What does Insomniac Games think they are doing?

They want customers to pay for specialty suits because they supposedly care about
getting people into the business and then they go and layoff hundreds of employees right
after they throw a party for them to show their "appreciation" for them. I would never pay
for those suits for that simple reason.

That was a really crappy thing for them to do. And what makes it even worse if that the suits are really ugly. Not only would I not pay the $5 for the suits I wouldn't even
pay five pennies for them. I seriously hope that they have learned their lesson and won't
do this ever again.

Wolverine

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What does Insomniac Games think they are doing?

I am not in the gaming industry so I may be way off but from what I have
heard about it, it is pretty cutthrout and layoffs like that are pretty
common.



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Blue White wrote to WOLVERINE <=-

I am not in the gaming industry so I may be way off but from what I
have heard about it, it is pretty cutthrout and layoffs like that are pretty common.

It's been years since I worked in the gaming industry, but at my
company, development and QA were tied together, so when a game was cut
loose, they'd cut the dev team and QA together. QA didn't move on to
another game.

The parent company was in England. I liked how they handled it. They
gave both teams a generous severance, wished them luck, and announced
the decision in a company meeting - then bought out the pub across the
street for the night to send them off.



... Infinitesimal gradations
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It's been years since I worked in the gaming industry, but at my
company, development and QA were tied together, so when a game was cut loose, they'd cut the dev team and QA together. QA didn't move on to
another game.

You'd think that if it was a good game they might want to keep the team together. Oh well. ;)



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Re: Layoffs
By: Blue White to WOLVERINE on Sun May 05 2024 08:22 am

I am not in the gaming industry so I may be way off but from what I have heard about it, it is pretty cutthrout and layoffs like that are pretty common.

What I have heard is the game industry is heading into a bad crisis.

Making an AAA game is very expensive. As in brutally expensive. If you release a game and it does not sell well, the studio goes kaput. This has lead to a number of risk reduction tactics, one of which is reusing old engines and code to death.

The problem? You can only reuse and add patches on an old engine for so long. After 20 years the whole thing becomes a bit unmaintanable and also very inefficient on your consumer's gaming gear.

It is reaching a point in which studios are going to get forced into taking massive investments in renewing their codebases. Some studios that tried and didn't manage to sell the games built on renewed engines have gone into a very bad shape, which is discouraging to the others.

So yeah, I am not surprised studios are taking random desperate actions at times.

--
gopher://gopher.richardfalken.com/1/richardfalken
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With regards to the reusing of resources, that doesn't sound like a bad idea, but there has been a lack of invation in gaming for a very long time. I can
go back into history and read up on games, point out titles or developers by name and what fantastic things they did, but I can't really do that today. My crowd nowadays is more used to memes about Todd Howard's lies or Billy Kotick existing. And don't get me started on the Dorito Pope.

I don't think the great ideas of the future are going to come out of big studios with tons of money, they'll come out of the smaller ones like they
did in the past, but I can't even speculate on who and when. Do you ever
feel like maybe everything has been done, already? Nowadays people are more
apt to look backwards for things to enjoy; old games, old shows -even old
music has old sold new music. It's gotta lead to a renaissance!


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
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On Tue, 7 May 2024 17:03:56 -0500, you wrote:

Making an AAA game is very expensive. As in brutally expensive. If you release a game and it does not sell well, the studio goes kaput. This
has lead to a number of risk reduction tactics, one of which is reusing
old engines and code to death.

Simple answer to that, stop making garbage. Stop rehashing the same CODs every single year. Do something new and intuitive. MW2 was a massive dump station, so they quickly made MW3 and called it an "upgrade" yet charged full price for it.

The problem? You can only reuse and add patches on an old engine for so long. After 20 years the whole thing becomes a bit unmaintanable and
also very inefficient on your consumer's gaming gear.

Agreed.

So yeah, I am not surprised studios are taking random desperate actions
at times.

