Video game companies are bad | EA is looking at incorporating advertising within games

Photek wrote:
Qikz wrote:This is insane - don't buy out a company to give the people working there hope and then fire most of them. strawberry float that's awful.

Its awful but… they didn’t fire MOST of them or close to that.

Sorry that was hyperbole and also me wording things horrifically.

That's a hell of a lot of staff to layoff though.

JChalmers wrote:It's crazy, apparently Blizzard have cancelled their unannounced survival game too that they were working on.

As much as I'd love for all the staff to find new jobs in the industry, when you've seen over 5,000 jobs gone in the first month it's surely going to be tougher for them all to stay in the gaming industry?

It's their own fault. If they had just trained as hedge fund managers then they would be contributing to trickle down economics AND would have secure jobs.

Trillion dollar company folks.

Christ.

Photek wrote:Trillion dollar company folks.

Christ.

Correction: three trillion dollar company.

Cuttooth wrote:
Photek wrote:Trillion dollar company folks.

Christ.

Correction: three trillion dollar company.

Even strawberry floating worse.

Is a gaming bubble bursting at the moment? Its going to be hard to find employment for any dev in this climate all
Beccause some suits think its a good idea.

A burst has been on the cards for a while, most clearly recently with Spider-Man where Sony were complaining about tripling the budget but it not translating to tripling profits and people not really being able to even tell. Gaming has been pushing for bigger and flashier and prettier for so long and giving it the budget to match. But there's only so much money consumers have to give so there's a breaking point somewhere.

But if they can just make the next one shinier then SURELY this will be the one.

Live service games are similar with companies throwing everything into it in the hopes they get The One. But there's only do much time a single player can give so most die.

It's also fallout from the pandemic of games companies seeing people stuck at home for weeks at a time buying more games. But that trend couldn't continue when normalcy returned.

You know when you watch a AAA game’s credits and they go on for hours, and you wonder how they can have so many people involved?

Phil

The scary part of this is, at first when these layoffs were happening, you had other studios reaching out to offer affected staff new positions. Now, all those studios are closing, where are all these people going to go now? They will realistically need to leave the gaming industry I would imagine as it doesn’t seem to be getting any better.

We are at a point where surely all the big jumps in tech are just giving us diminishing returns? We will never get a jump like we did with 2D to 3D or even SD to HD, all the focus is now on 4k/8k 60fps/120fps and just bigger worlds that never really end up being all that better than ones we’ve had before.

If it continues as it is it’s going to be more unsustainable and there is a very real possibility we could see another gaming crash.

Gaming is more profitable than Hollywood and the music industry combined so this is bizarre.

https://gamerhub.co.uk/gaming-industry- ... industry/#

FatDaz wrote:Gaming is more profitable than Hollywood and the music industry combined so this is bizarre.

https://gamerhub.co.uk/gaming-industry- ... industry/#

Yes, but just think how much more profit can be made if you sack the plebs that are fouling up your company. :wub:

Sad truth is the profit in gaming is now live service or mobile pay to win trash.

FatDaz wrote:Gaming is more profitable than Hollywood and the music industry combined so this is bizarre.

https://gamerhub.co.uk/gaming-industry- ... industry/#

Staff retention is linked to meeting demand not to profitability, especially in America with weak labour laws and no unions.

If a profitable company can make more profit by reducing their staff they will take that option.

ITSMILNER wrote:The scary part of this is, at first when these layoffs were happening, you had other studios reaching out to offer affected staff new positions. Now, all those studios are closing, where are all these people going to go now? They will realistically need to leave the gaming industry I would imagine as it doesn’t seem to be getting any better.

We are at a point where surely all the big jumps in tech are just giving us diminishing returns? We will never get a jump like we did with 2D to 3D or even SD to HD, all the focus is now on 4k/8k 60fps/120fps and just bigger worlds that never really end up being all that better than ones we’ve had before.

If it continues as it is it’s going to be more unsustainable and there is a very real possibility we could see another gaming crash.

We've absolutely reached the point of diminishing returns.

I remember looking at a comparison of Resident Evil 2 for PS4 and the new upgraded PS5 version. I honestly couldn't have told you which was the graphically enhanced version from the screenshots. Graphics are important, but it's just one element of what makes a game imersive.

It feels like we are close to the peak of graphics. You could make out individual hairs on characters on the PS3. How much more detail do we need in our games? For me, the console lifecycles need to increase. It has made sense to release a new console every 7 years or so with the advancements of technology, but perhaps it's now time for this to change. Allow the cost of hardware to come down, bring more people in as consumers and give developers expanded userbases. Unfortunately, Sony and Microsoft are fearful of falling behind the other and this doesn't seem likely.

twitter.com/LadyDevann/status/1750532326172528770

Sometimes we might get caught in just looking at the numbers rather than the people; especially when sackings are becoming so frequent in gaming right now.

Lady Devann has been a pillar of the Fallout community, acting as a community manager for Microsoft's Bethesda arm. I don't personally know the lady but I do know, from reading Tweets from her and in other online articles, that she did such a great job in building community spirit for the franchise.

It's strawbin' sad when companies do this. I get that "it's just business" and "it's not personal" (although it kinda is) but, yeah, it sucks.

Seems like a massive domino effect at the moment. Not sure why? At a time when companies are spending billions to buy developers and the revenue is higher than ever. Was 2023 a bad year commercially? I’m curious why it’s become so prevalent these last 6 months or so.

Seeing the testimonies on twitter is heart breaking.

Interestingly, anyone in a Union was not let go.

Photek wrote:Seeing the testimonies on twitter is heart breaking.

Interestingly, anyone in a Union was not let go.

Have you got any links to discussions of that last part? That sounds very interesting.

FatDaz wrote:Seems like a massive domino effect at the moment. Not sure why? At a time when companies are spending billions to buy developers and the revenue is higher than ever. Was 2023 a bad year commercially? I’m curious why it’s become so prevalent these last 6 months or so.

I do wonder if it's partly that it's now being reported more. There was a story the other day about a company letting go... 30 staff. That doesn't really seem like a news story.

rinks wrote:I do wonder if it's partly that it's now being reported more. There was a story the other day about a company letting go... 30 staff. That doesn't really seem like a news story.

I think it's the pace and frequency of sackings increasing, rinks. As Milner posted earlier, in 2023 there were circa 10,500 sackings in the gaming industry and that was generally regarded as being "a bad year". By 25 January this year, there had been around 5,600 sackings already; over half the amount in the whole of that "bad year".

Sure, there probably has been more reporting of job losses than in the past; but, then again, the numbers have really shot up.

Video game companies are bad | EA is looking at incorporating advertising within games

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