Submitted 1 year ago by dustyData@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvfEyRtdL-A
Same title as the video. Game dev writer Alanah Pierce offers her POV on the recent layoffs from Epic Games.
Alanah is a great creator. She worked for IGN as a reporter for years, then at Funhaus as a host/editor, and finally broke into games writing, which was her goal for years. She also hosts a gaming cross discipline podcast with gaming actors/muscians/devs.
Shes seen the industry from every angle. Its telling that her conclusion is “this is fucked.”
I don’t think you need that much insight to see that the whole institution is fucked.
What is even the point, really? Maybe I’m an outlier but I don’t feel like the AAA gaming industry provides enough good to warrant all the crap they put their workers through, and the way the sentient wallets customers are treated.
The point is to make as much money as possible while paying the workers as little as is possible. Same as it ever was.
They could always pay us more, but we’re just supposed to be happy they aren’t sending the Pinkertons to shoot our women and children anymore, I guess?
She’s been great for a long time. One of the few people with public comments on the industry that has a really great intuitive grasp on the business side of it.
I mean honestly it makes sense. If we assume that the average game dev is similar to the average “hardcore” gamer, then we can only assume that they’re toxic little shits 😆
She has a great deal of respect for the devs/writers/artists/workers. Its the system itself and the execs that are fucked. It’s the toxic atmosphere they cultivate to keep churn high so profits stay high. They build a bad place that attracts bad people that stay and good people that should leave.
Give the video a watch. It’s a very candid take from someone versed in all the layers of the field.
It's impossible to get people to stop buying AAA games, but please stop buying AAA games.
I would actually just settle for not pre ordering AAA games as a good place to start.
This I do not understand. I am sure a ton of people pre-ordered Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty even though we know how it launched. (And I love the game, I followed all the news, but even I could wait for a fckin day to wait for the reviews)
Indie stuff is way more interesting anyway, but I could never get my old lan party friends to look at them.
For me, the visuals are a huge part of gaming, i simply don’t like the style of most indie games gonfor. The “artsy” stylistic graphics, the 80’s inspired pixel graphics, the simple polygon graphic is all indie games seem to choose between these days, and in personally hate looking at it.
What defines AAA?
Like, is baldurs gate AAA?
Or just anything from EA, Ubisoft, etc.?
Larian is an unusual case. It's indie but it's huge. They aren't funded by or marketing through a bigger publishing company so IMO that's still indie. But they're hundreds of people so not really small, and BG3 can by all means be considered a AAA game because the difference in quality and scale is indistinguishable from AAA published games.
Id say BG3 probably falls into "III" or perhaps AA if you count Larian as such, they certainly didnt have a large marketing campaign on par with AAA.
I still play AAA games occasionally, but I’ve enjoyed gaming so much more since I got more selective with them.
ToTK was worthwhile, but even for the newest entry in my favorite series since childhood, (from a developer with a pretty good track record for their games) I still waited a week to see if any launch bugs needed to be ironed out.
I can’t even remember the last AAA game I bought before that.
Profit margin driven companies backed by a capitalist society where infinite growth is deemed viable sucks*
Also layoffs temporarily raise the stock price, it’s probably more costly in the long run… but who cares as long as the numbers go up for a bit and everyone gets bonuses.
who cares as long as the numbers go up for a bit
Especially when you’re mostly stock compensated. Just make the numbers go up long enough to see your share prices sore, browse around for a different job in the meantime. Sell your stocks at a high, exit the company as it implodes behind you. Rinse and repeat.
who cares as long as the numbers go up for a bit
Ironically, that’s the motivation with which I play many games.
cough capita cough lism cough
How could we have expected this was going to happen if we made it a law companies are obligated to do everything in their power to increase profits!
Form a Professional Game Developers Union.
Indie game development works well. It’s really just that large companies suck in video games as well as all other areas, so not really news.
will anybody think of the C-suite!!! How will they be able to face their other rich friends if they don’t wage-steal to ensure they hit record profits quarter after quarter???
It’s always sucked - at least with large companies.
Nope. All companies started in the 90s as groups of gamerbros. When they started to make loads of money and had to get managers cause they didnt want to do management was when it started to go down.
