70-80 for some of these high budget AAA games that require massive profit to be considered a success, people wouldn't buy.