seforin , you seem to have a real downer on outsourcers/freelancers.
lots of freelance work is outsourced to production companies this days or smaller quality operations, so imagining that somehow this is all the fault of outsourcing is just plain silly.
work has always been outsourced to some degree anyway and speaking as a freelancer I hope it continues this way.
I know quite a few folks in the vfx industry who get regular paid work and if you are anyway good, you can make a good living, so its not that insecure really
seforin , you seem to have a real downer on outsourcers/freelancers.
lots of freelance work is outsourced to production companies this days or smaller quality operations, so imagining that somehow this is all the fault of outsourcing is just plain silly.
work has always been outsourced to some degree anyway and speaking as a freelancer I hope it continues this way.
I know quite a few folks in the vfx industry who get regular paid work and if you are anyway good, you can make a good living, so its not that insecure really
no I dont have a problem with freelancing with individuals //good teams, I have a problem with overseas jobs being taken by people here forcibly.
I rather not get into it and make people think im being incompetent or anything in this matter, just my personal experiences have just made me not feel friendly towards this kinda issue.
on the other hand if something was being done in a studio and needed a particular type of asset or prop or animation or mo-cap or something in that regard done that was to specialized for any 1 individual then yes freelance/outsource is fine
on the other hand where the entire game except for "technical"((Usually in which means fixing the broken models + textures + animations etc)) side of things is done by people in china/india and none of the core team get to touch anything from it , then I have a problem with it.
EA buys the competition, then shuts it down to save money. Sounds like a normal business tactic to me. Dirty...but that's how business goes. That's how ya stay on top I guess during a messy recession.
But sucks for all those effected. I dont think any of us should be discouraged by this. We all do art because we love it, dont let these corporations squash those dreams.
how are they forcibly taking stuff seforin?, business is about competition , so perhaps you should blame the managers who use low quality outsource companies. It can be a false economy in the end. 'But' they are not all bad anyway.
I find it hard to imagine an entire project being outsourced. your suggesting that they would outsource all of the modelling/texturing, including the main characters/environments, then the full time staff would spend all of their time fixing the assets?
generally stuff like background/less important assets are outsourced and it can be quite a thankless task sometimes.
I doubt very much the recent spate of layoff have much to do with outsourcing , more the greed of CEO's at certain companies, combined with the current recession and some industry restructuring
Anyway it wasn't my intention to derail this, good luck to anyone who was laid off recently.
hey guys , i'm kinda new here . Just wanted to point to this article , since we are talking on the subject of greed of certain CEO's at certain companies . I think that this is outright despicable.
how are they forcibly taking stuff seforin?, business is about competition , so perhaps you should blame the managers who use low quality outsource companies. It can be a false economy in the end. 'But' they are not all bad anyway.
I find it hard to imagine an entire project being outsourced. your suggesting that they would outsource all of the modelling/texturing, including the main characters/environments, then the full time staff would spend all of their time fixing the assets?
generally stuff like background/less important assets are outsourced and it can be quite a thankless task sometimes.
I doubt very much the recent spate of layoff have much to do with outsourcing , more the greed of CEO's at certain companies, combined with the current recession and some industry restructuring
Anyway it wasn't my intention to derail this, good luck to anyone who was laid off recently.
maybe so not all the major multi millon dollar corps but I have heard entire sections + departments where this happened, and ive been apart of this 2 times already. Im just ringing on personal experiences is all. Might not be 100 % true all over no, but this is what im fighting against everywhere Ive gone to every time. (Bad luck maybe? )
Edit: also ruz I want you to understand I in no way possible mean to make this sound biased to "freelancing" in which you and many others make a living off, far from it, I again am talking about foreign countrys and as you said "bad management" deciding to go to china/india/3rd world nation of a sort working on things I and other talented artists are more then capable of doing.
Hmm I feel Ive taken this thread completely off topic, so lets just both end this discussion here for now shall we?
Also we Cool Ruz? You still one of my Polycount fav's on here
we is cool seforin, I must confess I have never heard of entire sections being laid off due to outsourcing to china or whatever.
I actually think that it more likely that work will be outsourced to quality companies in the long run, if the chinese or indian companies are really bad, but TBH they will probably at some
point in the future hit the bar in terms of quality also, then we are all screwed:)
we is cool seforin, I must confess I have never heard of entire sections being laid off due to outsourcing to china or whatever.
I actually think that it more likely that work will be outsourced to quality companies in the long run, if the chinese or indian companies are really bad, but TBH they will probably at some
point in the future hit the bar in terms of quality also, then we are all screwed:)
Increasingly, the push at EA is to shift development to cheaper facilities. At the end of fiscal year 09, we expect to have 19 per cent of our employees in low-cost locations versus 13 per cent a year ago, EAs CFO Eric Brown announced in February this year.
