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Hey moon am a long time viewer first time commenter and am just curious. Will you ever do a video on how you go about doing research ? . Because I was recently rewatching parts of your video on Brazil in Japanese games. And I saw how well put together everything was and will you ever address the other points of that video . Such as tai fighting , the Mr T archetype, Japan's connection to Taiwan. And how south east Asians are seen in Japan.
So, tech companies are Money% speedrunners with an infinite money glitch requiring two frame perfect inputs that have a drop off in effectiveness when not performed perfectly. Got it.
You see, when hit by the impact of the hype cycle, if you DI in the correct direction, you can mitigate the damage, but if you do it wrong, you go flying off the screen.
I love this channel because even if the video is about doom and gloom, it's factual doom and substantiated gloom. It's not just about how things are bad, it's WHY they are bad which is substantially more enriching than surface level doomerism.
I want to hope that there's a chance that things could get better, but that would require consumers to universally adopt a position of only patronizing the companies that treat employees well, and almost none of them do.
You can compare tech companies (and other start-ups) to a funfair. Anyone with enough funds can throw darts and hope for a win. Most people loses, but a few come home with a prize (fuelling the American Dream). Those big companies? They come from generational wealth and powerful families. They always had unlimited throws and are sure to win. What about the worker class? They are the ones running the stand for less than acceptable wage and unpaid overtime, with no chance of ever being able to see the prize
The crazy part is a lot of people don't even think they're necessarily faking it. Look at the documentary 'MoviePass movie Crash', how people didn't realize that business was never going to be profitable is beyond me lmao
I got out of college for game development RIGHT around the time all of this started ramping up, and I've been job searching ever since. The industry itself isn't collapsing, but for the employees itself, it has been getting significantly harder ESPECIALLY if you're a new face in the industry with little to no experience aside from potential internships like myself. I've heard this echoed by my fellow classmates as well as professors and others at the college I'm from. Regardless of if a company is in the know of the real reason big companies are doing it, or if they're just copying, there has been a pretty substantial increase in layoffs and the people that affects the most isn't the consumers. And it ABSOLUTELY isn't the companies. It's the employees losing jobs or people no longer able to find them, due to the oversaturation of people out of a job and the aversion of companies to hire more. Fantastic video, I wish this was all a bit more understood so I'm glad a good number of people will see this video.
Another thing to note is consumer expectations too. This is something as someone who went to school for game art and illustration wanting to go into the industry and as someone who is a consumer of games, people do base their first impressions of a developer on the games they can churn out and some consumers brutal expections leave no room for error on any front with your game when mistakes are part of and encouraged during the creative process. That is just a theory (no pun intended)
I graduated with a degree in game design and an internship about six years ago, and I still couldn't find entry level work. The same year, a friend of mine made a game that went to E3, but last I heard they're still doing long hours doing QA for a big company. I ended up leaving the field because I realized even if I got the job as an artist or translator that I wanted, I didn't want to be looking for a new job every few years like my professors had warned me about. I really love game design, so it really sucks this is how things are. Best of luck to you if you're going into the field!
I will be graduating as a new software dev in the next year and honestly this all has me feeling nervous. Unfortunately layoffs aren't just hitting tech, it's starting to spread elsewhere too. It's the recessions I graduated into around 2010 all over again, and I'm not looking forward to having the Millennial experience a second time when I'm approaching 40 and wholly responsible for housing and healthcare. 😂
I would honestly suggest you find a comparable job in a different industry for your start before going into the video game industry.. just get any industry experience first.. I didn't do anything video game related until after I started doing federal contracting. the path into the gaming industry isn't straight. It also helps you to do this so you know the ins and outs of not getting screwed over by employers... they will take advantage of you wanting the dream job. you gotta make yourself the hype not hype them up.
Watching this makes me feel sorry for everyone who's passion is making games and gets caught up in this boom and bust. It just pulls them in, rings out money, then throws them out to wait for the next cycle. It sounds like a stressful way to live, always unsure if you are part of the next set of layoffs and if you are, finding a new job while everyone else is cutting staff too.
@@krunkle5136 it isn't 100% the norm across all industries.. most companies in industries outside of tech and video games do not do such short boom and bust cycles like this. There are certain parts of Microsoft that is involved in federal contracts in which they legally cannot just do this to employees who are on those federal contracts with microsoft.. if Microsoft was to gut themselves like that on a federal contract.. they will be letting go of knowledge that likely allowed them to not be penalized by the gov't due to requirements of the contract being met... Institutional knowledge is still very important and for a company that often means needing longterm employees... The thing you're seeing now are more or less the end game of capitalism where a bunch of fucking grifters just pop up and it usually happens after a robber baron era... which as you can see we are in.
As someone in the games industry who has many friends who was affected by these layoffs, this video does really help explain why I've been looking increasingly wistfully towards Japanese developer business practices. This big tech approach sucks, it sucks more than you can possibly imagine, both in terms of the human suffering and in terms of the crushing of creative possibilities and damage to studios and game projects. Can you imagine how this cycle, which operates entirely independently of the games being published by that developer, interacts with the games being made themselves? It's like guiding a tugboat out of harbour into a storm without a working engine. It's madness.
@@-mawa- yeah. It's pretty sad. And even indie devs have to swim in that current too. There doesn't seem to be much way out. Unless the industry managed to get a union going or something.
Well it goes both ways, this is the culture we have. I'm an artist in the games industry and I survive by having a lot of independence, I'm a sort of mercenary that works for almost anyone, no loyalty, because the companies have no loyalty to me. It's a cut throat thing, but it does end up producing some highly resilient people.
Growing up I remember being frustrated because I just couldn't understand economics. Whenever I looked at stock markets or inflation rates or what have you there was always something that just didn't seem to add up. Now that I'm grown up I realized none of it was ever meant to make sense. Economics aren't led by logic or reason, but by game rules, and to succeed at the game you need to find the loopholes and exploit them.
Depends what you mean by economics. There are a lot of different economic lenses you can use to analyze a situation. Stock markets and inflation rates do make a certain amount of sense, when viewed through the right lens. There are also the various materialist schools of thought, which look past the social construct of money and consider the actual material conditions of economic actors and markets, and how those conditions shape their activities and behaviours. Economics can absolutely offer useful insights into patterns of production and consumption. Unfortunately, there's also a lot of incentive for economists to blow smoke up rich people's asses, so it takes a bit of work to sift out the actual wisdom.
There are two sets of economics. There is the explanation of what works and why, and there are the poisonous vipers who take that information and engineer ways to break the system and get rich selling the pieces.
Stock economics is a whole art of bullshitting and 'faking it until you make it' and then faking some more. You might see something of value or truth, but that would be like seeing the personality of Benedict Cumberbatch from his performance voice acting the dragon Smaug.
I really like how you addressed Nintendo's role in all this mess of the games industry. I wonder if a lot of the differences in how companies like Nintendo are ran vs. how companies like EA are ran has to do with the differences in culture. Iwata famously cut his salary in half during a time when the WiiU was failing, as he would rather that than lose their hardworking and long tenured staff. I think about that every time any CEO like Tim Sweeney says some bogus like "We have to adjust to market conditions".
somewhat. Sega and Square famously adopted what they called an "american corporate culture" early and became much more of a top down executive type company like EA. Companies that adopt the american way are great at appeasing shareholders and great at inflating costs and running very vertically, creating redundancies and overpaid layers of executives
Square adopting an american corporate structure actually almost broke the Square-Enix merger deal, it was one of the reasons Enix tried to back out at some point, since they saw it as incompatible with what they called their "family friendly nature" as a company
@@godlyBlade He actually halved his own salary twice, once in 2011 and another time in 2014. And yes, you're right that other senior staff did the same, I merely pointed out Iwata as he was President of Nintendo at the time and I was comparing him to other similar positions at Western game publishers.
Yep, this is also something that can be seen from their games, Zelda Tears of the Kingdom is a great game, but the programming behind it is completely insane, many western programmers essentially said that they wouldn't be able to replicate something like it in modern PCs or Consoles, let alone on something with the processing power the Switch has, this is in part due to the money oriented culture of western game studios where they prioritise cheap labour over talent in comparison to Nintendo where outstanding talent is prioritized.
Time and time again, this RUclipsr continues to prove himself on how actual real life stuff works rather than the other popular RUclipsrs, jumping straight to conclusions and complaining a lot 24/7! I can see moon himself reach over 1 million subscribers or more by the end of 2024
@@CantRead1 I mean the yt commenters are literally children. So it is kinda weird to me to have a sense of superiority to people who haven't finished hs yet.
FINALLY someone actual explains what the hell is going on with all these layoffs instead of just pointing and saying "oh no we're all next!" Thank you Moony
Yeah, I find it very interesting! Though if I were in the game industry and heard about a bunch of layoffs, I *would* wonder if I'm next, as my company might be chasing hype cycles, too. 😅
Well, you won't run out of content any time soon. But manm this just makes me wish greed just wasnt as rampant in the world... I seriously question how humans can treat humans like actual garbage. I guess such research will always be ongoing...
You see, corporate execs in their ivory towers dont view the groundfloor employees as human, therefore they dont feel a speck of guilt when they fire 3k people at once
@@jw6588nah, it's just our current economic system and the way our fore fathers structured society. Human nature is to be INSANELY cooperative, otherwise our hairless, toothless, clawless asses would have gone extinct 20 millennia ago
@@Yixdyno Human Nature is very Nuetral According to Studies. We are Cooperative when we need to be but just as Competive or Stubborn as were are Cooperative when Our Lives are Threatened or those we care about are Threatened. Being Cooperative is just the Easiest Logical Conclusion to Come to but if We were Extremely Cooperative then Corperate Greed and Corporatism would not Exist and the Current Free Market would not be Nearly as Corrupt by Said Greed and it would be Far less Controlled as it is. If we were Extremely Cooperative Large Governments like the US's would not have over 33,000 Laws(thats real look it Up) the Total Laws in the US is over 33,000. Thing is People say the Old Testament/Tanahk has a Ton of Laws but 613 Laws is a Peble compared to over 30,000.
Part of the reason for a lack of hiring/firing cycle in Japan may be cultural. There is still a cultural expectation of long term careers with a single company. Large scale firings may result in a consumer backlash. Although, for Nintendo specifically, the fact that they're over 100 years old may give them a longer-term perspective. In America, perhaps it would help the situation if laws were changed such that a corporate board's fiscal responsibility extended to future shareholders (though I'm not sure how the details of that could be arranged). Even apart from that, this strategy is basically a pump and dump scheme run by the board on behalf of the shareholders. It is an artificial inflation of value. If a company's revenue to valuation is so low that it would take over a hundred years of revenue to equal the current valuation, it seems almost by definition that the company is overvalued, and the value will crash at some point in the future, which will obviously not be in service of shareholders at that time. This doesn't apply the same to companies in their initial startup phase: it's a huge gamble, but a few of those companies will hit it big and legitimately become hundreds of times more profitable. But once a company has captured a large share of their market, there just isn't that opportunity for growth anymore.
Honestly it'd require a major change in ideology towards business management, prior to the 70s the USA largely pumped profits back into shoring up their businesses and then the mentality changed rapidly towards the shitstorm we see today, And a lot of laws that were established in line with operating public utilities etc by corporations instead of the government add to the perverse incentives that feed into it. You want to see Moony (or basically any other lawyer) cry suggest scrapping easily 50% of existing corporate law in favour of laws structured around promoting the public good, because that's what it would take to begin to fix the situation. And yeah the current system is fundamentally flawed and guarantees monopolies will form as businesses seek ever greater profits that require eating the competition.
"A transition from proactive to reactive strategy." Long have I searched for a concise way to describe all the baffling decisions, price hikes, and half-baked product launches or changes this year that seem to be coming out of every media and entertainment business, especially streaming and especially video games.
Current finance and accounting student, one of my lecturers always mentions how Japan changed the West's view when it came to production, the Japanese had the idea of maximum quality with the belief that a good product will always be more profitable than a bad one while the west saw quality as something that can be sacrificed to keep the price low. Japan believed this not only as a good product may sell more, but the reduction of returns and lack of need to keep spare inventory would make the product more profitable in the long run. You can see how this philosophy was successful with cameras, shoes and of course video games. This could be a reason why Japan is so different to its treatment of employees today than their US equivalents. Hopefully, this is an interesting perspective on the topic, great video as always Moony can't wait for the next one.
Yes I can agree. But: in countries like Germany, Scotland, UK, etc pp, in the 1950-1980 range, there was quite some companies manufacturing high quality long lasting products (e.g. fridges that could "live" longer than you, milling machines e.g. for bakeries & whisky production). This led in many cases to the demise of these companies, as their customers didn't need an replacement for decades and the market was obviously limited and these companies didn't realize that they need to branch out early enough. Can't say anything about the US due to lack of knowledge.
