Gama article: "Game Developer Layoffs The Real Story"
polycounter lvl 10
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3901/game_developer_layoffs_the_real_.php
Best of luck for affected folks.
Then reality set in. "You realize that EA owns a lot of the studios and they're still laying people off," he says. "Suddenly, your options are fewer. I even tried calling some of the contacts EA handed us when we left, but when I started getting turndowns, it hit me -- this is going to be more difficult than I thought."
Best of luck for affected folks.
Replies
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I know a few LDs that have gotten jobs recently, so maybe the industry is slowly recovering.
They are doing it to appease their stockholders, because at the end of the day, those are the people who foot the bill and are looking to make their money back. They aren't employing people to be nice - economics doesn't work that way.
"fiscally rooted decision that keeps MGS on its growth plan" basically means "cutting expenses so our revenue looks like profit." Because trending like you're losing money is a surefire way to turn off investors, which means shutting off your funding, which means killing the company, which means you're laying everyone off, not just the team for the Wii version of GunTits 4.
I've always assumed, perhaps falsely, that the reason so many layoffs take place at christmas is that it coincides nicely with the end of the fiscal year - projects are finished, so you won't hurt production/crunch morale, huge christmas profits are coming in, and then you have a Q4 riding on continued sales and a tremendous drop in overhead that makes it look like you did really well for 2 quarters instead of just Q3. I think it's bullshit number-fudging that hurts a lot of people, but I could be misunderstanding the motives behind december layoffs.
Hell yes! I would have given my left nut to be involved with Aliens: Colonial Marines. Sometimes the work really is its own reward.
As to the article, there was a lot of interesting things in it. I think one of the major issues it highlights is the destructive nature of the annual cycle in the games industry. As cynical as it is, layoffs at the end of the year really are a number-crunching game. That's not a theory, that is actually what's happening. Companies are terminating employees just to make their numbers look consistently solid for the year.
And I personally feel that doing business like this is crap. Say what you will about the bottom line, preserving and nurturing talent and loyalty in the workforce is more important. Having an annual cycle that encourages breaking up teams just to bolster a fiscal report is unnacceptable. There are companies in this industry that dont' participate in such practices. And they are able to get by just fine.
If this is you, have your Jump-to-Conclusions mat ready or garden hose if you prefer, its your call.
I can't speak for other stock markets around the world, but getting yourself out of the US dollar that is about to get nailed with massive inflation because of all these bailouts is not an "uneducated" move at all...unless you are selling to sit on US cash...then yeah that is stupid. But once lending begins again, watch out...we are going to be right back to $4/gallon & beyond in no time.
Even if you are in industries turning profits, you are actually losing if hyperinflation happens vs being in countries that are actually creditors...not debtors like us.
US version of the Weimar Republic cometh...one day...
Too true. At the web company I work at, half the middle management got slashed recently. I'm actually a little
QFT! If only those greedy companies wernt interested in being profitable everything would be just peachy. We should just have the government make all our video games. I hear that Jack Thompson fellow is looking for a job, maybe we could put him in charge of the National Department of Patriotic Gaming Devices Agency (NDoPGDA).
But on a serious note, it sounds like a lot of these jobs arnt coming back any time soon
And I think that's what is most frightening about the recent shakeup. If it was just the annual cycle of dropping excess workforce after a big release, than that's one thing. As unfortunate as that practice is, it's hardly anything new. No, what's new is that whole studios are being shuttered. That's what's new. And with a lot of existing companies folding up shop, that limits the potential job market for all those recently unemployed game designers, artists, and programmers.
As someone else mentioned earlier, there are a considerable number of opportunities available, its just that most of them aren't in the traditional game design arena. There's a lot of jobs for mobile, casual, and web game developers. Those markets are booming at the moment, and could actually benefit from an influx of solid talent. But of course, most experienced game artists aren't going to take such efforts as seriously. It is a bit degrading to step back from normal-mapped multi-million sculpted meshes down to the sub-500 poly level with a single diffuse map.
But hey, in these lean times, sometimes you got to take the work you can get.
fuck that. if someone told me my studio was being closed after a project, and then still expected me to put in those kind of hours to hit their deadlines, i'd tell them to fuck themselves. and probably try to incite the rest of the team to come out of crunch mode.
companies need to realise they need the workforce just as much as the workforce needs jobs.
feh, if you're LUCKY enough to be working on a 3d game in mobile at all... 3 years in mobile and I've done 1 3d game and nothing is over 100 tris. You'll be working on board games and card games in pixel art, stuck in a neverending cycle of backfill and remakes... When I started one of the first games I worked on was euchre. 3 years later... I'm working on another euchre. It's a job for recent grads to get their feet wet. I want out so bad cause I'm not learning anything new anymore.
