So here’s a very simple boiled down summary of what’s been happening in the last ~15 years, and has gotten exponentially more extreme with every subsequent year:
Game doesn’t sell well = All the devs are laid off, CEO gets a new yacht.
Game sells really well = Most devs are laid off, CEO gets three yachts
There’s too many knock-on effects to list, but specifically in the videogames business:
Quality of games goes down.
Prices go up.
Burnout in the industry goes up.
Exploitation of foreign contractors goes up.
There’s a metric fuckton of environmental, economic, and societal damage being done as well but I’m not qualified enough to explain/express them. The effects of all this will be felt by out-of-the-loop-ers in the years and decades to come
The crisis is that the triple-A industry is starting to feel consumers loss of interest in them as indie devs continue to outshine them with every release
This seems to be the case of software engineering industry in general, I’m hoping to get out of this field entirely in the next few years it’s become a shit hole
So here’s a very simple boiled down summary of what’s been happening in the last ~15 years, and has gotten exponentially more extreme with every subsequent year:
Game doesn’t sell well = All the devs are laid off, CEO gets a new yacht.
Game sells really well = Most devs are laid off, CEO gets three yachts
There’s too many knock-on effects to list, but specifically in the videogames business: Quality of games goes down. Prices go up. Burnout in the industry goes up. Exploitation of foreign contractors goes up.
There’s a metric fuckton of environmental, economic, and societal damage being done as well but I’m not qualified enough to explain/express them. The effects of all this will be felt by out-of-the-loop-ers in the years and decades to come
That feels like the ugly norm for way more than 15 years. I’m surprised it’s called a crisis just now.
The crisis is that the triple-A industry is starting to feel consumers loss of interest in them as indie devs continue to outshine them with every release
lots of growth during covid that could not be sustained => many, many layoffs to prop up earning statistics in the following years.
Also even if it was only 15 years I’m struggling to understand the “crisis now” part.
This seems to be the case of software engineering industry in general, I’m hoping to get out of this field entirely in the next few years it’s become a shit hole