2 ms·

I think the question is "Is there a better deal that's possible without bankrupting the studio?" When it comes to it, a lot of game companies are essentially ru

I think the question is "Is there a better deal that's possible without bankrupting the studio?" When it comes to it, a lot of game companies are essentially running like startups, but without the massive gluts of VC funding to give them runway. It's questionable how much small-to-mid-sized studios can increase costs without making it all the more risky that a single underperformance kills the studio. Obviously, this is less the case at somewhere like EA/Activision/2K/Epic, and you could make the case that if they can't treat the employees better, then the project doesn't deserve to exist.

AJ007 7y ago
I think there are a lot of poor analogies and comparisons being made to Hollywood. AAA linear game development accompanied by massive sustained growth in production budgets has made some segments of games look like Hollywood. Some segments of game development may continue to look like that. However, the mix of procedural content generation, user generated content, a strong skilled global talent market, and the US being of piece of a much larger global sales pie, makes it look nothing like Hollywood. Hollywood has traditional been very much an American cultural product dependent on American talent both on and off screen to produce. Games are neither. The boom-bust cycle of studios is of course another matter. Games-as-a-service may appear to be more suitable for unionization but the end result may just improve the economics of user generated content marketplaces.