There are people in my studio who still thinks our studio layoff was because of "leftist values". IMO looking back it was always in the plan, the studio bought a new building, and was renovating the old one constantly. Then when covid is ramping down they told us that there is a hiring and raise freeze. After all the overtime they didn't renew any contract and started firing. It's just min/maxing it's nothing cultural or personal. I wish everyone would watch this video. People always seem to forget that just because video games are "art" and "childhood" it's still run by market BS like everything else in the world. I remember talking to devs in asia who were super frustrated by this. Westerners think games studios in Asia are corrupt but when these big Western companies sneeze the whole world gets blown over.
A lot of ill-meaning uneducated men (regardless of formal education) blame their favorite pre-served boogieman for basic outcomes of the current economic trends and the current developments in capitalism. Blaming woke-ism, left-ism or the globo schlomo for anything is laughable if you are not engaged in a certain sub-culture grounded in cheap political vote grabbing based on fictional threats that end up in tax breaks and subsidies and profit protectionism for the billionaire class. Nothing more.
Another theory is that investors thought covid profits would be the norm. And that with recent lackluster titles they realised they couldn't afford all the new hires.
50% religious cult. That got me smiling especially because I complied a list of the innovations that Sony brought to the phone industry. While apple, they just seen to copy rather than innovate. Sure they innovated ONCE. Wow amazing.
I hope the irony of you laughing at Apple fans for being obsessive and cult-like only to openly admit that you spent time compiling a list of Sony’s contributions to the phone industry for some reason is apparent to you. I don’t even care that much for Apple, but the whole phone company war thing is so asinine, like console wars or political parties. Each side thinks so lowly of the other while doing basically everything they’re condemning the other side for. It’s kinda funny actually, like a Looney Tunes cartoon.
@@dingus_maximus I mean to be fair you did literally say, “for some reason” we don’t really know the reasons behind this. Educational reasons, personal interest, etc. I don’t really care about tech industries, but you assumed a lot about their character is all.
A lot of people have very harsh views of Nitendo, some for good reason, and some because they watched one Moistcritical video and made up their minds. And while I certainly don’t find many of their actions righteous in their interactions with the Smash scene, or online creators, for instance, Nintendo getting lumped in with all these other tech giants in people’s minds has never sat right with me. I’m not about to sit here and call them the “last bastion of creativity” or whatever (that would certainly be indie studios at this point), but you have to admit at the very least they their creative output is often so much brighter than the competition, and I think their value of employees has a lot to do with that. Cue Nintendo haters tearing me apart.
Nintendo is first and foremost a for-profit business, and because of that they are going to choose decisions that profit them. But very largely, Nintendo's leadership is made up of people who have a long history in the video game industry and their upper leadership is filled with a lot of people who actually make or had made games. So they will always make selfish corporate decisions- but because their company is filled with actual creatives, not just businessmen, they also will make good creative decisions and decisions that value their game development first and foremost.
@@lemoncakeslemonade5430it's almost as if *gasp* seniority and promoting employees to higher positions over time as the old guard age works, instead of hiring career CEOs that are only thinking of short term profits for the shareholders.
This video does a beautiful job of explaining how the phenomena in question are both artificial and unnecessary. I find it interesting how the conclusion highlights the importance of unionizing, because it reflects the true nature of this issue: it is a problem of power. Whoever or whatever has power decides how the world works. In our modern society, power belongs to corporations. Whether it’s marketing and advertisement to the general population or lobbying within the government, corporations can manipulate us and the world we live in, and that makes them powerful. All it costs is money. And surviving as a corporation requires a degree of power, so the innate goal of any corporation is money, aka profit. Any corporation that manages to prioritize innovation or humane treatment is constantly fighting against its nature. Eventually, the wrong people will take power, or the company will go public, and the scramble for profit will take priority at the cost of the workers who make it all possible. That is simply the inevitable reality of any system where power is centralized and those at the top are allowed to take advantage of others. The only way for workers to avoid this inevitable oppression is to create our own decentralized, democratic structures of power to oppose the corporations, like unions. However, as long as we live in a society with an economy designed around corporations and profit, the workers will always be playing defense. It’s difficult to imagine a world that functions so radically different from our own that profit is not the determining factor of everything, but considering the infinite problems less petty than the video game market that have been directly caused by valuing profit over human wellbeing, frankly, we have no choice. Keep thinking about these issues. Don’t just accept them as part of life. Look into the potential solutions, and when you’re ready, take direct action. Find other people working for a better world, and bring about the change that is necessary.
@@blocks4857up until a point yes. It’s had diminishing returns, in which these companies are often far exceeding. It is at this point you should be prioritising well being over endless growth
Moony! If you ever decide to do that Wizards of the Coast video I’d love to help out. Being relatively close to the situation I’d be happy to provide any assistance in going over the content creator/game design relations aspect of the whole thing. Anyways, great content as always!
as a recent CS graduate I just want to say thank you for explaining the cycle to me. It has been hard finding a job straight out of college and I think this kind of explains why. The companies that I'm applying for are constantly trying to fit that cycle and if you don't have any experience with it they seem less likely to give you a chance. I also ended up getting scammed by a fake company that offered me a job but now I'm taking the steps to fix that and (hopefully) come out of this bad experience better than I used to be. Good video moony.
As an aspiring game developer myself, I kind of look at all of this corporate chess and wonder if its really even worth it when I'm just gonna be a victim of it all. I'm not exactly skilled yet to make games on my own, as I take more of an artistic approach than a technical one, so being part of some studio is likely for the better. Just seeing everything run like this is kind of daunting, and makes me wonder if I'd even survive. When AAA studios pull stuff like this and indie game studios go under all of the time before they even make a name for themselves, such a slim chance of success unless I'm willing to harm myself. I still have time to decide, but I doubt game development would exactly leave my purview as it plays to my skills and passions.
Same, got the whole pandemic to think to about how much devs bleed for these games, even if the title is has no chance of success. Either because the studio is tiny or because it's so rush it gets panned. Regardless developers work 24/7 for months at a time frying their lives in the process. ALL FOR A DUMB VIDEO GAME FFS. You'd think people were dying but no it's just so some billionaires can make even more money. Now I just don't want much to do with tech, despite my qualifications in it. It's not going to help me live well, so why pursue it? Then again, nothing pays well so why try so hard? Just sad times all around
I think it depends. If you are a more conservative, risk averse person and would value stability then maybe not. If you are ok with riding these waves, moving jobs regularly and working in an extremely competitive environment then it could be good. I think one of the things that will change in society is that it will become normalised to pursue "passion" arts outside of work (rather than AS work). It has already become very hard to make a career in other artistic fields (music, photography for example)
Damn this was really informative. I appreciate learning about how and why these things layoffs happen, especially since they hit one of my favorite companies, Bioware, pretty hard. I still dislike the fact these cycles exists because workers deserve to be treated better than just pawns in a chess game against investors.
I think a key thing to understand here that Moony kinda glossed over a little bit but deserves to be stated outright is that, for these very large companies, much of their revenue comes FROM INVESTORS. Apple's gameplan as a company isn't to fill their treasury selling iPhones, but with the money investors give them. The money from iPhone sales is what they use to lure investors into giving them more money. "But Tiara!" I hear you say. "That would mean that these companies' financial success is defined by investors putting orders of magnitude more money into the company than it's actually earning." Correct. That's why, as Mooney said, companies NEED to grow in order to maintain profitability. If a company stops growing, investment stagnates, which halts cash flow, which leads to downfall and ruin. Surviving short term investor loss is why you need cash on hand to survive the "tide retreating" (as Moony put it) of the bust part of the cycle. "But... that implies that companies ultimately require infinite growth in order to maintain profitability. That sounds... impossible. Isn't such a model completely untenable?" Correct. "That all makes it sound like product quality and customer satisfaction don't matter at all in the face of the mere appearance of consumer interest! That it doesn't matter WHAT you sell or even IF you're selling, as long as you can convince investors that interest is high even if it isn't? As if an actually good product and happy customers are just optional data points to convince investors that interest exists." Correct. "That sounds awful." Correct.
I struggle to verify your claim as investment does not count as revenue and is thus not in any earnings reports. However I choose to believe you. Big Tech is a cesspit I think most people will agree on. Its harder to decide on how to fix this, as I don't think we've yet to stumble upon a system that actually works. Totalitarianism never works no matter if its facism or communism. Capitalism is not actually a system tho, its an add-on. Neoliberal capitalism has failed, a new approach is needed.
@@hazzardalsohazzard2624The thing is, this isn’t a bubble, this is just how corporations are all the time. They function very similarly to bubbles, because bubbles are INCREDIBLY PROFITABLE. The trick isn’t stopping the bubble from bursting, its lessening the severity of the burst. If you can survive the burst, then you can just hop on the next bubble.
Not exactly. This is true for startups. Startups live off of investors, they are small companies with big budgets. Companies like Microsoft and Apple have revenues bigger than some national economies. The thing is, investors don't make money though the company. Yes the company can pay dividends or buy backs but these aren't how you make money. Investors make money by selling their stocks to someone else who thinks they will go higher. So investors push for CEOs and policies that maximize stock value in the short term, even if it ultimately hurts the company long term. People often think investors and the company are aligned in their interests, but that is not true. Sometimes crashing a company is more profitable than it's core business, for example, Red Lobster.
Now this is the kind of content that the general public SHOULD watch daily. Humans are one of the many reasons that creativity in such entertainment booms, but also wield power that misuse their worth. For all of their business decisions and actions, Nintendo is really one of the rare gaming publishers left that does things right by the book. The difference between them and the copycats is that their mission statement does not align with a company whose goal has been that for YEARS. But it’s not too late for change, especially for young indie developers who look to take off on the ground running. After all, that success all started with just a single playing card. Good job as always, Moony!
The reason why Nintendo is so good to their employees is because they know that the most important part of their company is their brand. And brand identities are so tied to their staff as the staff’s vision is the brand. It’s their business model. Whether or not it is good or bad, I guess it’s up to the person. It’s also probably the reason why they are so protective of it, because they value the vision of their employees.
@thomasffrench3639 I know, Nintendo has a elephant in the room. While Nintendo has greedy similarities to Disney and the other triple AAA companies, thank God the games that Nintendo makes is nowhere near hot garbage as Disney and the other triple AAA companies. Let's hope Nintendo decides to start making awesome games (again) without any deadlines. Let's hope hope that Sega will take notes from the development of Super Mario Brothers Wonder.
@@keeganmcfarland7507 people are so hyperbolic about Nintendo. Just because they respect Sakuri’s vision and are protective of their IP doesn’t make them this greedy.
Another of note is one Nintendo's most valuable brands, is Nintendo. I would wager they are going to keep doing what they are doing because they have seen what happens if you cause damage to your own brand. Example A: Disney. Sure, Disney has always had this massive corporate persona, but they also had the magical side to them that could patch over the corporate side. Their major mishaps in 2020 to 2022 have caused them to lose that magical mask, leaving them open to attacks from multiple angles and sides. To quote a parody video from The Warp Zone where Mickey Mouse talked to Bob Chapek "You did the one true unforgivable act, you fucked with the magic. YOU DON'T FUCK WITH THE MAGIC!"
Nintendo really is a terrible example with its predatory stance on the community, modders, the whole ripping emulation programmers isos and selling them for a profit in their virtual store after suing the makers first business and the absolute creative bankrupcy that leads them to pumping out the same games from the same franchises year after year
A video about Wizards of the Coast from your vantage would be incredibly interesting! I genuinely hope you can push something through for that. Also, I've finally decided to jump in and support you, Moony. I love every video you've made, and you're currently one of my favorite creators on the platform. I hope you can keep making such great material, and I'm glad to be part of the process.
@@whatevr99because they want to create short term growth so their resume looks better. These mfs don't want to be stuck as directors in a Game company, they want to move up and the best way for that is to create good resumes in samm periods.
I believe the issue is public investment, when companies keep private and actually invested investors instead of "anyone who just wants to make money from throwing money at the company" you get results. Biggest issue I see with Public investment is that people using the "Market Value", which I would say is a misnomer, as a proxy for the health of the company, the issue is that this "Value" can be easily manipulated, in a way people are not investing in the company, just in the perceived "value" of that company, because it's far easier to look at a number and go "big number good", than actually analyzing what goods and services is the company actually providing and how profitable those are.
Yep and people also complain about the boom and bust cycle and yet that is exactly what everyone wants to happen in order to participate in ETF and stock investment. If the hype doesn't flop, then I can't buy stocks to get my chance, if the hype doesn't increase subsequently, I don't profit off of my investment. And since our currencies are debased and can be inflated on a whim, we are all forced to participate in investment strategies to prevent loss of wealth/purchasing power, so we have to buy ETFs/Stock/Bitcoin and participate in the volatile bipolar ride that is contemporary western economics. Wouldn't it be so much better and simpler if we just took care of each other and the overall increase in productivity over time causes EVERYONE who contributed to increase their wealth? I.e a system that compensates competence instead of savvy self oriented investment strategy.