I don't think it's a new thing. There have been plenty of big layoffs after AAA games are released. Most of these companies are fairly small, and when they take on a project of that grand of a scale, they have to hire a boatload of developers in order to make their deadlines. Once the deadlines are met, they scale back down.

Regards,
Nick

... Take my advice, I don't use it anyway.
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* Origin: _thePharcyde distribution system (Wisconsin) (21:1/200)

I don't think it's a new thing. There have been plenty of big layoffs
after AAA games are released. Most of these companies are fairly
small, and when they take on a project of that grand of a scale, they
have to hire a boatload of developers in order to make their
deadlines. Once the deadlines are met, they scale back down.

That actually describes just about any IT shop that works on temporary, large-scale projects, come to think of it.



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Blue White wrote to Accession <=-

I don't think it's a new thing. There have been plenty of big layoffs
after AAA games are released. Most of these companies are fairly
small, and when they take on a project of that grand of a scale, they
have to hire a boatload of developers in order to make their
deadlines. Once the deadlines are met, they scale back down.

That actually describes just about any IT shop that works on temporary, large-scale projects, come to think of it.

Which is fine as long as the premise is out in the open. It's when the companies manipulate the employees with "we're all family here" talk,
then lay off entire groups that it becomes disingenous.

It seems to be getting harder and harder to hire independent
contractors for those project-based tasks due to tax implications
(thinking you're hiring ICs to get around paying benefits) although as
long as you keep them under a year as a policy, companies seem to be Ok
with it. Otherwise, it'd be consistent with the definition to hire a
group to work on a specific project then leave after delivering the
project, but it's too tempting for management to consider contractors as
cheap replacements for salaried personnel.





... It is simply a matter of work
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On Wed, 8 May 2024 13:57:12 -0500, you wrote:

That actually describes just about any IT shop that works on temporary, large-scale projects, come to think of it.

It's not uncommon at all, really. Even construction trades do it. Need more manpower for some jobs, and others you don't.

Regards,
Nick

... Take my advice, I don't use it anyway.
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On 07 May 2024, Arelor said the following...

Re: Layoffs
By: Blue White to WOLVERINE on Sun May 05 2024 08:22 am

I am not in the gaming industry so I may be way off but from what I hav heard about it, it is pretty cutthrout and layoffs like that are pretty common.

What I have heard is the game industry is heading into a bad crisis.

The correllation between delivery excellence in product and internal management is never assured. Game Industry is not alone in this.

You will also see industries experiencing a boomm create their own future chaos and employment bust, mostly because leadership adds people to accelerate delivery without a longterm purpose for the newer highers. Those recently added folks were expendable by design.

Where employment rules make this hard on the firm, they will resort to indirect hires (contractors and outsourcing).

If Investment Bankers or Private Equity money got involved, the build-up and purges seem to quicker and more ruthless.

All that said, there is always in every industry opportunities for high performers. Even those sort of folk have to watch out for being caught up in positions that are structurally hopeless.

The purges always focus on perceived value. Great people who are stuck in roles that are beneath their pay grade get purged. Those over the head at work usually get the axe too. And sometimes the best value people get it "just because."

If you are working for a place that is purging and you don't have a special reason to stay, shift.

No one guarantees you will be able to stay in the same industry either, as often a slump affects too many people that opportunities dry up.

--- Steve K9ZW via SPOT BBS

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It seems to be getting harder and harder to hire independent
contractors for those project-based tasks due to tax implications
(thinking you're hiring ICs to get around paying benefits) although as
long as you keep them under a year as a policy, companies seem to be
Ok
with it. Otherwise, it'd be consistent with the definition to hire a
group to work on a specific project then leave after delivering the
project, but it's too tempting for management to consider contractors
as
cheap replacements for salaried personnel.

Here, the contractors usually have benefits through their companies
(which are often better than ours) and get paid more than us salaried personnel, so I don't begrudge the companies who use them for not paying benefits. I guess the contract employees somehow work out to be cheaper,
but some of them get paid so much I wonder.



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