EA believes the quality bar is high enough already. Don't expect those jobs to come back any time soon.
so yeah they are relocating wholesale. But my point with its daft to blame china or india, because this is the way capitalism works isn't it.
western businesses want to keep costs down and they probably don't care how they do it.
cheaper is better and if the quality is not so high they can ship out some experienced dudes to train them up.
This is not just happening in games though to be fair
I don't really see how this can be avoided and perhaps in a few years time we might have to go and work in places like china if we want to continue working.
I don't really see how this can be avoided and perhaps in a few years time we might have to go and work in places like china if we want to continue working.
yeah you may be right but it doesn't make it suck any less :-P
There is a lot to be said on Team Dynamics..and how it effects development. Some of the best games in the world are made because of the Synergy of the development team. ...maybe its just wishful thinking...hope everyone lands on their feet
EA buys the competition, then shuts it down to save money. Sounds like a normal business tactic to me. Dirty...but that's how business goes. That's how ya stay on top I guess during a messy recession.
But sucks for all those effected. I dont think any of us should be discouraged by this. We all do art because we love it, dont let these corporations squash those dreams.
Well to be honest EA and quite a few publishers have been taken advantage of in a great number of ways, their own fault really. It was pretty common for people to start studios with the aim of selling them to a publisher.
Here ya go pub the concept is proven and you can now print money by making sequels. The problem being people take the pubs money and also the talent and go start another studio.
Wash rinse repeat until either:
A) the publishers get wise to your scheme. They run out of money.
C) You've driven 16 of your multi-million dollar sports cars into various things including a brick wall, a swamp and or a gaggle of hobo's, just for fun.
Well to be honest EA and quite a few publishers have been taken advantage of in a great number of ways, their own fault really. It was pretty common for people to start studios with the aim of selling them to a publisher.
Here ya go pub the concept is proven and you can now print money by making sequels. The problem being people take the pubs money and also the talent and go start another studio.
Wash rinse repeat until either:
A) the publishers get wise to your scheme. They run out of money.
C) You've driven 16 of your multi-million dollar sports cars into various things including a brick wall, a swamp and or a gaggle of hobo's, just for fun.
Any Examples of guys who did this? Because I want to do it.
Any Examples of guys who did this? Because I want to do it.
Actually, Vig has something here. It's true that a lot of devs will get started up, and then the founders will intentionally look for a publisher to buy them out after their first or second title has shipped. The founders and original shareholders of an indie dev stand to make some fat bank off of the sale of their company to a major publisher. It's the best way to "cash out" of the indie development scene.
A large reason for this practice is the development of Intelectual Properties. You'll hear publishers squaking about developing new IPs all the time. But the publishers are rarely ever the ones to do this. Fresh IPs usually come from the indie developers. A lot of the time, a publisher will buy up an indie dev not for their studio, but just for their IPs.
So a great way to make some money off of indie development is to establish a small studio, create a decent IP, get a fanbase, and then start hinting to publishers that you are interested in selling. If your IP has enough of a following, they might snatch you up just for that.
Will Wright and a lot of other guys who owned companies on his list. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Electronic_Arts.
These are just the major acquisitions there are a lot of small fish studios that made bank when things where booming but the buy out wasn't always news worthy.
I'm sure there is a list of GT/Infogrames/Atari acquisitions floating around somewhere too. They fell victim to this scheme more than any publisher I can remember. When I was working for Atari we would get nearly weekly email updates about acquisitions, then weeks later or sometimes at the same time we would hear about so and so, founder of XYZ acquisition would leave and start a new company.
They quickly ran out of cash. They have a new CEO and a new plan and it seems to be working but holy crap did they raise a bunch of cash only to blow 99% of it on bad investments.
China is definitely there already when it comes to the level of artists. Main problem I encountered was communication, time difference, admin overhead, language barrier and different mentality.
Those can be serious problems when you require top notch artwork which is up to specs and done in a timely manner. Outsourcing ain't that easy to set up. It may work for some companies but not for others. The bigger the corp the easier however to set it up as you have the cash resources to start up an overseas studio and train people until they got it right.
Ironic though, I'm actually trying to get back to China to work there. With a western wage you can live there really nicely, as long as you enjoy Chinese food
Replies
lots of freelance work is outsourced to production companies this days or smaller quality operations, so imagining that somehow this is all the fault of outsourcing is just plain silly.
work has always been outsourced to some degree anyway and speaking as a freelancer I hope it continues this way.
I know quite a few folks in the vfx industry who get regular paid work and if you are anyway good, you can make a good living, so its not that insecure really
no I dont have a problem with freelancing with individuals //good teams, I have a problem with overseas jobs being taken by people here forcibly.
