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While I empathize with the message about layoffs, the tone of this article is too hyperbolic for my tastes, “Game development is in an extinction level event cr
by tyleo 3y ago
While I empathize with the message about layoffs, the tone of this article is too hyperbolic for my tastes, “Game development is in an extinction level event crisis, and it is entirely self inflicted.”
The games industry makes more money than music and movies combined. It’s no where close to extinction. It does have all the problems of any entertainment industry though where the creators love the product and put up with unfair wages, hours, and personalities at the cost of their own well being.
- Telemakhos 3y agoThe opening of the story really undercuts the hyperbole: > There are approximately 330,000 people who work in the video game industry. > 9,000 of them have been laid off in 2023. > 3,000 more of them have been laid off this month. You know, the one that's only half over. That's a four percent reduction. Meta cut thirteen percent in November 2022, and it still exists, as does Twitter/X, which has notoriously cut far more staff. A four percent reduction is probably just beginning to clear out some dead wood, not the sign of impending extinction.
- spenczar5 3y agoYes, it is quite literally not decimation, which would be a loss of 10%.
- empath-nirvana 3y agoYeah all the layoffs all across tech are 100% a result of raising interest rates, but everyone wants to frame it with whatever their political ideology is (oh, it's DEI, oh, it's capitalist profiteering, whatever). People didn't like inflation, but they loved inflated salaries. When people said "tackle inflation", they meant "lower prices", but didn't really consider that their salary increases were _also_ a result of inflation. When you pull money out of the economy, companies cut spending and the single largest expense of tech companies is "salaries", so of course they're going to cut salaries. The end result of this should all balance out, but in the mean time, everyone was mad about rising prices and didn't complain about rising salaries, and now they're mad about falling salaries and don't complain about falling prices. In conclusion, (too much) inflation is bad and we should stop doing that.
- Loughla 3y ago>falling prices. Where?
- empath-nirvana 3y agoCurrently mostly energy and things whose prices depend mostly on energy like airline tickets, but inflation _generally_ doesn't end with prices falling over all, just not going up any more.
- ajmurmann 3y agoYeah, prices should stop increasing quickly, but not fall. Nobody wants deflation.
- Calamitous 3y ago> Nobody wants deflation. I hear this argument regularly, but I’ve never understood why. Hyperinflation is historically a bad thing, but whenever I ask about deflation, I just get hand-waving about the Great Depression. Is there any reading that lays out the dangers of deflation?
- nikanj 3y agoDeflation throws on the breaks in the economy, because X is cheaper if you postpone it. With X representing essentially all economic activities like buying a new phone / hiring a programmer / going on vacation / etc This would be great for the environment, but absolutely terrible for the economy
- ajmurmann 3y agoTo add to this, it's also very hard to get out of as we've seen for decades in Japan. Some countries get stuck in recurring waves of inflation as well, as we set with Argentina, but that's arguably more sure to avoidable policy choices.
- 3y ago