These kind of financial strategies are so... Deeply frustrating. It's parasitic. It's falsifying the relationship between physical and labour economies and finances. As someone who can't help but think ecologically, it reminds me of seeing an animal in the wild getting sick and weakening and the parasite load growing exponentially out of control. There's something viscerally disgusting about it, and it makes me nervous as hell because while systems can survive a certain amount of parasitism, after a point, the growth takes over and takes everything with it if not enough resources are directed to the host.
Thank you for simultaneously explaining why my Nintendo stock is down from where I bought it despite oodles of good news, and justifying the logic for that stock purchase as a long-term investment in the first place.
From what I've read Nintendo of America *employees* are happy and treated well, but their treatment of contractors or "red badges" is pretty reprehensible. So Bowser is accurate but deliberately missing a large portion of folks who are not subject to this statement and who have been having miserable working experiences.
So basically Ceos and people at the top are trying to gain more investment by manipulating the investors, through laying people off, therefore, ruining thousands of peoples lives every couple of years.
I’m not even a game dev or anything but that ending made me a little misty eyed. The entire video I was just thinking how asinine this all is and *painful* to be the workers getting churned in and out of companies over the games these corporate vultures play with people’s actual lives. We cannot emphasize the importance of unions enough, thank you!
i can't thank you enough for this video, the conclusion made me sob - ive only been in the industry half a year, but im alongside people who have been here for decades who cant quite fathom whats going on, and this made it all so, so clear. your final, quiet call to action is so, so resonant - our actions to organise have been demonised by the board and other colleagues - this felt like a quiet pat on the back that i needed to find reassurance that what we're doing isn't wrong i didn't go looking for this video: i've subscribed to you for a while (on my main channel) and always have adored your videos for the depth and humanity presented in each one, so the fact that this appeared on my recommended page today felt like fate. thank you so much.
Moon, these videos are really good. Too good. The kind of good that makes me wonder "who the heck are you?" These videos were always beyond amateur skill level, but the more videos you make the more you show that what you give us stems from more than just being good at research and writing. I suppose this kind of perspective is something a lawyer is privy to. Not just any lawyer though, but one intimately familiar with corporations, and an interest in gaming that spreads far beyond that of a consumer. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for sharing with us. We all appreciate your well informed perspective greatly! :)
Btw, technicality, there is some "layoff" in NoA back in very early 2022. But I don't think that is part of the hiring-firing cycle but more of the restructing the NoA branch to Washington, their HQ instead of CA, for example: Kit & Crystal decide to leave NoA after more 10 years or so because they don't want to move to Washington. But because of that refocus, this year is the first time we have Nintendo Live in US, and it was right in their home state.
I wouldn't call that hyper capitalist or even capitalist, it's more corporatism. All capitalism means in the purest sense is the belief that we as individuals have the right to ownership and property and for those rights to be acknowledged and protected.
@@NoxideActive What is corporatism if not a highly efficient way for those recognized rights to be used for the worse, resulting in power (e.g. economic strength and money) accruing more and more under the ownership of increasingly fewer individuals? After all, capitalism is still capitalism if 99.99% of all possible ownership (including the rights to future property) is controlled by a single person.
@@NoxideActivecorporatism is an inevitably under capitalism. In fact, it's capitalism in it purest form. Property and ownership is a form of power. If you own a factory, you have more power (financially, socially, and materially) than your employees. Even owning a house conveys a certain amount of power because of the generational wealth it provides. Because it provides power, you always have the incentive to accrue more property and possessions, because when your rights are tied to your possession of property, those with less property have less rights. The most efficient way to accrue power is through the cartel-like monopolistic practices of large corporations. Capitalism is a competition between endlessly hungry monsters, but in a world of limited resources, that competition means they will all eventually starve once the resources they need to grow are far too great for the environment to sustain.
@NoxideActive ooh, I like that word. If Capitalism is an economic style/structure, maybe Corporatism is the philosophy/mindset/policies that companies follow to optimize "growth" (however they define it) in a Capitalist economy. 🤔
@@NoxideActive I'd call it collective ownership. The investors don't care about the company, only about what they can milk out of it, the tragedy of the commons in full effect.
I don't work in video games but I am an SWE in tech and the regular "business as usual" layoffs are something that are always at the back of my mind. Thankfully I'm hard to replace enough at my current company that the probably of being layed off should be lower than average, but the possibility is always there...
The employees don't like it, the customers don't like it, heck even middle management doesn't like it, and often it's bad for the environment, but the the shareholders like it so it's gonna happen, that's our current tragic fate.
Mooney, thank you for taking the time to make videos like these. Most gaming enthusiasts make speculations based on surface level info presented whenever a studio announces layoffs, and that leads to many half-baked speculations just for clicks here on YT. Finding out that all these layoffs and general bad news in the industry is a game in and of itself that these big developers play is very informative and eye-opening. I'll now be able to look at news like this in the future and be able to figure out where they are in their cycles. Please keep doing what you're doing!
I finished my concept art contract in Sept 23 and havene't worked since (early-mid Jan '24 as of writing). I'm having to sell my car, move in with my 80 year old mother and very seriously consider abandoning my whole career. Every job has hundreds of applications. And there aren't many jobs.
Tech companies save money by firing and hiring, because they can pay new employees less than bumping up highly skilled workers over time. I also think its to do with bumping up profits on quarterly reports to look good for investors. Year in and year out, they hire and fire hundreds again and again. This obviously impacts the development games in dysfunctional ways, at times it sabotages development. Then more people will be let go, the developers taking the fall. The financial model is dysfunctional and more exploitative than other industries, despite being a bigger industry than film or music. Video game workers need to unionize now! Tech workers outside of gaming are also hemmorgahing workers like crazy rn. It's this insanely non-strategic, growth at all costs, high investment strategy. Growing too fast can really hurt a company.
It is not dysfunctional so much as exploitative because it is functioning as intended. They are effectively performing a convoluted means of stealing from their employees by weakening their negotiating position, consumers through game outputnand quality, and in some cases, investors.
Problem with Unionizing is that if you decide to do it, then most of these companies will just outsource their work to contractors in China, which has little in the way of worker protections and will likely result in these contractors being overworked way worse than anything here in the states.
The concept of small players following the dance steps of the big boys, and the implication that Japaneses video game companies like Square Enix and Atlas increased wages for their employees, not because it's a cool thing to do, but because it's what _Nintendo_ did, is something I learned today. The coporate cynicism is strong with this one, to the point of being kind of depressing even, but it was highly educational, and I enjoyed how you presented it Moony. I look forward to your next upload
I appreciate a video discussing the implications of capitalism on the gaming industry at large while, the entire time, SiIvaGunner music is playing. This is the vibe I need in my life.
This video’s section on Microsoft aged like a fine wine. It still makes the layoffs at Tango, Arkane Austin and so on sting from the cynicism of it all, but understanding “the dance” makes it easier to argue against it.
52:20 THATS SILVAGUNNERS MIX OF THE WII SHOP CHANNEL THEME WITH DRAKES "YOU USED TO CALL ME ON MY CELL PHONE!" I noticed, I FELT IT, SOMETHING WAS OFF in the music of your video...ITS THE FUCKING SILVAGUNNER MUSIC! Amazing, loved it
I imagine, like cinema, there can never be a total corporate take over of video games. Simply because of the art element. Kind of like how Hollywood became completely closed off to new film makers and people had to go to schools and use certain equipment to even be an indie; RUclips appeared as a more accepting method of sharing their art. In a similar way console games may one day be impossible for indie makers to get on, but there will always be people that make games for other platforms and aren't constrained by the market or boards.
I've never understood corporate finance (to be fair I haven't ever wanted to). But after another banger from Moony, it's opened by eyes to the "dance steps of success" and confirmed my suspicions of the cynicism that it takes to most efficiently and profitably "do the dance" I've learned so much from this channel thanks to the trickery of actually learning things when I just want to watch stuff about video games. Thanks Moony!
no wonder there is so much slop, is just "make an attractive game for investors not for the people that are gonna play it", this is a very cool vid man
in a world and industry that increasingly values corporations and IPs over everything else, it's so refreshing to hear such a based, well researched and pro worker voice!
Great in-depth video! As someone who works in the industry as a programmer I find this very eye-opening. One thing I'd love to see discussed is how these cycles affect productivity and quality in the long-run. I've seen many instances where in a span of a few years most of the team has changed. Even if the new hires are better developers than the previous ones there's a lot of time that needs to be spent getting them up to speed. Another issue is the knowledge that is lost when people leave. Whole game systems suddenly do not have someone responsible for them and when bugs appear or the system needs to be modified someone will have to learn how it works (usually not understanding it as well as the original owner) leading to more time lost or worse, bugs as the system was not properly understood. Wouldn't this mean that in the long run the company is hurt more by joining this method then by ignoring it? Look at some of the most talented studios out there... They are the ones that retain their staff. Nintendo is a great example. Others like Blizzard are but a shell of their previous selves. The company name may be the same, but the people aren't.
When it comes to creating great content? Yeah most likely, but when it comes to money? Well, look again at the comparison between Nintendo and EA he shows.
it hurts the company in the sense that their products get worse, yes. however, the point of a company that's bought into shareholder capitalism isn't to make good or profitable products, but to provide quick returns for shareholders and to allow them to cash out on top and buy in at the bottom.
@ovesHugs Exactly why these companies products suck and more people are turning to indie developers. It's the cycle of enshittification. They don't exist to make good games, that's usually an accident, they exist to manipulate shareholders. Ex: Bioware of today is not the same company as the Bioware that made KotOR or ME1. Their names are the same but it's just a zombie wearing a skin suit of its old self.
What did cause the crash back in the day tho? Too many games offered with bad quality nobody wanted. These cycles continue to diminish the quality over and over again, so what is the final outcome of it? A crash, cuz nobody wants to buy the bad quality games anymore, especially in the casual market as they only know mostly AAA games. And then, only those who didn't join the practice are left in the eyes of casuals, they have to breed the ground again and the circle starts up again.
Damn, an hour long Moon Channel video? Is it Christmas already?;) Time to get some hot chocolate ready and cuddle up in a blanket burrito! I'm ready to learn!:D
I think the only way we can move away from the current state of Western AAA development cycles is for there to be a homegrown company who can make it big in the USA without participating in the same dance as big tech. Possibly imitating how the Japanese do it but there's room for them to invent their own. The first step might be to take our eyes off big tech; too much of our discussion is centered on AAA when indies and smaller game companies don't necessarily always follow the same cycles, although sometimes they accidentally fall into it. Just some sort of proof to future game company leaders that you don't have to sing Microsoft's tune.
"Let's do one more example. Here's a company that is imperfect but is making surprising moves such as increasing staff by 10%." Me: it's gotta be Nintendo "That company is Nintendo."
At 2 minutes in, I am guessing that they overbuilt on a bubble is part of it. Corporations insist on perpetual growth, which is impossible when there is a decline in consumer demand by an order of magnitude because it was being temporarily artificially inflated by lockdowns. Same thing happened with ttrpgs. It exploded, then quickly tapered off once people went back to work. Less consumer demand, less money, downsizing and firms exit theb industry. Now to listen to the rest and see how it compares to Mooney's take.
many of my close friends and I have been affected by layoffs in the industry and seeing a factual approach to whats actually going on behind the scenes is really reassuring and helps quell a lot of the anxiety around my career path - thanks moony!!
I'm glad someone talked about this. People are waxing poetical about how the industry is in shambles (which it is) and when I tell them it's just capitalism doing its thing, the same response always comes up: IT'S THOSE NASTY GREEDY PEOPLE AT THE TOP STOP MAKING THINGS POLITICAL And I always say, "And do you think that maybe, JUST maybe capitalism rewards greed?" It's exhausting. Someone blamed middle managers. Another blamed piracy and "everyone" expecting games to be free all the time. Ridiculous. Look at the world around us, people, it's actually not the complicated.
Some tech companies of this latest boom have seen their stock increasing after a lay off, it's just how Wall Street treats workers I guess. There is also the fact that after a lay off, they can replace the laid off employees with current market ones which are often much cheaper, especially if lay offs have been happening everywhere or your company is heavily sought after for some reason. I remember Blizzard showing up in the news every start of the year for laying off hundreds of employees before the allegations surfaced, and after they did and everyone were talking about their bad experiences with Blizzard, it became widespread that they were paying their employees around 1/3 of the market average. I don't know how things are going for them right now.
@@SimuLord Commodus was more so a victim of circumstances and propaganda. But I’d like to believe the next generation is just tired of all the cynical corporate bullshit and hold on to idealistic values.
this video is amazing at explaining such a difficult topic, but i gotta admit that thinking about it is so stressful and complicated it makes me want to go live in the countryside and plant potatoes
Me before this video: "man I am wondering whats up with the gaming industry." Me after: "You are so right Mr. Moonie it's time to burn down Silicon Vally and the Wall Street! Glory to the dictatorship of the workers!"
