Why game developers keep getting laid off

Tuism

A sobering look at the state of affairs in AAA development in the holy land of big studios.

http://kotaku.com/why-game-developers-keep-getting-laid-off-1583192249

The basic gist is that game dev cycles create layoff and hiring cycles, and many people working in the industry uproot their lives and families regularly because of it.
It sounds rather scary :/

The article offers that indie development is a kind of a counter against that trend.

I know we're mostly far Far FAR from AAA in our circumstances, but I suspect that game development lifecycles are applicable no matter the size of the studio. True or not true?

Elyaradine

The thing about a small team is that you're much more likely to be a team of generalists. Your typical local artist does concept art, illustration, sprites, 3D, animation, fx, UI design, and everything else visual. So while the dev cycle still exists (you concept stuff, you build it, you iterate and add polish), because almost everyone can do almost everything, laying people off because of dev cycles is quite a bit rarer here as far as I know.

People still join up and leave all of the time, but that's more about personal preference, whether they fit well with the team, whether they're doing good work, and not so much because of the system.

I imagine that if/as we grow bigger, we'll be hiring more specialised positions (e.g. our recently hiring a writer and a concept artist), and this dev cycle thing may be more of an issue. You can streamline it though, so that your studio is working on multiple productions at once, so that when some of the studio is busy trying to ship a game (sticking in achievements, fixing bugs, trying to figure out wtf a Unity update just broke), the other part of your team that is useless at this point (like concept artists) would ideally be working on the next project. I don't know that anyone in the country's at that point though, and I'm also not entirely sure that it's desirable. Bigger doesn't always mean better. It may be better business to have a smaller team that you know and trust, than to have a bigger team that increases your risk in multiple ways.

Tuism

Yeah the most obvious thing that occurred to me while reading the article was "why didn't they have multiple projects that could share the same people's skills at different points in the project lifecycle?" It just sounds like bad management to me.

Then I look at the companies I've worked for and realise that bad management is the norm, and that giants are profitable more on reputation than on efficiency.

edg3

Heh, didn't see this when I posted on BlakShip's post - but I feel both threads are considering the same subset of issues in the game industry.

Elyaradine said:

You can streamline it though, so that your studio is working on multiple productions at once, so that when some of the studio is busy trying to ship a game (sticking in achievements, fixing bugs, trying to figure out wtf a Unity update just broke), the other part of your team that is useless at this point (like concept artists) would ideally be working on the next project. I don't know that anyone in the country's at that point though[...]

Devil's Advocate: why aren't the large international companies following this model then? I personally feel like that model (while being ideal) isn't something that we will see in the games industry (as the norm) any time soon.

Scratch17

@edg3 I think the hire/fire cycle that big development houses go through might just be the first of a few big 'norms' amongst the AAAs. I mean, the industry has never been as big as it's been now, and it'll only keep expanding as long as people keep flocking to work in the industry, despite horrible working conditions, long hours, crappy pay, etc..

The recent tendency of people coming from a AAA background starting their own studios, with the idea of still making games without all the horrible conditions that go with the AAA industry, is proof that there's something wrong with the system. Perhaps it's just a shift the industry is going through, and with time, things like a pre-production cycle (to keep concept artists and script writers occupied) might become more common practice.

@Tuism, You're right, it does sound like bad management, but like I said, given that the industry is experiencing such massive growth, I think that the concept of managing the design and development of a game is still kind of new. Nobody knows how to do it properly, because nobody has done work like this on such a massive scale before. There's no "how-to" for managing the production of games because it's still suck a new industry. I dunno, I'm just spit-balling now.

dislekcia

edg3 said:

Devil's Advocate: why aren't the large international companies following this model then? I personally feel like that model (while being ideal) isn't something that we will see in the games industry (as the norm) any time soon.

Probably because making games isn't a production line process. It's not like all games progress along a set of required skills like a car body: You don't start with design, do all the programming, shunt the game over to music for a while, pass it on to art, throw it at the cutscene people, have a writer come in and screw some stuff together, then hand it to marketing to make it sell. Every game is different, depending on the problems it's addressing, but there do seem to be a core of skills that are simply always active on a game - code and design mostly.

