But that feels like the polar ends of who can benefit in the deprofessionalized world—developers with the stability to swing big for big-shot ideas, and programmers or designers with deep career experience that can be called in like a group of noble mercenaries. People in between will be left out.
Well, no. The issue is not that people offer their expertise as contract workers. The issue is supposed AAA studios cranking out one piece of hot garbage after another, while small independent teams can work (and fail) with unique ideas at a much faster rate.
There will always be freelance workers and having one on board, even an experienced one, will neither guarantee success nor is it a prerequisite. Looking at some highly successful indi titles of today, they often started with humble beginnings and got gradually more “professional” along the way.
I am currently playing Factorio Space Age and holy hell, have they come a long way since initial release. Fluid system, anyone?
Coming from the software development side, I interpret this statement a little differently.
I used to work with a team:
1 engineering manager whose sole focus was management, developing talent and problem solving around the organization
1 very senior engineer who could do the work of 10 ordinary engineers
2-3 mid level engineers who could work somewhat independently, as long as they were provided guidance to start
1-2 junior engineers who could only handle the most basic tasks and needed hand holding through most projects
Rather than working full tilt, the senior engineer did a lot of work pair programming and helping the juniors develop into better engineers. He accomplished half of what he could, but the team was better for it.
Fifteen years later, no one hired juniors anymore. We hire 1-2 seniors, 2 mid levels and that’s it. Everyone is expected to focus on developing software. No one cares about training or education.
The problem with this is we aren’t backfilling the ranks. If we don’t train juniors, they never become mid levels. Without mid levels, we won’t identify the best to become seniors.
In a world where game development happens on the fringes (indie studios or solo developers), who’s going to hire a junior that can’t contribute meaningfully to the project?
I have also worked on many engineering teams, both as management and engineering. Still, the execs are the ones that get left behind. The juniors at least have knowledge and ability to continue honing their craft. If they’re passionate about it, they will push through and make it work.
The execs just extract money, even in the scenarios you presented, and without any developers they can’t accomplish shit.
Having said that, I get what you’re saying, but again that is something that exists without this idea of “deprofessionalization.” Juniors get the shit end of the stick in a lot of industries, even outside development and engineering. On the flipside, so do seniors when the execs aren’t willing to pay what they’re worth, so they hire green juniors instead.
And by a modder turned dev, so, professionalisation? :)
Though the way wube works the whole team will have been involved in some way. And they’re a student so it’s part of a fairly normal pipeline for gamedev.
Not a surprise. Anything this company touches is sinking. These giant gaming conglomerates don’t make an iota of business sense. The whole point of a conglomerate buying a whole bunch of similar businesses, aka horizontal integration, is so these businesses can share the same knowledge, infrastructure and supply lines and benefit from economies of scale to lower costs. Like an oil conglomerate using their own tankers to transport oil for all their subsidiaries. But in the gaming industry there is barely any overlap between two studios where synergy can happen. Except for the business admin, promotion and advertising side. But that is a tiny fraction of the costs of big budget production. The biggest cost is on the production side and every studio needs their own set of directors, producers, designers, artists, programmers etc. Another goal of horizontal integration is capturing market share, but with games you run the risk of cannibalizing your own sales especially how Embracer is doing it since most studios in their portfolio are from the same region in the world making games for similar markets.
EA and Ubisoft tried this before and failed miserably and they sold or shuttered almost every studio they bought. The only one who does a good job at it is Sony, but even they don’t have as many studios as Embracer and they rely on Chinese digital asset sweatshops.
Their piece of shit CEO, Lars Wingefors, was in discussion with a gulf national fund on a huge $2 billion investment.
He never got anything legally binding, but before securing the investment he went on a massive spending spree.
The national fund got cold feet and Wingefors had to cut up all of Embracer to account for his mistake.
You would think such a childish error would result in immediate dismissal and essentially a permanent blacklisting from executive positions (not only in the gaming industry).
Nothing like that happened, I believe the Embracer board is full of his friends and family. He just went with it.
This is the kind of stuff that shows that polemics around hard works and meritocracy are at least partially propaganda to keep the plebs in line.
Embracer is also splitting into three separate companies to shed the tainted Embracer name, all still owned and run by Wingefors of course.
Asmodee Group (for board games) and Coffee Stain Publishing (for indie games) are the only two with official names last I heard. The unnamed third is the big one and Embracer’s direct successor, but I guess they’re delaying naming it to minimize bad press associated with the new name.
“That being said, I want to call out the way Unity chose to communicate these layoffs. Receiving a 5am email from ‘noreply@unity’ informing me that my role was being ‘eliminated’ and that I’d lose system access by the end of the day felt completely abrupt and impersonal. Unity must do better in how they treat their workers in hard times like this.”
Oh the irony, they are almost there. Trying to appeal to empathy and humanity of a corporation in the same breath that they acknowledge the lack of it.
There is no humane nature intrinsic in corporations. People need to stop humanizing it. Treat it like It is, know that you are being taken advantage of, you are being squeased, extracted of every value you can give and then discarted.
Is there something to be worried about here with the Unreal Engine being the only big business in town in terms of indie game development for 3d game engines?
I mean obviously yes, but how worried should we be of this becoming a bottleneck?
Godot has been making leaps and bounds. Obviously not close to UE, but if it maintains its rate of improvement, I can see it becoming a more and more common choice in the indie space over the next few years
Nah, it definitely is, in fact I have noticed a disconcerting number of indie games I REALLY like especially 3d games with physics engines are on the unreal engine.
I have always been a massive fan of at least the creative output of projects on the unreal engine, I don’t know much about the politics and details around how it is to actually create games on the unreal engine or anything though. I just don’t trust Epic honestly or whoever owns them now or rather I don’t trust the incentive structure… but yeah I wish the unreal engine success I am just asking how people see the state of similar engines in this moment.
Bevy is damn impressive. I can understand why it’s not suitable for large projects yet but for anyone tinkering or projects willing to adapt to a rapidly iterate ecosystem is well worth a look.
I’m very sorry man, I’ve been through that, and I have friends that have been cut at unity before. They treat their workers terribly.
Focus on getting better first, just process it for a bit. When you’re ready to start looking, the market is warm right now. I’m more than happy to help review resumes.
Ah I think my comment made in haste was ambiguous. Fortunately I was not cut this time around, I’ve somehow skated by all the firings. I’m actually just clinging on for a few more months then I’m off to Sweden to go back to school. Hoping to actually finish my game dev degree this time around! I do have some school application stuff I would love to have people see though I’ll keep you in mind for that if you are up for it (for a work sample primarily, to get into higher rates schools)
Good then, glad you’ve made it through, but obviously stay frosty. Those execs will cut every engineer as long as they still look good. Be ready for anything
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