This was so interesting. I've always wondered why companies can get massive share prices when their earnings are so low in comparison. It was all just hype all along? It really is incredible how irrational so much of our world is.
@@Doktario_Mystario Well after what I've learned from this video plus my own observations, they don't actually see the money, they're seeing hype and buying in to it.
I've been trying to understand what "business growth" means for ages and couldn't pin down a concrete definition. I thought I couldn't understand because finance is complicated and I'm not well-educated in the subject. Now I'm bitter to find out it's just a meaningless marketing term like "natural" or "superfood" that doesn't actually mean anything. Except it's marketing to shareholders rather than consumers. So these business decisions that have such an impact on all our lives - layoffs, "restructuring" and probably a bunch of other things that ruin our cities and our environment - you're telling me it's all due to what is basically astrology that investors are using to make these decisions that affect all of us?
This has continued to happen, but there are deeper issues as well. There are entire teams doing things that many game engines have tools built into them to do automatically. Placing furniture and clutter in buildings, for a prime example. A former Bethesda dev pointed out how using UE5 he could do something in seconds that Bethesda would have an entire team working to do for weeks. And since it's so much simpler, a single dev can do everything and then go back and make the spaces more representative of the character(s) in that space. And the reason Bethesda and other developers don't make that change is too much bureaucracy. Unless they HAVE to make a change like that, its too much of a shift in the development process to implement on the fly. One developer might be able to do all that work themselves instead of all the teams that currently get assigned to it, but insert what-ifs. I would also massively argue against any claim that Microsoft is the king of managing the hype cycle. If anything, they're the jokers. Those prestigious developers you listed off have universally been called out for steep declines in the quality of games they're producing - Now including Activision-Blizzard. And sadly, that also includes Obsidian, despite the fact that I really liked The Outer Worlds, many others took it as them trying to return to something akin to Fallout: New Vegas, but even I have to admit it lacked features it should have had considering that intent. Fable is the last standing exclusive that hasn't recently released an entry that significantly upset at least part of the fanbase. That said, a lot of fans were really disappointed with what they've seen with even Fable now. Then comes the issue around the fact that Game Pass doesn't even make enough to fund its first party studios, let alone the third party studios, and games they have sold as exclusives now have to be sold on other platforms to generate more revenue. Meaning Microsoft can't even deliver on the one thing leads people to buy their console - exclusive games. Game Pass, which they should have known wouldn't work just looking at Netflix and Disney+, is how they want to be identified. They're stuck in a situation where they can't increase the price of Game Pass bc they tried twice now and were stopped by fan backlash and they aren't selling enough games due to Game Pass having a direct negative impact on selling games, so they have to find some way to generate more revenue. And while the initial sells from their new studios, Cod-Acitivision, Diablo 4-Blizzard, Starfield-Bethesda, haven't been disappointing the issue has been fan reception, which has led to those games dropping off a cliff in both sales and active players. Which points back to what I said about MS prestigious developers and their declining quality. Microsoft is easily dumping $10-15 billion into Game Pass every year, but only getting a top end of $5 billion. That's gone on for a few years now. Even Netflix and Disney+ are losing money, but Microsoft and Phil Spencer specifically are so invested into Game Pass that conceding it as a failure could kill the entire Xbox brand. They've chosen a death by a thousand cuts it seems bc losing what exclusivity they had is upsetting and enraging their fans. Phil Spencer has been indicating for over a year now that their 2023 game lineup needed to be a huge success. The initial response to Diablo 4 likely made him think they would pull it off, but every day since has just added to the disappointment. Safe games like CoD seriously underperformed due to beta and early access reviews. The entire Xbox brand has been focused on capitalizing on the hype from the early 360 era that by the time Phil Spencer began making statements about how badly they're losing the reality had already shifted to them having already lost. People like to say they're too big to fail, Microsoft won't fail, but the Xbox wing of Microsoft definitely can. Investors and the board will eventually get fed up with Phil Spencer burning billions of dollars every year that would otherwise be going into their pockets. MS is in a bad spot bc they have a couple dozen development teams that have grown so large that they can't react to issues as they arise, and the attempt to take on a ever-failing financial model. Unity cost themselves a lot of contracts due to their actions, but there is also going to be an impact on to developers as they no longer have much use for individuals who specialize in that engine specifically. And as developers are almost universally laying people off, we fans should be hoping that these layoffs are being done to address the bloated staff, overly bureaucratic management structure and no longer necessary positions in these companies. The size of development teams went from 100-150 to over 400 in the span of time it takes to develop a single AAA game. Meanwhile, fans have spent this entire generation pointing out that this has been the smallest generational improvement we've ever seen. It's really hard to justify employing that many people when investors are taking the fans reactions as, "The product they made with 100 people was better than this product they made with over 400." I'll point back to what I said earlier about the game engines having the tools built into them that made these ballooning staffs unnecessary to begin with. And I still haven't pointed out things like individual developers complaining on social media that they spent the entire afternoon watching RUclips videos bc their team had nothing to do. And they had nothing to do bc you have to have managerial affirmation before you can do anything in game development these days. And it wasn't that long ago that a person on one team could just walk over and ask a developer on another team if they could make something work, so they'd try it out and see what everyone else thought. That sort of thing is seen as a waste of development time and resources, but an entire team doing nothing all day except watching RUclips videos isn't. There is a very real, very large breakdown in modern game development and they're still massively profitable. As to the connection to the rest of the tech industry, we literally saw people from Twitter and Google making videos showing, likely unintentionally, how their typical day at work didn't actually involve work. It's comparable to a college kid going home on the weekend to have their mom do their laundry and eating as much as they can as well as taking some food home for later. That's not a good way to make any money. Yet some of these companies are massively successful DESPITE having built a work culture around that sort of behavior. So in that way, game development hasn't gotten back to that sort of behavior. Last time that was common in game development was in the early/mid 90s where game development took 3-6 months with a staff as small as 10-15 people and the CEO's were 30 somethings flying around the world in private jets doing lines of blow off porn stars and expensive escorts. A time where the industry could have literally been paying individual developers like they were Bobby Kotick in some studios. If people don't understand why the industry seems so greedy today, I'd like to point out that a lot of the people calling the shots now got into the industry bc a single team could generate hundreds of millions each year in profits by pumping out 3-5 games and now games are taking 3-6 years. Gaming crushes Hollywood still in cost vs earnings after expenses, but its peanuts compared to what it could have been in that era of developers who lived like rockstars.
They're both good and bad IMO. They allow for more money to flow into a company which allows said company to make more ambitious and expensive titles they may never have been able to make otherwise if they had to rely on profit alone, but they also facilitate the creation of a lot of the more scummy practices of the game industry.
Sidenote. Thank you for answering the question posed by your video's title in the first 5 minutes. I WILL watch the rest of this, but I was worried that question was going to hang over my watching experience, thanks for the short answer. Ok, watching the rest now! Byyyye
Love how the business that pays me so I can afford sustenance might shoot my financial security out of existence because firing a few people makes them more money
Moon channel just doesn't miss. Every video is about something that I've noticed but never spent the time or effort to look into in more than surface detail. The massive hiring and layoffs were a mystery to me until this video. I had thought it was part of the rising interest rates and post-covid restructuring, but the timing didn't exactly match up and was too quick. Why would such big companies hire a large number of employees only to fire them a year later. Anyone in the finance sphere could tell you the general trajectory of the lock-down once it started, so for so many big tech companies to suddenly change direction as if making a misstep didn't make sense to me. I'd also love to hear more of your thoughts on the Unity situation. I was extremely frustrated at how surface level people talked about the whole Unity situation, given how odd the situation was. Between Unity's 70% market share in mobile games, the obviously flawed profit model, and the the fact that Unity somehow loses money; I think it all adds up, but I also doubt its that simple.
Unions are a great way of keeping other people out the industry and getting your job outsourced to some Lao Xing somewhere in Eastern China. No, you learn how to negotiate, and refuse to deal with companies that treat you like garbage
As a game developer, I thank you for this video, both for insight and for telling everyone else about this issue As a worker, I urge us game devs to unionize And as a person, I can't help but ask that anyone reading this stops and thinks what is the root of this problem. What system makes this whole ordeal possible and natural.
Also all those companies have record profits and C-level makes more money than most multi year AAA project budgets... so yeah, it's capitalism as usual, those at the bottom are fucked, rich get richer...
I work for a tech company that sold off a bunch of assets and laid off over a thousand employees. They're already talking about growth. Its just how tech companies work now. Sell off the things they don't think are super profitable and lay off employees and then continue with a growth mindset immediately after. Its hard to tell what is or isn't good and whether a company is heading towards bankruptcy or just doing what stockholders want. Also I think stuff like this was always happening in the games industry, people are just paying more attention to corporations and how they treat employees. hearing X big corp laid off more employees and you're hearing it left and right everywhere is a bigger story now and people are getting more and more tired of capitalism as corps take it to its extreme.
I've studied economics a bit and thought I already had a good grasp on the current events of the games market, but your explanation is enlightening. You not only fill in the common missing pieces of the picture but also show your work on how and why they fit. Additionally, with how much you mentioned intentional excess and cutting when explaining the boom and bust, and how you explained investor attitudes, I think I have an analogy to help explain. Boom and bust economics is akin to a hypercompetitive bodybuilding competition with blind judges who are appraising the contestants by how much sweat they smell.
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Its honestly, not a bad moba,
They paying you too?@@marocat4749
Hey moon am a long time viewer first time commenter and am just curious. Will you ever do a video on how you go about doing research ? . Because I was recently rewatching parts of your video on Brazil in Japanese games. And I saw how well put together everything was and will you ever address the other points of that video . Such as tai fighting , the Mr T archetype, Japan's connection to Taiwan. And how south east Asians are seen in Japan.
Nice video!!
Can you re do this video. With all the lay offs at EA and Sony and all the projection failures recently we have to revisit this
So, tech companies are Money% speedrunners with an infinite money glitch requiring two frame perfect inputs that have a drop off in effectiveness when not performed perfectly. Got it.
This is incredibly accurate
And it seems like the cord is starting to fray.
Unless the FTC notices you doing an exceptionally interesting jump.
You see, when hit by the impact of the hype cycle, if you DI in the correct direction, you can mitigate the damage, but if you do it wrong, you go flying off the screen.
Perfection.
Moon Channel about to explain stock speculators, bubbles, and hype cycles? Hell yeah.
Judging by his inability to properly research, I would fact check.
I love this channel because even if the video is about doom and gloom, it's factual doom and substantiated gloom. It's not just about how things are bad, it's WHY they are bad which is substantially more enriching than surface level doomerism.
Yeah if going to spread bad news, let's not embrace the nihilism the second it appears and see what going on
to top it off a semi optimistic message at the end
I want to hope that there's a chance that things could get better, but that would require consumers to universally adopt a position of only patronizing the companies that treat employees well, and almost none of them do.
It's a channel on video games so for sure must be talking DOOM
Are you saying he destroyed us with facts and logic?
"Fake it till you make it " as a business strategy explains so much about the world we're in.
because that explains the very idea of money itself....
Bring back sound money and sound business 😂
You can compare tech companies (and other start-ups) to a funfair. Anyone with enough funds can throw darts and hope for a win. Most people loses, but a few come home with a prize (fuelling the American Dream).
Those big companies? They come from generational wealth and powerful families. They always had unlimited throws and are sure to win.
What about the worker class? They are the ones running the stand for less than acceptable wage and unpaid overtime, with no chance of ever being able to see the prize
The crazy part is a lot of people don't even think they're necessarily faking it. Look at the documentary 'MoviePass movie Crash', how people didn't realize that business was never going to be profitable is beyond me lmao
You do realize it's always been that way right?
I got out of college for game development RIGHT around the time all of this started ramping up, and I've been job searching ever since. The industry itself isn't collapsing, but for the employees itself, it has been getting significantly harder ESPECIALLY if you're a new face in the industry with little to no experience aside from potential internships like myself. I've heard this echoed by my fellow classmates as well as professors and others at the college I'm from.
Regardless of if a company is in the know of the real reason big companies are doing it, or if they're just copying, there has been a pretty substantial increase in layoffs and the people that affects the most isn't the consumers. And it ABSOLUTELY isn't the companies. It's the employees losing jobs or people no longer able to find them, due to the oversaturation of people out of a job and the aversion of companies to hire more.
Fantastic video, I wish this was all a bit more understood so I'm glad a good number of people will see this video.
