Video Game Execs Are Ruining Video Games

https://jacobin.com/2024/05/video-games-union-zenimax-exploitation

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Redactor0 naori/oppa Unpaid jannie for 10+ years and I would make the same choices if I could do it all over again. 1mo ago #6883923

Tech companies often lay people off not because they are losing money but because they are simply growing at a slower rate than before.

If you wrote this on a story problem in math class in 3rd grade it would be marked wrong. At least in my day.

reports likely underestimate the carnage

Using that word while you at the very least say that you want the war in Gaza to end is a little cringe. Reminds me of the girl at the end of "Being a Peepeehead is Cool."

We put on this rave in an abandoned mosque and all the proceeds went to the Middle East or Africa or wherever that thing is happening

enshittification

As I always say, they have to use scatological terms because that's the only thing left when you're constantly afraid of everyone being offended. Next the coprophiles will complain and they'll just be stuck with "bad".

Bioware laid off a significant portion of their employees last fall

Could it be because the ending of Mass Effect 3 was so offensively bad it made millions of people go apeshit and they still remember it? No, it's probably capitalism.

Companies often argue they need to cut jobs when an expensive project doesn't sell as well as predicted. But workers aren't buying this argument anymore.

:marseydizzy:

I could play Lemonade Stand on the Apple II (in school, we had a Commodore 64 because we're not a bunch strags) when I was 10 years old and understand concepts that elude them.

Part of what contributes to that burnout is what's known as "crunch,"

Work for a fricking bank or something. (Oh yeah, that's right, these kids don't know COBOL.) You can just be a normal person if you want.

Workers call these "death marches,"

Neighbor did you REALLY go there? :marseydizzy: I guess I'll have to explain to kids there was this thing called the Bataan Death March where the Japanese forced tens of thousands of Filipino and American prisoners to walk to their prison camps. Read it for yourself, but I'm just gonna say directly that no game dev in 2024 has ever gone through an experience like this. It's like if you said "my bosses are working me too hard, this is a real holocaust!"

ZeniMax Workers United is also bargaining to clamp down on the industry's widespread use of independent contractors in place of employees.

Wow. This is revolutionary. Nobody ever thought of this before. :marseyclapping:

This profit maximization also distorts the kinds of games that developers are allowed to pursue.

Profit maximization is a bad word? I guess they've dumbed down Economics 101 since I took it.

"Big companies will refuse to do small, cheap projects (think $1 million or less) that are almost guaranteed to make a profit, because they wouldn't make enough money," Kai says.

This is actually 110% right. These big game companies are foundering because management wants them to be big. You have to always expand. They expanded way too far. There's no profitable market for what they're selling now. The best games in this century, and definitely with the highest profit margins, are like Factorios where a few Czech guys made a game that was actually really good and sold millions of copies.