That’s really not at all what happened. Gaming development goes back to the 70s and gamerbro culture has almost nothing to do with history of game dev, that’s a more recent thing that happened with DOTA and the like.
On a different note I just watched a very similar video that was recommended to me by a pretty much unknown creator about the importance of indie developers and pretty much everything Alanah says here shows how important they really are. To imagine where we would be without tiny indies breaking the mold… it sends a shudder down my spine. ‘Indies > AAA’ has been my way to go for many years, now that I think about it.
It absolutely sucks, but many of the standard calls of “it’s always been shit” and “boycott” aren’t really doing anything outside of virtue signalling or trying to hold a moral view to a company that couldn’t give a fuck about the 0.001% of people that action these views.
Regarding software engineering, I’ve often said that “if the games industry doesn’t unionise, there’s no hope for the rest of the tech industry”, and I still stand by that. While there are obvious complications in forming unions in a global market, I truly believe that the US is often the barrier towards workers rights. If American workers can unionise, you can bet that those in Europe would do so too.
Too many devs think they’re above unionizing. It’s going to be very difficult to pull off. They won’t be interested until it’s too late.
Bottom line is that tech is chock full of greedy fucking people who only care about what they’re getting paid this year.
I don’t think the gaming industry could lead on this issue though. It’s tech companies like FAANG that really lead the market and that’s where people refuse to organize.
I couldn’t agree more. I’m a software engineer at a FAANG company, and the split is very apparent. There are either people that would love to see a union (but know their employer would happily fire 100k+ people for even trying it), alongside people that believe unions are the devil. There was a shift in the last 12 months due to the mass layoffs and the nature of how someone with a decade or more of loyal work can be locked out and fired immediately without so much as a “goodbye”, but there is still a huge number of people that view tech as a “survival of the fittest” thing. I work with some people that even love the idea of URA and the “weakest” people in the team losing their jobs.
Game dev is an interesting thing, though. For decades now, even smaller companies (at the time) like Rare were built from the mentality that you cannot just work 50 hours a week to make a good game, or that once a release is complete, you move on to your next gig. That culture has existed throughout corporate, not just in tech, which is why I’m surprised that there hasn’t been a true effort towards unionising industry-wide. Hell, I would’ve thought that the Activision issues from a while ago would have spurred something too.
Video game workers are starting to unionise in France, finally.
The liberal culture of the people working there didn’t help.
I’m British, so I don’t have a great understanding of French law, but do they have unions in the same way, or are they similar to works councils in Germany? I know French law is protective of workers, so wonder if it’s as divisive as it would be in the West.
These companies have always used the call center style of employment.
Yeah having worked in a call center for 3 years I always find it amusing when people think these issues are related to a certain industry when in reality it’s just the core essence of capitalism calling for infinite growth in a finite market
The solution is not for you to show contempt or lack of empathy to these people, it’s for them and you to demand better treatment from the owners and executives.
The system is fucked and it is skewed wildly against anyone who is not at the top.
I don’t think you realize that video game developers and other related jobs are pretty badly compensated for the job they’re doing. Those devs are among the most skilled ones and could probably earn 5 or 10x what they’re getting now by going to work at some FAANG or big banks. They’re working here because they love video games and want to create something fun, so it sucks when you just get fired like that.
Also, it’s not because you’ve had it worse that their situation is okay, it’s fairly easy to always find a worse situation and just dismiss any issue.
Support independent developers! Stop buying AAA.
Sanctus@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I don’t know how to say this but corporations suck. They turn human spirit into profits and excrement. Anything led by a corporation will inevitably suck if it doesn’t right off the bat.
moody@lemmings.world 1 year ago
The stock market has to be one of the biggest mistakes we’ve made as human beings.
PeterPoopshit@lemmy.world 1 year ago
What even is the point? The stock market is just a ticking time bomb and when it fucks up, people lose their job and their house and anything else thats sustained by income. The existence of the stock market is a crime against humanity. You can’t even blame a single dictator for what happens to people when it crashes.
Haui@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
Are there any tech co-ops or 100% employee owned companies? Could be a system forward.
Sanctus@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I’m sure there are. But, at least in the states, many tech people are also right-leaning libertarians. Co-ops are unpopular with them because they want to be the kings in the castle, not equal with their peers.