Another thing to note is consumer expectations too. This is something as someone who went to school for game art and illustration wanting to go into the industry and as someone who is a consumer of games, people do base their first impressions of a developer on the games they can churn out and some consumers brutal expections leave no room for error on any front with your game when mistakes are part of and encouraged during the creative process. That is just a theory (no pun intended)
I graduated with a degree in game design and an internship about six years ago, and I still couldn't find entry level work. The same year, a friend of mine made a game that went to E3, but last I heard they're still doing long hours doing QA for a big company.
I ended up leaving the field because I realized even if I got the job as an artist or translator that I wanted, I didn't want to be looking for a new job every few years like my professors had warned me about. I really love game design, so it really sucks this is how things are. Best of luck to you if you're going into the field!
@@GriffinHuntress you can alwaye make games on the side instead of leaving all together. Keep it as a hobby
I will be graduating as a new software dev in the next year and honestly this all has me feeling nervous. Unfortunately layoffs aren't just hitting tech, it's starting to spread elsewhere too. It's the recessions I graduated into around 2010 all over again, and I'm not looking forward to having the Millennial experience a second time when I'm approaching 40 and wholly responsible for housing and healthcare. 😂
I would honestly suggest you find a comparable job in a different industry for your start before going into the video game industry.. just get any industry experience first.. I didn't do anything video game related until after I started doing federal contracting. the path into the gaming industry isn't straight. It also helps you to do this so you know the ins and outs of not getting screwed over by employers... they will take advantage of you wanting the dream job. you gotta make yourself the hype not hype them up.
Watching this makes me feel sorry for everyone who's passion is making games and gets caught up in this boom and bust. It just pulls them in, rings out money, then throws them out to wait for the next cycle. It sounds like a stressful way to live, always unsure if you are part of the next set of layoffs and if you are, finding a new job while everyone else is cutting staff too.
That's just part of being ruled by large corporations in an individualistic culture.
@@krunkle5136 it isn't 100% the norm across all industries.. most companies in industries outside of tech and video games do not do such short boom and bust cycles like this. There are certain parts of Microsoft that is involved in federal contracts in which they legally cannot just do this to employees who are on those federal contracts with microsoft.. if Microsoft was to gut themselves like that on a federal contract.. they will be letting go of knowledge that likely allowed them to not be penalized by the gov't due to requirements of the contract being met... Institutional knowledge is still very important and for a company that often means needing longterm employees...
The thing you're seeing now are more or less the end game of capitalism where a bunch of fucking grifters just pop up and it usually happens after a robber baron era... which as you can see we are in.
As someone in the games industry who has many friends who was affected by these layoffs, this video does really help explain why I've been looking increasingly wistfully towards Japanese developer business practices. This big tech approach sucks, it sucks more than you can possibly imagine, both in terms of the human suffering and in terms of the crushing of creative possibilities and damage to studios and game projects. Can you imagine how this cycle, which operates entirely independently of the games being published by that developer, interacts with the games being made themselves? It's like guiding a tugboat out of harbour into a storm without a working engine. It's madness.
@@-mawa- yeah. It's pretty sad. And even indie devs have to swim in that current too. There doesn't seem to be much way out. Unless the industry managed to get a union going or something.
Well it goes both ways, this is the culture we have. I'm an artist in the games industry and I survive by having a lot of independence, I'm a sort of mercenary that works for almost anyone, no loyalty, because the companies have no loyalty to me. It's a cut throat thing, but it does end up producing some highly resilient people.
Growing up I remember being frustrated because I just couldn't understand economics. Whenever I looked at stock markets or inflation rates or what have you there was always something that just didn't seem to add up.
Now that I'm grown up I realized none of it was ever meant to make sense. Economics aren't led by logic or reason, but by game rules, and to succeed at the game you need to find the loopholes and exploit them.
Economics is and always has been governed by psychology
Depends what you mean by economics. There are a lot of different economic lenses you can use to analyze a situation. Stock markets and inflation rates do make a certain amount of sense, when viewed through the right lens. There are also the various materialist schools of thought, which look past the social construct of money and consider the actual material conditions of economic actors and markets, and how those conditions shape their activities and behaviours.
Economics can absolutely offer useful insights into patterns of production and consumption. Unfortunately, there's also a lot of incentive for economists to blow smoke up rich people's asses, so it takes a bit of work to sift out the actual wisdom.
There are two sets of economics. There is the explanation of what works and why, and there are the poisonous vipers who take that information and engineer ways to break the system and get rich selling the pieces.
Stock economics is a whole art of bullshitting and 'faking it until you make it' and then faking some more. You might see something of value or truth, but that would be like seeing the personality of Benedict Cumberbatch from his performance voice acting the dragon Smaug.
Back in the wild west there was a solution to those cheating at games. These days it's harder to pull off that solution.
I really like how you addressed Nintendo's role in all this mess of the games industry. I wonder if a lot of the differences in how companies like Nintendo are ran vs. how companies like EA are ran has to do with the differences in culture. Iwata famously cut his salary in half during a time when the WiiU was failing, as he would rather that than lose their hardworking and long tenured staff. I think about that every time any CEO like Tim Sweeney says some bogus like "We have to adjust to market conditions".
I think it was the 3ds failing when he cut his salary and it wasn't just him either. A lot of the more senior upper management types followed suit.
somewhat. Sega and Square famously adopted what they called an "american corporate culture" early and became much more of a top down executive type company like EA. Companies that adopt the american way are great at appeasing shareholders and great at inflating costs and running very vertically, creating redundancies and overpaid layers of executives
Square adopting an american corporate structure actually almost broke the Square-Enix merger deal, it was one of the reasons Enix tried to back out at some point, since they saw it as incompatible with what they called their "family friendly nature" as a company
@@godlyBlade He actually halved his own salary twice, once in 2011 and another time in 2014. And yes, you're right that other senior staff did the same, I merely pointed out Iwata as he was President of Nintendo at the time and I was comparing him to other similar positions at Western game publishers.
Yep, this is also something that can be seen from their games, Zelda Tears of the Kingdom is a great game, but the programming behind it is completely insane, many western programmers essentially said that they wouldn't be able to replicate something like it in modern PCs or Consoles, let alone on something with the processing power the Switch has, this is in part due to the money oriented culture of western game studios where they prioritise cheap labour over talent in comparison to Nintendo where outstanding talent is prioritized.
Time and time again, this RUclipsr continues to prove himself on how actual real life stuff works rather than the other popular RUclipsrs, jumping straight to conclusions and complaining a lot 24/7!
I can see moon himself reach over 1 million subscribers or more by the end of 2024
While also having RUclips commenters always believe in said popular RUclipsrs in the comment section like robots.
@@CantRead1 Exactly
My thoughts exactly
@@CantRead1 I mean the yt commenters are literally children. So it is kinda weird to me to have a sense of superiority to people who haven't finished hs yet.
It’s a nuanced take on why corporations are bad instead of the consumer being mad that their favorite game series gets cancelled or is ruined.
FINALLY someone actual explains what the hell is going on with all these layoffs instead of just pointing and saying "oh no we're all next!" Thank you Moony
Yeah, I find it very interesting! Though if I were in the game industry and heard about a bunch of layoffs, I *would* wonder if I'm next, as my company might be chasing hype cycles, too. 😅
Jim Stephanie Sterling has been pointing this stuff out for years.
Well, you won't run out of content any time soon.
But manm this just makes me wish greed just wasnt as rampant in the world... I seriously question how humans can treat humans like actual garbage. I guess such research will always be ongoing...
Human nature man. People can be very evil.
@@jw6588it's not human nature, it's just the way the system is set up. You grow or you die.
You see, corporate execs in their ivory towers dont view the groundfloor employees as human, therefore they dont feel a speck of guilt when they fire 3k people at once
@@jw6588nah, it's just our current economic system and the way our fore fathers structured society. Human nature is to be INSANELY cooperative, otherwise our hairless, toothless, clawless asses would have gone extinct 20 millennia ago
@@Yixdyno Human Nature is very Nuetral According to Studies. We are Cooperative when we need to be but just as Competive or Stubborn as were are Cooperative when Our Lives are Threatened or those we care about are Threatened. Being Cooperative is just the Easiest Logical Conclusion to Come to but if We were Extremely Cooperative then Corperate Greed and Corporatism would not Exist and the Current Free Market would not be Nearly as Corrupt by Said Greed and it would be Far less Controlled as it is. If we were Extremely Cooperative Large Governments like the US's would not have over 33,000 Laws(thats real look it Up) the Total Laws in the US is over 33,000. Thing is People say the Old Testament/Tanahk has a Ton of Laws but 613 Laws is a Peble compared to over 30,000.
Part of the reason for a lack of hiring/firing cycle in Japan may be cultural. There is still a cultural expectation of long term careers with a single company. Large scale firings may result in a consumer backlash.
Although, for Nintendo specifically, the fact that they're over 100 years old may give them a longer-term perspective.
In America, perhaps it would help the situation if laws were changed such that a corporate board's fiscal responsibility extended to future shareholders (though I'm not sure how the details of that could be arranged). Even apart from that, this strategy is basically a pump and dump scheme run by the board on behalf of the shareholders. It is an artificial inflation of value.
If a company's revenue to valuation is so low that it would take over a hundred years of revenue to equal the current valuation, it seems almost by definition that the company is overvalued, and the value will crash at some point in the future, which will obviously not be in service of shareholders at that time.
This doesn't apply the same to companies in their initial startup phase: it's a huge gamble, but a few of those companies will hit it big and legitimately become hundreds of times more profitable. But once a company has captured a large share of their market, there just isn't that opportunity for growth anymore.
Honestly it'd require a major change in ideology towards business management, prior to the 70s the USA largely pumped profits back into shoring up their businesses and then the mentality changed rapidly towards the shitstorm we see today, And a lot of laws that were established in line with operating public utilities etc by corporations instead of the government add to the perverse incentives that feed into it. You want to see Moony (or basically any other lawyer) cry suggest scrapping easily 50% of existing corporate law in favour of laws structured around promoting the public good, because that's what it would take to begin to fix the situation.
And yeah the current system is fundamentally flawed and guarantees monopolies will form as businesses seek ever greater profits that require eating the competition.
Why GE Is dying and many of the proto Edo companies of japan (Nintendo Koppai, Mitsubishi,Kawasaki)dont suffer too much??
"A transition from proactive to reactive strategy." Long have I searched for a concise way to describe all the baffling decisions, price hikes, and half-baked product launches or changes this year that seem to be coming out of every media and entertainment business, especially streaming and especially video games.
Current finance and accounting student, one of my lecturers always mentions how Japan changed the West's view when it came to production, the Japanese had the idea of maximum quality with the belief that a good product will always be more profitable than a bad one while the west saw quality as something that can be sacrificed to keep the price low. Japan believed this not only as a good product may sell more, but the reduction of returns and lack of need to keep spare inventory would make the product more profitable in the long run. You can see how this philosophy was successful with cameras, shoes and of course video games. This could be a reason why Japan is so different to its treatment of employees today than their US equivalents.
Hopefully, this is an interesting perspective on the topic, great video as always Moony can't wait for the next one.
Japan also has laws in place to prevent mass layoffs from happening like in other countries.
Yes I can agree. But: in countries like Germany, Scotland, UK, etc pp, in the 1950-1980 range, there was quite some companies manufacturing high quality long lasting products (e.g. fridges that could "live" longer than you, milling machines e.g. for bakeries & whisky production). This led in many cases to the demise of these companies, as their customers didn't need an replacement for decades and the market was obviously limited and these companies didn't realize that they need to branch out early enough.
Can't say anything about the US due to lack of knowledge.
There are people in my studio who still thinks our studio layoff was because of "leftist values". IMO looking back it was always in the plan, the studio bought a new building, and was renovating the old one constantly. Then when covid is ramping down they told us that there is a hiring and raise freeze. After all the overtime they didn't renew any contract and started firing. It's just min/maxing it's nothing cultural or personal.
I wish everyone would watch this video. People always seem to forget that just because video games are "art" and "childhood" it's still run by market BS like everything else in the world. I remember talking to devs in asia who were super frustrated by this. Westerners think games studios in Asia are corrupt but when these big Western companies sneeze the whole world gets blown over.
@@Nyahthuluplz don't label things as general terms as it gets. Iit Up.
A lot of ill-meaning uneducated men (regardless of formal education) blame their favorite pre-served boogieman for basic outcomes of the current economic trends and the current developments in capitalism.
Blaming woke-ism, left-ism or the globo schlomo for anything is laughable if you are not engaged in a certain sub-culture grounded in cheap political vote grabbing based on fictional threats that end up in tax breaks and subsidies and profit protectionism for the billionaire class. Nothing more.
The irony of calling capitalism a "leftist value"
Another theory is that investors thought covid profits would be the norm.
And that with recent lackluster titles they realised they couldn't afford all the new hires.
50% religious cult. That got me smiling especially because I complied a list of the innovations that Sony brought to the phone industry. While apple, they just seen to copy rather than innovate. Sure they innovated ONCE. Wow amazing.
lol
@@winterwatson6811 yes exactly, the idea of apple being an innovative company is laughable.