Mobile has been great and all.. but in 5 years what will I have done and left as an artistic legacy? where will my portfolio be, what can I say I've done? "An impressive array of the same old card games. For about 3000 different cellphones."
But like you said... I'm working, can't complain... too much
QFT!!
Unionize.
"Down with the blackleg, all workers unite" There is Power in a Union.
The street dogs did a pretty good version of Billy Braggs song I think its 99 cents on i-tunes. Load it up, get fired up and then do absolutely nothing because most of have jobs and aren't being abused... For the few that are, I hope the rest of us apathetic bastards get around to helping you guys out, but don't count on us, we're a sorry bunch of douche bags who only care about their own low wages =P
But imagine if...
Spark
"Down with the blackleg, all workers unite" Billy Bragg - 1988
"Let's fight the Right Wing, all workers unite" Street Dogs - 2006 (check out who they gave credit to for songwriting)
If you want to get crazy technical...
"Down with the traitors, up with the stars" George F. Root - 1862
put the power into the hands of the employees instead of the employers.
that way you'll be twisting the big honcho's legs in no time.
Yeah cause that worked out really well for the auto industry didn't it?
and don't blame the fall of the car industry on the union. thats just retarded execs who doesn't know back from front what people are actually buying, spending billions on developing expensive gas guzzling SUVs.
Sooooo basically, economic crisis + resulting decreased investor interest = larger publishers/devs cull staff numbers to be more fiscally efficient? (Particularly ones with shareholders to answer to).
I've not heard much about how the current economic climate is affecting smaller, privately owned studios.
An excellent point. It would be very interesting to see how the smaller independent companies are faring in these turbulent times. We've heard a lot from the bigger companies, but the smaller companies have generally been keeping mum.
Of course, part of that is just the fact that the smaller companies aren't always publicly traded. (which means that they don't have to release their financial information to a broad audience) Also, most of them don't have big PR departments, and don't often get hit up for interviews.
I'd love to be a fly on the wall over at Valve right about now...
But Valve is very far away to what Bungie and Nintendo do with all the cash:
The biggest thing standing in the way is that game developers are scattered to the four corners of the Earth. People can't pop around between gigs because of that, which kind of cripples the idea (as well as operational efficiency for the industry as a whole).
The people who play our games become pretty loyal fans and because we crank out 2 games a year we keep them pretty happy. In 08 we expanded production to include a casual downloadable game that will be produced 2-3 times a year in between our main launches. I can't talk about future plans but I'm excited about whats coming and I like working here.
There's another advantage the down turn has given us, and that's our price point and back catalog of games. People who might hold off on buying the 50- 60.00 game might instead pick up a 20. If they like what they play they have a bunch of other cheap games they can pick up in the same vein.
SO for us, we're in a pretty good position to ride this thing out, but they've always run a tight ship.
I've always believed that a company can sustain itself if it puts out quality titles and doesn't stretch itself too thin. There is no reason to have operating costs constantly in the red and pray for a good return. When has running things in debt, and hope to gain a profit become a standard business model (across many industries)? The creative companies and individuals will be the ones who come out on top at the end of this.
Back to the grind, gotta find a job
We appear to be doing quite well. Still have a lot of projects going at the moment.
We heard about Pandemic Australia shutting down just this week, terrible for them. They're just down the road from us so we have the chance to recruit some top quality staff out of this. Great for us, and good we can give some people jobs too.
trendy windows.
I hope they are suffering now
I didn't get the job
The industry is cutting the fat and outsourcing more. Most of the outsourcing is going to asia where the cost of living is low and there are a lot of bodies who are happy to make anything you give them. Some of the publishers are getting a bit smarter and sharing these assets between projects - double whammy.
I know the cutting the fat term is not nice... but a lot of companies threw loads of people at next gen development rather than developing nice pipelines etc. Now we're forced to refine.
imo.
I have enough money and resources where if I don't find a job, I'll just duke it out and make something on my own. The past month and a half I've been enjoying doing the artwork I want to do when I want to do it.
(and staying up till 7am and sleeping till 4pm...)