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Spoken like a person who has never so much as sniffed what the world is like in "AAA Game Development". Imagine what a product like Facebook or Mac OS would lo

Spoken like a person who has never so much as sniffed what the world is like in "AAA Game Development". Imagine what a product like Facebook or Mac OS would look like, if after every major release, 2/3rds or the entire team were laid off, and a fresh batch of bright eager young talent was put in the chairs at a cheaper wage than the last crop, unaware of the doom riding on the horizon. Do you know why every EA franchise seems to tank over time, until it's eventually killed? Because the people who made it originally are gone, replaced by a bunch of guys who are told "Make it work like the last one, but the market says it needs to be more action-y, so do that too." The people on the new team weren't there the first time around, and so they wind up making a faded copy of a game trying to imitate the predecessor. Eventually the game loses all of the heart, passion, and competency that made it a great game in the first place. In the software world, we know the benefit of building a strong team. People learn to work with each other, and people learn to work with the product, knowing it inside and out. They're able to make the product the best it can be. That doesn't seem to matter in the world of games to publishers. They see the people who build the games as disposable fodder, because as you say there will always be a new generation whose greatest desire is to be a game developer. Sure. Publishers don't see layoffs as a problem. It's become part of their business model by now. But from where I sit, you can only disenfranchise so many people, until you've killed your golden goose who makes building the product for you possible in the first place. And this is directly why we've seen the rise of indie games. Every time they piss one of us off, we slowly start to realize we don't need them anymore. -- A laid of game developer, with a foreclosed home.

chc 12y ago
I think you might have misunderstood neves' post. You seem to largely agree with it.
- bittermang 12y ago
  "Layoffs aren't a problem." They are _the_ problem. See Dead Space's decline until it was given the ax. See the constant eb and tide of Need for Speed, as they play developer hot potato with the title. See the rambling incoherent mess that are Medal of Honor and Battlefield, the original marquee warfare titles, that don't even know what kind of game they want to try to imitate anymore because they forgot what they were. In my mind and experience, these can all be directly attributed to EA's policy of killing everyone at the end of the dev cycle. It's like every sequel is started from scratch, when you have to spin the new team up every time. But that's ok, because "when they get older and can't stand more this" they'll move on, right? You mean six to twenty-four months older, depending on when they joined the project. If they're lucky, they can parlay that experience in to signing on with another developer. But the constant layoffs mean that not only is your pool of competition for the job full of young bucks fresh out of Guildhall and Full Sail, but also full of desperate people just like you. People who felt safe enough in their so called tenure to dare to do things like try to start families or own homes, to live a life to accompany that dream. Lay offs and the ideal of living the dream of games are creating an over-saturation in the market that is going to have some dire consequences down the road. We already see this today in real time, as the money continues to consolidate at the top, and developers are left dead in the ditch. Terminal Reality. Lucas Arts. Vigil. Time Gate. Studios with long rich histories, full of talented people who made a lot of great games, many of whom I knew... gone. Stand here and tell me lay offs are not a problem, when I've had to listen to their pleas of what they're going to do now with no job, and a baby on the way. When another great game is taken from the world, because the focus groups didn't respond the right way, so you all can line up at the unemployment line. Stories and worlds we'll never be able to enjoy, because someone decided that they had enough of trying to live this way, and the dream died with their career. Explain to me how that is not going to have a long and damaging impact on this industry, when the people who make fun aren't having fun anymore.
  - ekianjo 12y ago
    > Explain to me how that is not going to have a long and damaging impact on this industry, when the people who make fun aren't having fun anymore. You always have the option to go indie if you can't stand the larger industry practices. But then you realize the benefits of being an employee even if you get laid off once in a while. Being Indie is even harder, and only a very small fraction of indie devs actually make money.
    - bittermang 12y ago
      And, just like undertaking a startup is not for everyone, going indie is not an option for many people coming from the AAA world. They may not have all of the pieces among themselves and their associates to actually ship something, let alone something that will sell.
      - ekianjo 12y ago
        Certainly. But even if you don't want to ship stuff on your own, you can become a freelancer and become a consultant for certain aspects of game design. I've met a number of people who ended up doing that.
  - watwut 12y ago
    "Being Indie is even harder, and only a very small fraction of indie devs actually make money." Only a fraction of big games makes money. Big game studios are falling right and left. The thing is, if you can develop games, you can develop other things too - and those jobs invariably offer much better conditions and pay.
    - ekianjo 12y ago
      > The thing is, if you can develop games, you can develop other things too - and those jobs invariably offer much better conditions and pay. Yeah, but I guess you miss something important: people make games because they enjoy doing that instead of social apps or server-side applications. And the fun factor also has value that is not always related to how much you make. I've seen the same thing in other industries: people with high tech skills quitting and going to a complete different occupation where they actually make less money, just because they see it as a more worthwhile pursuit.
ralphc 12y ago
I'm a rare consumer of video games. If I read this correctly, I should always try to get the first in a series and ignore the sequels?

