I'm still mad as hell about the Microsoft layoffs. It may be difficult for people to understand, but a functioning game development team that can actually ship products is a tremendously difficult thing to build. I can't even come up with an analogy for how difficult this is. It's like building an F1 race car in your garage; no, a rocket ship. No, it's like building a rocket ship that can do ballet. "Games are operas made of bridges" - Frank Lantz They had 4 years with multiple studios, multiple development teams, multiple at-bats, bites at the apple, whatever you want to call that. That is unfathomable luxury. We're talking hundreds of millions of dollars. Thousands of person-years. And they failed to make anything of it. What an incredible failure of leadership. To have all those resources and not be able to find product-market fit. To have all those chances and not be able to find a community. To have so many high-performing creatives and engineers and producers and QA and still not be able to make it happen. We know the people in the trenches could do their jobs. They shipped games. They won awards. That you could see all of these people and choose to abandon them rather than trying to work with them to make a better future, it's mind-boggling. Given that all of the cuts are happening under the Bethesda umbrella, I have to imagine that there are pieces of this that we can't see, whether the acquisition deal had a poison pill in it or this is just politics at the executive level. Hopefully some of the undetermined corporate heads that are going to roll are the people responsible for this state of affairs. But, it's an incredible squandering of opportunity. It's a huge waste of human potential. In the hundreds of people let go (I'm assuming, no numbers have been released), you could have formed dozens of start-up teams, made of proven professionals, people who know how to work together, people who know what good looks like, what it takes to ship. They're going to go out and make new studios. It's absurd that you'll spend billions of dollars to acquire these studios after they've been successful, but you're not willing to spend the 10's of millions now to nurture their development. This whole system is broken.
I agree but I can't be mad anymore. This is what Microsoft is, which is pretty much what public corporations are: money making machines. "If aliens visited the earth, they wouldn't think that humans were the highest form of life. They would probably negotiate directly with corporations, of which humans are just cells." - William Gibson, kindof a) Indie will always win and corporations will always kill creativity b) selling your company has consequences c) corporate short-term focus means constant IP and talent shortfall d) unions
Jeff Giron
3mo
I hope they all go and form studios. You know what will force change from these major companies? A lot of competition. So much competition with quality games made by quality talent that they’re either forced to awknowledge their mistakes and address their problems or fade off the radar as a prominent force in the industry.
Caleb Harwell
3mo
It's crazy how complex some people say game making is. I worked in VR, using Unreal to build "experiences" that were basically a series of small games. The kicker? We also built hardware that interfaced with the VR systems. I did a lot on my own, then eventually led a small/mid global team to help. It was never hugely difficult. I wonder how much of the issue with game dev is the beaurocracy, mismanagement, misappropriation, and just general lack of understanding of processes and procedures in other fields that would improve outcomes?
Kelly Boudreau
3mo
my dream in all of this corporate chaos is that those amazing people you list will indeed form their own studios (I know that's a big ask re: $$) and create interesting, innovative, engaging games that aren't forced to churn out the same ol same ol for the sake of stakeholders' bank accounts. That is my dream - that the corporate stranglehold on the games "industry" will explode and all the pieces will splinter off and make bigger (re: interesting) better games with heart and soul. - where the goal is to make a good living wage while creating great games ...
Michael Fitch one can stay bitter or one can move on and get better. How does complaining change the fate of you or others? Microsoft as a business has priorities that don't match your expectations. You need to write all this negativity down on paper. Then have a ceremonial moving on ceremony and burn that paper. Then never look back or discuss it.
Carlo Delallana
3mo
What's worse than a broken system are those who enable it. Systems can be improved or abandoned for something better. When the people who ultimately have the authority to make change decide to hold on to the broken system then the only reason I can think of is that the broken system benefits them.
Sarah Thomson
3mo
It's nice to see people getting pissed off- about time. I'm seeing the first stages of leveraging that anger into action. We are a group of talented, passionate people- and we have power if we unite in the right ways. Time for change.
Form workers co-ops. Start unions. Change your perspective.
My understanding is that any company built with a C-suite and shareholders is built to deliver growth, every quarter, forever, which is crazy and completely unsustainable, and only benefits those in charge. A game like Hi-Fi Rush was by all accounts a modest success, and that SHOULD be enough. But it's clearly not... any studio set up that way is not allowed to have minor ambitions, or to find acceptance and happiness in minor growth. The only solution I can see is to have more studios that are built and which operate privately and without shareholder influence. Studios like this can still be profitable and still please their investors, but on the studio's own terms. Here's hoping we see a lot more of this in the coming years.