I hope the irony of you laughing at Apple fans for being obsessive and cult-like only to openly admit that you spent time compiling a list of Sony’s contributions to the phone industry for some reason is apparent to you.
I don’t even care that much for Apple, but the whole phone company war thing is so asinine, like console wars or political parties. Each side thinks so lowly of the other while doing basically everything they’re condemning the other side for. It’s kinda funny actually, like a Looney Tunes cartoon.
@@dingus_maximusSony and Apple are worse than Nintendo
@@dingus_maximus I mean to be fair you did literally say, “for some reason” we don’t really know the reasons behind this. Educational reasons, personal interest, etc.
I don’t really care about tech industries, but you assumed a lot about their character is all.
A lot of people have very harsh views of Nitendo, some for good reason, and some because they watched one Moistcritical video and made up their minds. And while I certainly don’t find many of their actions righteous in their interactions with the Smash scene, or online creators, for instance, Nintendo getting lumped in with all these other tech giants in people’s minds has never sat right with me.
I’m not about to sit here and call them the “last bastion of creativity” or whatever (that would certainly be indie studios at this point), but you have to admit at the very least they their creative output is often so much brighter than the competition, and I think their value of employees has a lot to do with that.
Cue Nintendo haters tearing me apart.
Last bastion of creativity between the big 3/biggest companies
Nintendo is first and foremost a for-profit business, and because of that they are going to choose decisions that profit them. But very largely, Nintendo's leadership is made up of people who have a long history in the video game industry and their upper leadership is filled with a lot of people who actually make or had made games. So they will always make selfish corporate decisions- but because their company is filled with actual creatives, not just businessmen, they also will make good creative decisions and decisions that value their game development first and foremost.
@@lemoncakeslemonade5430 a business that sells games and consoles is a for-profit??!??!
@@lemoncakeslemonade5430it's almost as if *gasp* seniority and promoting employees to higher positions over time as the old guard age works, instead of hiring career CEOs that are only thinking of short term profits for the shareholders.
@@lemoncakeslemonade5430Reminds me of how AMD did a complete 180 when they put an actual engineer as CEO.
This video does a beautiful job of explaining how the phenomena in question are both artificial and unnecessary. I find it interesting how the conclusion highlights the importance of unionizing, because it reflects the true nature of this issue: it is a problem of power. Whoever or whatever has power decides how the world works. In our modern society, power belongs to corporations. Whether it’s marketing and advertisement to the general population or lobbying within the government, corporations can manipulate us and the world we live in, and that makes them powerful. All it costs is money. And surviving as a corporation requires a degree of power, so the innate goal of any corporation is money, aka profit. Any corporation that manages to prioritize innovation or humane treatment is constantly fighting against its nature. Eventually, the wrong people will take power, or the company will go public, and the scramble for profit will take priority at the cost of the workers who make it all possible. That is simply the inevitable reality of any system where power is centralized and those at the top are allowed to take advantage of others. The only way for workers to avoid this inevitable oppression is to create our own decentralized, democratic structures of power to oppose the corporations, like unions. However, as long as we live in a society with an economy designed around corporations and profit, the workers will always be playing defense. It’s difficult to imagine a world that functions so radically different from our own that profit is not the determining factor of everything, but considering the infinite problems less petty than the video game market that have been directly caused by valuing profit over human wellbeing, frankly, we have no choice. Keep thinking about these issues. Don’t just accept them as part of life. Look into the potential solutions, and when you’re ready, take direct action. Find other people working for a better world, and bring about the change that is necessary.
Yeah no democracy isn't fix that
Beautifully said
profit over well-being is, unfortunately, the nature of not only big corporations but also the people themselves
@roomer8381 profit is good actually
@@blocks4857up until a point yes. It’s had diminishing returns, in which these companies are often far exceeding. It is at this point you should be prioritising well being over endless growth
Moony! If you ever decide to do that Wizards of the Coast video I’d love to help out. Being relatively close to the situation I’d be happy to provide any assistance in going over the content creator/game design relations aspect of the whole thing.
Anyways, great content as always!
Thank you for the offer, DungeonDad! I'll certainly reach out if I end up making a video on that topic!
This makes my blood boil every 5 minutes that I remember these are people's entire lives and passions they're playing with.
as a recent CS graduate I just want to say thank you for explaining the cycle to me. It has been hard finding a job straight out of college and I think this kind of explains why. The companies that I'm applying for are constantly trying to fit that cycle and if you don't have any experience with it they seem less likely to give you a chance. I also ended up getting scammed by a fake company that offered me a job but now I'm taking the steps to fix that and (hopefully) come out of this bad experience better than I used to be. Good video moony.
As an aspiring game developer myself, I kind of look at all of this corporate chess and wonder if its really even worth it when I'm just gonna be a victim of it all. I'm not exactly skilled yet to make games on my own, as I take more of an artistic approach than a technical one, so being part of some studio is likely for the better.
Just seeing everything run like this is kind of daunting, and makes me wonder if I'd even survive. When AAA studios pull stuff like this and indie game studios go under all of the time before they even make a name for themselves, such a slim chance of success unless I'm willing to harm myself. I still have time to decide, but I doubt game development would exactly leave my purview as it plays to my skills and passions.
Same, got the whole pandemic to think to about how much devs bleed for these games, even if the title is has no chance of success. Either because the studio is tiny or because it's so rush it gets panned. Regardless developers work 24/7 for months at a time frying their lives in the process. ALL FOR A DUMB VIDEO GAME FFS. You'd think people were dying but no it's just so some billionaires can make even more money. Now I just don't want much to do with tech, despite my qualifications in it. It's not going to help me live well, so why pursue it? Then again, nothing pays well so why try so hard? Just sad times all around
I think it depends. If you are a more conservative, risk averse person and would value stability then maybe not. If you are ok with riding these waves, moving jobs regularly and working in an extremely competitive environment then it could be good.
I think one of the things that will change in society is that it will become normalised to pursue "passion" arts outside of work (rather than AS work). It has already become very hard to make a career in other artistic fields (music, photography for example)
Damn this was really informative. I appreciate learning about how and why these things layoffs happen, especially since they hit one of my favorite companies, Bioware, pretty hard. I still dislike the fact these cycles exists because workers deserve to be treated better than just pawns in a chess game against investors.
I think a key thing to understand here that Moony kinda glossed over a little bit but deserves to be stated outright is that, for these very large companies, much of their revenue comes FROM INVESTORS. Apple's gameplan as a company isn't to fill their treasury selling iPhones, but with the money investors give them. The money from iPhone sales is what they use to lure investors into giving them more money.
"But Tiara!" I hear you say. "That would mean that these companies' financial success is defined by investors putting orders of magnitude more money into the company than it's actually earning."
Correct. That's why, as Mooney said, companies NEED to grow in order to maintain profitability. If a company stops growing, investment stagnates, which halts cash flow, which leads to downfall and ruin. Surviving short term investor loss is why you need cash on hand to survive the "tide retreating" (as Moony put it) of the bust part of the cycle.
"But... that implies that companies ultimately require infinite growth in order to maintain profitability. That sounds... impossible. Isn't such a model completely untenable?"
Correct.
"That all makes it sound like product quality and customer satisfaction don't matter at all in the face of the mere appearance of consumer interest! That it doesn't matter WHAT you sell or even IF you're selling, as long as you can convince investors that interest is high even if it isn't? As if an actually good product and happy customers are just optional data points to convince investors that interest exists."
Correct.
"That sounds awful."
Correct.
I struggle to verify your claim as investment does not count as revenue and is thus not in any earnings reports.
However I choose to believe you.
Big Tech is a cesspit I think most people will agree on.
Its harder to decide on how to fix this, as I don't think we've yet to stumble upon a system that actually works. Totalitarianism never works no matter if its facism or communism. Capitalism is not actually a system tho, its an add-on. Neoliberal capitalism has failed, a new approach is needed.
Does this mean that gaming industry growth is basically a bubble and the cited revenues for the Industry are meaningless?
@@hazzardalsohazzard2624The thing is, this isn’t a bubble, this is just how corporations are all the time. They function very similarly to bubbles, because bubbles are INCREDIBLY PROFITABLE. The trick isn’t stopping the bubble from bursting, its lessening the severity of the burst. If you can survive the burst, then you can just hop on the next bubble.
Not exactly.
This is true for startups. Startups live off of investors, they are small companies with big budgets. Companies like Microsoft and Apple have revenues bigger than some national economies.
The thing is, investors don't make money though the company. Yes the company can pay dividends or buy backs but these aren't how you make money. Investors make money by selling their stocks to someone else who thinks they will go higher.
So investors push for CEOs and policies that maximize stock value in the short term, even if it ultimately hurts the company long term.
People often think investors and the company are aligned in their interests, but that is not true. Sometimes crashing a company is more profitable than it's core business, for example, Red Lobster.
Now this is the kind of content that the general public SHOULD watch daily. Humans are one of the many reasons that creativity in such entertainment booms, but also wield power that misuse their worth. For all of their business decisions and actions, Nintendo is really one of the rare gaming publishers left that does things right by the book. The difference between them and the copycats is that their mission statement does not align with a company whose goal has been that for YEARS. But it’s not too late for change, especially for young indie developers who look to take off on the ground running. After all, that success all started with just a single playing card. Good job as always, Moony!
The reason why Nintendo is so good to their employees is because they know that the most important part of their company is their brand. And brand identities are so tied to their staff as the staff’s vision is the brand. It’s their business model. Whether or not it is good or bad, I guess it’s up to the person. It’s also probably the reason why they are so protective of it, because they value the vision of their employees.
@thomasffrench3639 I know, Nintendo has a elephant in the room.
While Nintendo has greedy similarities to Disney and the other triple AAA companies, thank God the games that Nintendo makes is nowhere near hot garbage as Disney and the other triple AAA companies.
Let's hope Nintendo decides to start making awesome games (again) without any deadlines.
Let's hope hope that Sega will take notes from the development of Super Mario Brothers Wonder.
@@keeganmcfarland7507 people are so hyperbolic about Nintendo. Just because they respect Sakuri’s vision and are protective of their IP doesn’t make them this greedy.
Another of note is one Nintendo's most valuable brands, is Nintendo. I would wager they are going to keep doing what they are doing because they have seen what happens if you cause damage to your own brand.
Example A: Disney. Sure, Disney has always had this massive corporate persona, but they also had the magical side to them that could patch over the corporate side. Their major mishaps in 2020 to 2022 have caused them to lose that magical mask, leaving them open to attacks from multiple angles and sides.
To quote a parody video from The Warp Zone where Mickey Mouse talked to Bob Chapek "You did the one true unforgivable act, you fucked with the magic. YOU DON'T FUCK WITH THE MAGIC!"
Nintendo really is a terrible example with its predatory stance on the community, modders, the whole ripping emulation programmers isos and selling them for a profit in their virtual store after suing the makers first business and the absolute creative bankrupcy that leads them to pumping out the same games from the same franchises year after year
A video about Wizards of the Coast from your vantage would be incredibly interesting! I genuinely hope you can push something through for that. Also, I've finally decided to jump in and support you, Moony. I love every video you've made, and you're currently one of my favorite creators on the platform. I hope you can keep making such great material, and I'm glad to be part of the process.
The companies who laid off employees should’ve learned what Mr. Iwata did.
They really should, but I doubt they will.
If all business executives were like Iwata the world would be a better place.
@@whatevr99because they want to create short term growth so their resume looks better. These mfs don't want to be stuck as directors in a Game company, they want to move up and the best way for that is to create good resumes in samm periods.
I believe the issue is public investment, when companies keep private and actually invested investors instead of "anyone who just wants to make money from throwing money at the company" you get results. Biggest issue I see with Public investment is that people using the "Market Value", which I would say is a misnomer, as a proxy for the health of the company, the issue is that this "Value" can be easily manipulated, in a way people are not investing in the company, just in the perceived "value" of that company, because it's far easier to look at a number and go "big number good", than actually analyzing what goods and services is the company actually providing and how profitable those are.
Yep and people also complain about the boom and bust cycle and yet that is exactly what everyone wants to happen in order to participate in ETF and stock investment. If the hype doesn't flop, then I can't buy stocks to get my chance, if the hype doesn't increase subsequently, I don't profit off of my investment. And since our currencies are debased and can be inflated on a whim, we are all forced to participate in investment strategies to prevent loss of wealth/purchasing power, so we have to buy ETFs/Stock/Bitcoin and participate in the volatile bipolar ride that is contemporary western economics.
Wouldn't it be so much better and simpler if we just took care of each other and the overall increase in productivity over time causes EVERYONE who contributed to increase their wealth? I.e a system that compensates competence instead of savvy self oriented investment strategy.