I rather not get into it and make people think im being incompetent or anything in this matter, just my personal experiences have just made me not feel friendly towards this kinda issue.
on the other hand if something was being done in a studio and needed a particular type of asset or prop or animation or mo-cap or something in that regard done that was to specialized for any 1 individual then yes freelance/outsource is fine
on the other hand where the entire game except for "technical"((Usually in which means fixing the broken models + textures + animations etc)) side of things is done by people in china/india and none of the core team get to touch anything from it , then I have a problem with it.
But sucks for all those effected. I dont think any of us should be discouraged by this. We all do art because we love it, dont let these corporations squash those dreams.
I find it hard to imagine an entire project being outsourced. your suggesting that they would outsource all of the modelling/texturing, including the main characters/environments, then the full time staff would spend all of their time fixing the assets?
generally stuff like background/less important assets are outsourced and it can be quite a thankless task sometimes.
I doubt very much the recent spate of layoff have much to do with outsourcing , more the greed of CEO's at certain companies, combined with the current recession and some industry restructuring
Anyway it wasn't my intention to derail this, good luck to anyone who was laid off recently.
http://www.marketrap.com/article/view_article/91171/outrageous-electronic-arts-inc-ceo-riccitello-buys-his-own-company-and-closes-it-down-two-years-later
maybe so not all the major multi millon dollar corps but I have heard entire sections + departments where this happened, and ive been apart of this 2 times already. Im just ringing on personal experiences is all. Might not be 100 % true all over no, but this is what im fighting against everywhere Ive gone to every time. (Bad luck maybe?
Edit: also ruz I want you to understand I in no way possible mean to make this sound biased to "freelancing" in which you and many others make a living off, far from it, I again am talking about foreign countrys and as you said "bad management" deciding to go to china/india/3rd world nation of a sort working on things I and other talented artists are more then capable of doing.
Hmm I feel Ive taken this thread completely off topic, so lets just both end this discussion here for now shall we?
Also we Cool Ruz? You still one of my Polycount fav's on here
BOO TO PANDEMIC BEING SHUT DOWN!
Sad about pandemic...shitty times...
I actually think that it more likely that work will be outsourced to quality companies in the long run, if the chinese or indian companies are really bad, but TBH they will probably at some
point in the future hit the bar in terms of quality also, then we are all screwed:)
http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/bcb/top-stories/2009/06/03/rough-play-vancouver-video-games
western businesses want to keep costs down and they probably don't care how they do it.
cheaper is better and if the quality is not so high they can ship out some experienced dudes to train them up.
This is not just happening in games though to be fair
I don't really see how this can be avoided and perhaps in a few years time we might have to go and work in places like china if we want to continue working.
yeah you may be right but it doesn't make it suck any less :-P
Here ya go pub the concept is proven and you can now print money by making sequels. The problem being people take the pubs money and also the talent and go start another studio.
Wash rinse repeat until either:
A) the publishers get wise to your scheme.
C) You've driven 16 of your multi-million dollar sports cars into various things including a brick wall, a swamp and or a gaggle of hobo's, just for fun.
Any Examples of guys who did this? Because I want to do it.
Actually, Vig has something here. It's true that a lot of devs will get started up, and then the founders will intentionally look for a publisher to buy them out after their first or second title has shipped. The founders and original shareholders of an indie dev stand to make some fat bank off of the sale of their company to a major publisher. It's the best way to "cash out" of the indie development scene.
A large reason for this practice is the development of Intelectual Properties. You'll hear publishers squaking about developing new IPs all the time. But the publishers are rarely ever the ones to do this. Fresh IPs usually come from the indie developers. A lot of the time, a publisher will buy up an indie dev not for their studio, but just for their IPs.
So a great way to make some money off of indie development is to establish a small studio, create a decent IP, get a fanbase, and then start hinting to publishers that you are interested in selling. If your IP has enough of a following, they might snatch you up just for that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Electronic_Arts.
These are just the major acquisitions there are a lot of small fish studios that made bank when things where booming but the buy out wasn't always news worthy.
I'm sure there is a list of GT/Infogrames/Atari acquisitions floating around somewhere too. They fell victim to this scheme more than any publisher I can remember. When I was working for Atari we would get nearly weekly email updates about acquisitions, then weeks later or sometimes at the same time we would hear about so and so, founder of XYZ acquisition would leave and start a new company.
They quickly ran out of cash. They have a new CEO and a new plan and it seems to be working but holy crap did they raise a bunch of cash only to blow 99% of it on bad investments.
Those can be serious problems when you require top notch artwork which is up to specs and done in a timely manner. Outsourcing ain't that easy to set up. It may work for some companies but not for others. The bigger the corp the easier however to set it up as you have the cash resources to start up an overseas studio and train people until they got it right.
Ironic though, I'm actually trying to get back to China to work there. With a western wage you can live there really nicely, as long as you enjoy Chinese food