chc 12y ago

I think you might have misunderstood neves' post. You seem to largely agree with it.

bittermang 12y ago
"Layoffs aren't a problem." They are _the_ problem. See Dead Space's decline until it was given the ax. See the constant eb and tide of Need for Speed, as they play developer hot potato with the title. See the rambling incoherent mess that are Medal of Honor and Battlefield, the original marquee warfare titles, that don't even know what kind of game they want to try to imitate anymore because they forgot what they were. In my mind and experience, these can all be directly attributed to EA's policy of killing everyone at the end of the dev cycle. It's like every sequel is started from scratch, when you have to spin the new team up every time. But that's ok, because "when they get older and can't stand more this" they'll move on, right? You mean six to twenty-four months older, depending on when they joined the project. If they're lucky, they can parlay that experience in to signing on with another developer. But the constant layoffs mean that not only is your pool of competition for the job full of young bucks fresh out of Guildhall and Full Sail, but also full of desperate people just like you. People who felt safe enough in their so called tenure to dare to do things like try to start families or own homes, to live a life to accompany that dream. Lay offs and the ideal of living the dream of games are creating an over-saturation in the market that is going to have some dire consequences down the road. We already see this today in real time, as the money continues to consolidate at the top, and developers are left dead in the ditch. Terminal Reality. Lucas Arts. Vigil. Time Gate. Studios with long rich histories, full of talented people who made a lot of great games, many of whom I knew... gone. Stand here and tell me lay offs are not a problem, when I've had to listen to their pleas of what they're going to do now with no job, and a baby on the way. When another great game is taken from the world, because the focus groups didn't respond the right way, so you all can line up at the unemployment line. Stories and worlds we'll never be able to enjoy, because someone decided that they had enough of trying to live this way, and the dream died with their career. Explain to me how that is not going to have a long and damaging impact on this industry, when the people who make fun aren't having fun anymore.
- ekianjo 12y ago
  > Explain to me how that is not going to have a long and damaging impact on this industry, when the people who make fun aren't having fun anymore. You always have the option to go indie if you can't stand the larger industry practices. But then you realize the benefits of being an employee even if you get laid off once in a while. Being Indie is even harder, and only a very small fraction of indie devs actually make money.
  - bittermang 12y ago
    And, just like undertaking a startup is not for everyone, going indie is not an option for many people coming from the AAA world. They may not have all of the pieces among themselves and their associates to actually ship something, let alone something that will sell.
    - ekianjo 12y ago
      Certainly. But even if you don't want to ship stuff on your own, you can become a freelancer and become a consultant for certain aspects of game design. I've met a number of people who ended up doing that.
- watwut 12y ago
  "Being Indie is even harder, and only a very small fraction of indie devs actually make money." Only a fraction of big games makes money. Big game studios are falling right and left. The thing is, if you can develop games, you can develop other things too - and those jobs invariably offer much better conditions and pay.
  - ekianjo 12y ago
    > The thing is, if you can develop games, you can develop other things too - and those jobs invariably offer much better conditions and pay. Yeah, but I guess you miss something important: people make games because they enjoy doing that instead of social apps or server-side applications. And the fun factor also has value that is not always related to how much you make. I've seen the same thing in other industries: people with high tech skills quitting and going to a complete different occupation where they actually make less money, just because they see it as a more worthwhile pursuit.

ralphc 12y ago

I'm a rare consumer of video games. If I read this correctly, I should always try to get the first in a series and ignore the sequels?