These kind of financial strategies are so... Deeply frustrating. It's parasitic. It's falsifying the relationship between physical and labour economies and finances. As someone who can't help but think ecologically, it reminds me of seeing an animal in the wild getting sick and weakening and the parasite load growing exponentially out of control. There's something viscerally disgusting about it, and it makes me nervous as hell because while systems can survive a certain amount of parasitism, after a point, the growth takes over and takes everything with it if not enough resources are directed to the host.
fucking capitalism
Thank you for simultaneously explaining why my Nintendo stock is down from where I bought it despite oodles of good news, and justifying the logic for that stock purchase as a long-term investment in the first place.
How ya feelin' bout it nao? :3c
From what I've read Nintendo of America *employees* are happy and treated well, but their treatment of contractors or "red badges" is pretty reprehensible. So Bowser is accurate but deliberately missing a large portion of folks who are not subject to this statement and who have been having miserable working experiences.
This is very true for Nintendo of America
I’ll never forget the way they backstabbed 4Kids in 2006.
@@LeafRazorStormThat's around the time 4Kids kinda collapsed on itself - what did Nintendo have to do with 4Kids specifically?
So basically Ceos and people at the top are trying to gain more investment by manipulating the investors, through laying people off, therefore, ruining thousands of peoples lives every couple of years.
Hey look, Microsoft doing the exact thing this video describes on May 7th. Who woulda thought?
I’m not even a game dev or anything but that ending made me a little misty eyed. The entire video I was just thinking how asinine this all is and *painful* to be the workers getting churned in and out of companies over the games these corporate vultures play with people’s actual lives. We cannot emphasize the importance of unions enough, thank you!
i can't thank you enough for this video, the conclusion made me sob - ive only been in the industry half a year, but im alongside people who have been here for decades who cant quite fathom whats going on, and this made it all so, so clear. your final, quiet call to action is so, so resonant - our actions to organise have been demonised by the board and other colleagues - this felt like a quiet pat on the back that i needed to find reassurance that what we're doing isn't wrong
i didn't go looking for this video: i've subscribed to you for a while (on my main channel) and always have adored your videos for the depth and humanity presented in each one, so the fact that this appeared on my recommended page today felt like fate. thank you so much.
Moon, these videos are really good. Too good. The kind of good that makes me wonder "who the heck are you?" These videos were always beyond amateur skill level, but the more videos you make the more you show that what you give us stems from more than just being good at research and writing.
I suppose this kind of perspective is something a lawyer is privy to. Not just any lawyer though, but one intimately familiar with corporations, and an interest in gaming that spreads far beyond that of a consumer.
Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for sharing with us. We all appreciate your well informed perspective greatly! :)
Btw, technicality, there is some "layoff" in NoA back in very early 2022. But I don't think that is part of the hiring-firing cycle but more of the restructing the NoA branch to Washington, their HQ instead of CA, for example: Kit & Crystal decide to leave NoA after more 10 years or so because they don't want to move to Washington.
But because of that refocus, this year is the first time we have Nintendo Live in US, and it was right in their home state.
So this would be a "Type 3" layoff, I'd think.
Pretty interesting to see how those companies work. And Kudos to Nintendo (of America even) to not have fallen into the same hyper capitalist mindset.
I wouldn't call that hyper capitalist or even capitalist, it's more corporatism.
All capitalism means in the purest sense is the belief that we as individuals have the right to ownership and property and for those rights to be acknowledged and protected.
@@NoxideActive What is corporatism if not a highly efficient way for those recognized rights to be used for the worse, resulting in power (e.g. economic strength and money) accruing more and more under the ownership of increasingly fewer individuals?
After all, capitalism is still capitalism if 99.99% of all possible ownership (including the rights to future property) is controlled by a single person.
@@NoxideActivecorporatism is an inevitably under capitalism. In fact, it's capitalism in it purest form.
Property and ownership is a form of power. If you own a factory, you have more power (financially, socially, and materially) than your employees. Even owning a house conveys a certain amount of power because of the generational wealth it provides.
Because it provides power, you always have the incentive to accrue more property and possessions, because when your rights are tied to your possession of property, those with less property have less rights. The most efficient way to accrue power is through the cartel-like monopolistic practices of large corporations.
Capitalism is a competition between endlessly hungry monsters, but in a world of limited resources, that competition means they will all eventually starve once the resources they need to grow are far too great for the environment to sustain.
@NoxideActive ooh, I like that word. If Capitalism is an economic style/structure, maybe Corporatism is the philosophy/mindset/policies that companies follow to optimize "growth" (however they define it) in a Capitalist economy. 🤔
@@NoxideActive I'd call it collective ownership. The investors don't care about the company, only about what they can milk out of it, the tragedy of the commons in full effect.
I don't work in video games but I am an SWE in tech and the regular "business as usual" layoffs are something that are always at the back of my mind. Thankfully I'm hard to replace enough at my current company that the probably of being layed off should be lower than average, but the possibility is always there...
The employees don't like it, the customers don't like it, heck even middle management doesn't like it, and often it's bad for the environment, but the the shareholders like it so it's gonna happen, that's our current tragic fate.
Mooney, thank you for taking the time to make videos like these. Most gaming enthusiasts make speculations based on surface level info presented whenever a studio announces layoffs, and that leads to many half-baked speculations just for clicks here on YT. Finding out that all these layoffs and general bad news in the industry is a game in and of itself that these big developers play is very informative and eye-opening. I'll now be able to look at news like this in the future and be able to figure out where they are in their cycles. Please keep doing what you're doing!
I finished my concept art contract in Sept 23 and havene't worked since (early-mid Jan '24 as of writing). I'm having to sell my car, move in with my 80 year old mother and very seriously consider abandoning my whole career. Every job has hundreds of applications. And there aren't many jobs.
Tech companies save money by firing and hiring, because they can pay new employees less than bumping up highly skilled workers over time. I also think its to do with bumping up profits on quarterly reports to look good for investors. Year in and year out, they hire and fire hundreds again and again. This obviously impacts the development games in dysfunctional ways, at times it sabotages development. Then more people will be let go, the developers taking the fall. The financial model is dysfunctional and more exploitative than other industries, despite being a bigger industry than film or music. Video game workers need to unionize now! Tech workers outside of gaming are also hemmorgahing workers like crazy rn. It's this insanely non-strategic, growth at all costs, high investment strategy. Growing too fast can really hurt a company.
It is not dysfunctional so much as exploitative because it is functioning as intended. They are effectively performing a convoluted means of stealing from their employees by weakening their negotiating position, consumers through game outputnand quality, and in some cases, investors.
Dont join a company work, start a indie studio
Problem with Unionizing is that if you decide to do it, then most of these companies will just outsource their work to contractors in China, which has little in the way of worker protections and will likely result in these contractors being overworked way worse than anything here in the states.
The concept of small players following the dance steps of the big boys, and the implication that Japaneses video game companies like Square Enix and Atlas increased wages for their employees, not because it's a cool thing to do, but because it's what _Nintendo_ did, is something I learned today.
The coporate cynicism is strong with this one, to the point of being kind of depressing even, but it was highly educational, and I enjoyed how you presented it Moony.
I look forward to your next upload
I appreciate a video discussing the implications of capitalism on the gaming industry at large while, the entire time, SiIvaGunner music is playing. This is the vibe I need in my life.
This video’s section on Microsoft aged like a fine wine. It still makes the layoffs at Tango, Arkane Austin and so on sting from the cynicism of it all, but understanding “the dance” makes it easier to argue against it.
Absolutely incredible ending segment after the absolutely depressing realization of the downsides of capitalism.
I absolutely agree
LOVING you showing Wario during the Corporate leadership section
52:20 THATS SILVAGUNNERS MIX OF THE WII SHOP CHANNEL THEME WITH DRAKES "YOU USED TO CALL ME ON MY CELL PHONE!"
I noticed, I FELT IT, SOMETHING WAS OFF in the music of your video...ITS THE FUCKING SILVAGUNNER MUSIC! Amazing, loved it
dude how are you doing these so fast
Law school is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.
Is that Yoshi Commits Tax Fraud!?
I imagine, like cinema, there can never be a total corporate take over of video games. Simply because of the art element. Kind of like how Hollywood became completely closed off to new film makers and people had to go to schools and use certain equipment to even be an indie; RUclips appeared as a more accepting method of sharing their art.
In a similar way console games may one day be impossible for indie makers to get on, but there will always be people that make games for other platforms and aren't constrained by the market or boards.
It is harder than with cinema I would argue, as the resources required to make a game is definitely way less than a movie
As a game developer of almost 10 years, thank you for this video, I feel like I've learned a lot, the biz has been pretty stressful as of late.
i cant keep a straight face listening to all of these capital truth bombs while fucking nokia arabic ringtone bonetrousle plays in the background
Thank you Arlo.
This makes me think about the Olympians or deities that did whatever they wanted as humans prayed to not die in the crossfire.
Interesting simile, but actually you're telling the truth! 🙏
I've never understood corporate finance (to be fair I haven't ever wanted to). But after another banger from Moony, it's opened by eyes to the "dance steps of success" and confirmed my suspicions of the cynicism that it takes to most efficiently and profitably "do the dance"
I've learned so much from this channel thanks to the trickery of actually learning things when I just want to watch stuff about video games. Thanks Moony!
no wonder there is so much slop, is just "make an attractive game for investors not for the people that are gonna play it", this is a very cool vid man
in a world and industry that increasingly values corporations and IPs over everything else, it's so refreshing to hear such a based, well researched and pro worker voice!
Great in-depth video!
As someone who works in the industry as a programmer I find this very eye-opening.
One thing I'd love to see discussed is how these cycles affect productivity and quality in the long-run. I've seen many instances where in a span of a few years most of the team has changed. Even if the new hires are better developers than the previous ones there's a lot of time that needs to be spent getting them up to speed. Another issue is the knowledge that is lost when people leave. Whole game systems suddenly do not have someone responsible for them and when bugs appear or the system needs to be modified someone will have to learn how it works (usually not understanding it as well as the original owner) leading to more time lost or worse, bugs as the system was not properly understood.
Wouldn't this mean that in the long run the company is hurt more by joining this method then by ignoring it? Look at some of the most talented studios out there... They are the ones that retain their staff. Nintendo is a great example. Others like Blizzard are but a shell of their previous selves. The company name may be the same, but the people aren't.
When it comes to creating great content? Yeah most likely, but when it comes to money? Well, look again at the comparison between Nintendo and EA he shows.
it hurts the company in the sense that their products get worse, yes. however, the point of a company that's bought into shareholder capitalism isn't to make good or profitable products, but to provide quick returns for shareholders and to allow them to cash out on top and buy in at the bottom.
@ovesHugs Exactly why these companies products suck and more people are turning to indie developers. It's the cycle of enshittification. They don't exist to make good games, that's usually an accident, they exist to manipulate shareholders.
Ex: Bioware of today is not the same company as the Bioware that made KotOR or ME1. Their names are the same but it's just a zombie wearing a skin suit of its old self.
What did cause the crash back in the day tho? Too many games offered with bad quality nobody wanted. These cycles continue to diminish the quality over and over again, so what is the final outcome of it? A crash, cuz nobody wants to buy the bad quality games anymore, especially in the casual market as they only know mostly AAA games. And then, only those who didn't join the practice are left in the eyes of casuals, they have to breed the ground again and the circle starts up again.
Damn, an hour long Moon Channel video? Is it Christmas already?;) Time to get some hot chocolate ready and cuddle up in a blanket burrito! I'm ready to learn!:D
That Inkling boy incident is amazing. The use of WarioWare footage is gold too.
Gold
Heh
moony ends vid with union call to action
STAY BASED MOON
I think the only way we can move away from the current state of Western AAA development cycles is for there to be a homegrown company who can make it big in the USA without participating in the same dance as big tech. Possibly imitating how the Japanese do it but there's room for them to invent their own. The first step might be to take our eyes off big tech; too much of our discussion is centered on AAA when indies and smaller game companies don't necessarily always follow the same cycles, although sometimes they accidentally fall into it. Just some sort of proof to future game company leaders that you don't have to sing Microsoft's tune.
"Let's do one more example. Here's a company that is imperfect but is making surprising moves such as increasing staff by 10%."
Me: it's gotta be Nintendo
"That company is Nintendo."
Love this guys channel.
Bonus points for Persona 5 music in the background.
Thank you for these quality uploads.
and negative 100 points for the latest video. they got so much wrong there.
At 2 minutes in, I am guessing that they overbuilt on a bubble is part of it. Corporations insist on perpetual growth, which is impossible when there is a decline in consumer demand by an order of magnitude because it was being temporarily artificially inflated by lockdowns.
Same thing happened with ttrpgs. It exploded, then quickly tapered off once people went back to work. Less consumer demand, less money, downsizing and firms exit theb industry.
Now to listen to the rest and see how it compares to Mooney's take.
many of my close friends and I have been affected by layoffs in the industry and seeing a factual approach to whats actually going on behind the scenes is really reassuring and helps quell a lot of the anxiety around my career path - thanks moony!!
