Jason Schreier (Bloomberg): It Sucks to Work in the Video-Game Industry Right Now

It sucks to work in any industry right now, right?

Some interesting content here:

> At the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco earlier this month, I was talking to a grizzled veteran who has been working in games since the 1990s. He pointed out that the industry always has its ups and downs, and that this current period is reminiscent of the global recession in 2008. But there’s one key difference: the scale.
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> I’ve heard countless horror stories over the last few months. One veteran composer with three decades of experience told PC Gamer yesterday that he’s gotten a single interview in the last year. Some have shared stories with me about coming close to securing new jobs only to see those positions evaporate because that company had a mass layoff.

He has been saying that forever. Has it ever been good to work in video games?

No shit, Sherlock.

I was a week into school for game development when I got a call for an interview for another job. I had a choice, either continue with school, or take the job

I took the job, seems like I made the right choice.

Can someone post article w/o paywall

For most companies. The Japanese companies like Capcom, Nintendo and Square Enix have been pretty fine. Nintendo especially has a great reputation for workers that extends to their overseas studios. Even Sony Japan recently raised their base pay although every else for Sony has been pretty awful.

Video games became too popular during the pandemic and now the industry is paying for it.

Life just sucks. Hope the midterms can provide relief. Vote blue no matter who. That’s the only way this American nightmare ends.

It really does feel like the American AAA market is going to crash.

Budgets are becoming so bloated and large, yet some AAA games are being beaten by indie games. So even if your game performs well (Battlefield 6), you can still get laid off…

It just sucks rn in general

Biscially, many industries are fucked:

covid pandemic(supply chain issue, scalpers and e.t.c)-> tariffs -> AI driven components cost rise (ram, ssd, cpu, gpu and even cooling to numbers of data centers) -> Iran war driven energy price rise (cause shipment price rise)-> next? who knows, maybe we will see these GPU vendors and consoles vendors provide rent and cloud solutions.

Almost all consumer electronics become more expansive. console /pc /laptop /mobile phones’ price already gets some rises or lower specs (less ram, storage, bring back old tech solution)

Another really bad thing: as the AI development, a lot industries cut 20%~30% work-force, which is especially often for video-game industry now, some company are using AI to replace part of QA, arts or other task AI can take over.

The market is certainly growing but almost every dev struggles to keep their job. Don’t see a sign of hope in near future if systematic changes wouldn’t happen.

Kinda what happens when big investors get involved and want unrealistic returns on literally everything that releases.

Not everything can be a Fortnite or a GTA level release and now it finally seems these investors have realised they need to cut costs everywhere and scale back their studios.