I'd argue that's very similar to the way that Hollywood spins up teams to produce films, except that the film process is more concretely understood and unions exist to push for fairer conditions for workers in that loop. One of the biggest problems seems to be that people who want to make games aren't willing to see themselves as workers - they consider themselves management because of their high-tech skillset. Is it any wonder that management tends to be crap in an industry where it's undervalued AND experienced people are constantly leaving because the money is better elsewhere that's less hit-driven?

edg3

dislekcia said:

edg3 said:

Devil's Advocate: why aren't the large international companies following this model then? I personally feel like that model (while being ideal) isn't something that we will see in the games industry (as the norm) any time soon.

Probably because making games isn't a production line process. It's not like all games progress along a set of required skills like a car body: You don't start with design, do all the programming, shunt the game over to music for a while, pass it on to art, throw it at the cutscene people, have a writer come in and screw some stuff together, then hand it to marketing to make it sell. Every game is different, depending on the problems it's addressing, but there do seem to be a core of skills that are simply always active on a game - code and design mostly.

Then you cannot say local development houses will eventually reach that stage where they can do this? If it worked, other people would be doing it. Which was the point I was trying to get across.

Elyaradine

@edge: Actually, I think all of the forward-thinking ones are. Either they have multiple projects going at different stages of production (Blizzard, Valve), or they work on games as a service where DLC is pretty much the lower-risk "next project" for the art team, while the programming team works on bugs and patches and such.

There are of course AAA studios that are tied to publishers that don't work this way, but my feeling is that those publishers aren't invested in these studios long-term, and are pretty much doing games on a per-project basis, awaiting the financial returns of the current project before being willing to sign them up for the next one. And you can't pay people to go into pre-production on your next project when you haven't been given a budget for the next project.

--
I think that some parallels can be made with the animation/vfx industry, in terms of business, because they're similar, but with the animation/vfx industry being more mature. The studios that are basically outsource, even the ones that are some of the best in the world, because they're working contract-to-contract, project-to-project, have regular lay-offs or are forced to close. (Technically it's also because working contract-to-contract you're competing with hundreds of new studios popping up all over the world -- including South Africa! ^_^ - that have significantly lower living costs or offer subsidies.) But the successful ones that develop their own IP in-house, have multiple productions going on at once. They have the confidence (or capital?) to invest in their long-term future.

dislekcia

edg3 said:

Then you cannot say local development houses will eventually reach that stage where they can do this? If it worked, other people would be doing it. Which was the point I was trying to get across.

What is the "this" that I have apparently said local development houses will be able to do? Am confuse.

EvanGreenwood

@Elyaradine So I don't know the staff turnover of any of the big AAA publishers/studios...

But the approach that Ubisoft take in their games seems suited to lower staff turnover. In that many of Ubisoft's big recent projects are open-worldish games with the same sorts of quest structures, similar scope of content, similar narrative delivery, similar art styles and many of their titles have become franchises that receive sequels regularly.

For all I know Ubisoft currently have a terrifyingly high staff turnover, but the way they manage their franchises seems conducive to this not being the case. I'm wondering if you have more insight into this (or if I'm missing the real determining factors in retaining staff).

Tuism

From the article in OP:

Over the past few years, some game companies have figured out how to avoid layoff cycles. One Ubisoft Montreal employee reached out to assure me that in ten years at the studio, he's never seen layoffs. (He estimated that the studio employs a whopping 2,700 people, which by Ubisoft's criteria is enough to make about three games.)P

So yeah I think your observations are spot on, I've also noticed that Ubi has been pushing out a lot of franchise stuff which must obviously be great for continuity of staff. Though it didn't help them supporting innovative titles like AC: Recollection - great mechanics with a safe IP. It's still a sore spot for me against Ubi that they canned it :(

Elyaradine

I'm afraid I don't know much about Ubisoft; I've only interacted with one person who used to work for one of their studios, and he had a handful of horror stories (although they weren't anything to do with layoffs).

kidult

I know a guy at Ubisoft Romania and he has nothing but good things to say of his studio. He hasnt been there for such a long time though. Their release schedule looks like a good...ish balance of keeping share holders happy and having overlapping projects to retain staff.