When I see a Mooney video notification, I click. No in-between.
big real
God you guys are such man children.
Moony coming again with a video where the provided context is just as eye-opening, if not more so, than the actual part about video games.
I'm glad someone talked about this. People are waxing poetical about how the industry is in shambles (which it is) and when I tell them it's just capitalism doing its thing, the same response always comes up: IT'S THOSE NASTY GREEDY PEOPLE AT THE TOP STOP MAKING THINGS POLITICAL And I always say, "And do you think that maybe, JUST maybe capitalism rewards greed?" It's exhausting. Someone blamed middle managers. Another blamed piracy and "everyone" expecting games to be free all the time. Ridiculous. Look at the world around us, people, it's actually not the complicated.
Union time baby let’s go
Some tech companies of this latest boom have seen their stock increasing after a lay off, it's just how Wall Street treats workers I guess. There is also the fact that after a lay off, they can replace the laid off employees with current market ones which are often much cheaper, especially if lay offs have been happening everywhere or your company is heavily sought after for some reason. I remember Blizzard showing up in the news every start of the year for laying off hundreds of employees before the allegations surfaced, and after they did and everyone were talking about their bad experiences with Blizzard, it became widespread that they were paying their employees around 1/3 of the market average. I don't know how things are going for them right now.
Ea's new ai voice thing... They are indeed preparing for the next hype cycle.
What kind of beautiful video did youtube just recommend to me here. Wow. This guy is really smart. What a great video.
Valve has avoided all of this trouble by being privately held.
Probably more so because Gabe holds the same values as Nintendo. Put someone else in his spot and they might dance a different dance.
@@SimuLord Commodus was more so a victim of circumstances and propaganda. But I’d like to believe the next generation is just tired of all the cynical corporate bullshit and hold on to idealistic values.
Also helps that they basically don't make games anymore and are satisfied just milking their storefront.
this video is amazing at explaining such a difficult topic, but i gotta admit that thinking about it is so stressful and complicated it makes me want to go live in the countryside and plant potatoes
Me before this video: "man I am wondering whats up with the gaming industry."
Me after: "You are so right Mr. Moonie it's time to burn down Silicon Vally and the Wall Street! Glory to the dictatorship of the workers!"
Why? Greed. Capitalism is always the real villain.
This was so interesting. I've always wondered why companies can get massive share prices when their earnings are so low in comparison. It was all just hype all along? It really is incredible how irrational so much of our world is.
nah it's only investors that only see money
@@Doktario_Mystario Well after what I've learned from this video plus my own observations, they don't actually see the money, they're seeing hype and buying in to it.
@@MarkPTP7000 yes, they see the hype and think it will make them money
a cyber’s world? is such a banger. cheers moonie!
I've been trying to understand what "business growth" means for ages and couldn't pin down a concrete definition. I thought I couldn't understand because finance is complicated and I'm not well-educated in the subject. Now I'm bitter to find out it's just a meaningless marketing term like "natural" or "superfood" that doesn't actually mean anything. Except it's marketing to shareholders rather than consumers.
So these business decisions that have such an impact on all our lives - layoffs, "restructuring" and probably a bunch of other things that ruin our cities and our environment - you're telling me it's all due to what is basically astrology that investors are using to make these decisions that affect all of us?
This has continued to happen, but there are deeper issues as well. There are entire teams doing things that many game engines have tools built into them to do automatically. Placing furniture and clutter in buildings, for a prime example. A former Bethesda dev pointed out how using UE5 he could do something in seconds that Bethesda would have an entire team working to do for weeks. And since it's so much simpler, a single dev can do everything and then go back and make the spaces more representative of the character(s) in that space. And the reason Bethesda and other developers don't make that change is too much bureaucracy. Unless they HAVE to make a change like that, its too much of a shift in the development process to implement on the fly. One developer might be able to do all that work themselves instead of all the teams that currently get assigned to it, but insert what-ifs.
I would also massively argue against any claim that Microsoft is the king of managing the hype cycle. If anything, they're the jokers. Those prestigious developers you listed off have universally been called out for steep declines in the quality of games they're producing - Now including Activision-Blizzard. And sadly, that also includes Obsidian, despite the fact that I really liked The Outer Worlds, many others took it as them trying to return to something akin to Fallout: New Vegas, but even I have to admit it lacked features it should have had considering that intent. Fable is the last standing exclusive that hasn't recently released an entry that significantly upset at least part of the fanbase. That said, a lot of fans were really disappointed with what they've seen with even Fable now. Then comes the issue around the fact that Game Pass doesn't even make enough to fund its first party studios, let alone the third party studios, and games they have sold as exclusives now have to be sold on other platforms to generate more revenue. Meaning Microsoft can't even deliver on the one thing leads people to buy their console - exclusive games. Game Pass, which they should have known wouldn't work just looking at Netflix and Disney+, is how they want to be identified. They're stuck in a situation where they can't increase the price of Game Pass bc they tried twice now and were stopped by fan backlash and they aren't selling enough games due to Game Pass having a direct negative impact on selling games, so they have to find some way to generate more revenue. And while the initial sells from their new studios, Cod-Acitivision, Diablo 4-Blizzard, Starfield-Bethesda, haven't been disappointing the issue has been fan reception, which has led to those games dropping off a cliff in both sales and active players. Which points back to what I said about MS prestigious developers and their declining quality.
Microsoft is easily dumping $10-15 billion into Game Pass every year, but only getting a top end of $5 billion. That's gone on for a few years now. Even Netflix and Disney+ are losing money, but Microsoft and Phil Spencer specifically are so invested into Game Pass that conceding it as a failure could kill the entire Xbox brand. They've chosen a death by a thousand cuts it seems bc losing what exclusivity they had is upsetting and enraging their fans. Phil Spencer has been indicating for over a year now that their 2023 game lineup needed to be a huge success. The initial response to Diablo 4 likely made him think they would pull it off, but every day since has just added to the disappointment. Safe games like CoD seriously underperformed due to beta and early access reviews. The entire Xbox brand has been focused on capitalizing on the hype from the early 360 era that by the time Phil Spencer began making statements about how badly they're losing the reality had already shifted to them having already lost. People like to say they're too big to fail, Microsoft won't fail, but the Xbox wing of Microsoft definitely can. Investors and the board will eventually get fed up with Phil Spencer burning billions of dollars every year that would otherwise be going into their pockets.
MS is in a bad spot bc they have a couple dozen development teams that have grown so large that they can't react to issues as they arise, and the attempt to take on a ever-failing financial model. Unity cost themselves a lot of contracts due to their actions, but there is also going to be an impact on to developers as they no longer have much use for individuals who specialize in that engine specifically. And as developers are almost universally laying people off, we fans should be hoping that these layoffs are being done to address the bloated staff, overly bureaucratic management structure and no longer necessary positions in these companies. The size of development teams went from 100-150 to over 400 in the span of time it takes to develop a single AAA game. Meanwhile, fans have spent this entire generation pointing out that this has been the smallest generational improvement we've ever seen. It's really hard to justify employing that many people when investors are taking the fans reactions as, "The product they made with 100 people was better than this product they made with over 400." I'll point back to what I said earlier about the game engines having the tools built into them that made these ballooning staffs unnecessary to begin with. And I still haven't pointed out things like individual developers complaining on social media that they spent the entire afternoon watching RUclips videos bc their team had nothing to do. And they had nothing to do bc you have to have managerial affirmation before you can do anything in game development these days. And it wasn't that long ago that a person on one team could just walk over and ask a developer on another team if they could make something work, so they'd try it out and see what everyone else thought. That sort of thing is seen as a waste of development time and resources, but an entire team doing nothing all day except watching RUclips videos isn't. There is a very real, very large breakdown in modern game development and they're still massively profitable.
As to the connection to the rest of the tech industry, we literally saw people from Twitter and Google making videos showing, likely unintentionally, how their typical day at work didn't actually involve work. It's comparable to a college kid going home on the weekend to have their mom do their laundry and eating as much as they can as well as taking some food home for later. That's not a good way to make any money. Yet some of these companies are massively successful DESPITE having built a work culture around that sort of behavior. So in that way, game development hasn't gotten back to that sort of behavior. Last time that was common in game development was in the early/mid 90s where game development took 3-6 months with a staff as small as 10-15 people and the CEO's were 30 somethings flying around the world in private jets doing lines of blow off porn stars and expensive escorts. A time where the industry could have literally been paying individual developers like they were Bobby Kotick in some studios. If people don't understand why the industry seems so greedy today, I'd like to point out that a lot of the people calling the shots now got into the industry bc a single team could generate hundreds of millions each year in profits by pumping out 3-5 games and now games are taking 3-6 years. Gaming crushes Hollywood still in cost vs earnings after expenses, but its peanuts compared to what it could have been in that era of developers who lived like rockstars.
Are investors just bad for the video game environment? Or is it just the wild attempts at pleasing them that some companies make that ruin things?
Yes
Public-traded companies are the problem
They're both good and bad IMO. They allow for more money to flow into a company which allows said company to make more ambitious and expensive titles they may never have been able to make otherwise if they had to rely on profit alone, but they also facilitate the creation of a lot of the more scummy practices of the game industry.
Sidenote. Thank you for answering the question posed by your video's title in the first 5 minutes. I WILL watch the rest of this, but I was worried that question was going to hang over my watching experience, thanks for the short answer. Ok, watching the rest now! Byyyye
Love how the business that pays me so I can afford sustenance might shoot my financial security out of existence because firing a few people makes them more money
sarcasm obviously
fuck them for playing with people's lifes like that, especially when they actually have the funds to sustain the business
Is the video game industry collapsing? No. Is the Triple A video game industry collapsing? Maybe
"Gaming is being infected with a little-known business practice: capitalism."
Moon channel just doesn't miss. Every video is about something that I've noticed but never spent the time or effort to look into in more than surface detail.
The massive hiring and layoffs were a mystery to me until this video. I had thought it was part of the rising interest rates and post-covid restructuring, but the timing didn't exactly match up and was too quick. Why would such big companies hire a large number of employees only to fire them a year later. Anyone in the finance sphere could tell you the general trajectory of the lock-down once it started, so for so many big tech companies to suddenly change direction as if making a misstep didn't make sense to me.
I'd also love to hear more of your thoughts on the Unity situation. I was extremely frustrated at how surface level people talked about the whole Unity situation, given how odd the situation was. Between Unity's 70% market share in mobile games, the obviously flawed profit model, and the the fact that Unity somehow loses money; I think it all adds up, but I also doubt its that simple.
Having the Pinkerton logo flash right as you mention Magic is perfect.
It's not collapsing, it's just corperate greed speedrunning themselves into the ground.
Putting the Pinkerton logo up when describing WotC as the company who makes Magic was brilliant.
WotC literally sent Pinkertons to a streamer's house
Well well well, (May 10, 2024) look whose Video just became relevant again.
As always the answer is UNIONS. You don’t owe any loyalty to a corporation, because they sure as hell won’t give you any.
Unions are a great way of keeping other people out the industry and getting your job outsourced to some Lao Xing somewhere in Eastern China. No, you learn how to negotiate, and refuse to deal with companies that treat you like garbage
As a game developer, I thank you for this video, both for insight and for telling everyone else about this issue
As a worker, I urge us game devs to unionize
And as a person, I can't help but ask that anyone reading this stops and thinks what is the root of this problem. What system makes this whole ordeal possible and natural.
> What system makes this whole ordeal possible and natural.
Uh oh, you're not about to say the C word, are you? that's a very big no no.
The syncretism between capitalism and communism, but you’re not gonna like that answer
new moony video LETS GOOOOO
Also all those companies have record profits and C-level makes more money than most multi year AAA project budgets... so yeah, it's capitalism as usual, those at the bottom are fucked, rich get richer...
I work for a tech company that sold off a bunch of assets and laid off over a thousand employees. They're already talking about growth. Its just how tech companies work now. Sell off the things they don't think are super profitable and lay off employees and then continue with a growth mindset immediately after. Its hard to tell what is or isn't good and whether a company is heading towards bankruptcy or just doing what stockholders want.
Also I think stuff like this was always happening in the games industry, people are just paying more attention to corporations and how they treat employees. hearing X big corp laid off more employees and you're hearing it left and right everywhere is a bigger story now and people are getting more and more tired of capitalism as corps take it to its extreme.
I've studied economics a bit and thought I already had a good grasp on the current events of the games market, but your explanation is enlightening. You not only fill in the common missing pieces of the picture but also show your work on how and why they fit. Additionally, with how much you mentioned intentional excess and cutting when explaining the boom and bust, and how you explained investor attitudes, I think I have an analogy to help explain. Boom and bust economics is akin to a hypercompetitive bodybuilding competition with blind judges who are appraising the contestants by how much sweat they smell.