You ever wonder how many hours of productivity the games industry's torching with continual layoffs by keeping people stressed and worried about precarious positions they're in? If you stuck a monetary value on how much productivity they're losing, would it be more/less than money saved by layoffs? - ThreadSky

caseyexplosion.bsky.social • 1 day ago

You ever wonder how many hours of productivity the games industry's torching with continual layoffs by keeping people stressed and worried about precarious positions they're in? If you stuck a monetary value on how much productivity they're losing, would it be more/less than money saved by layoffs?

Comments

bsattva.bsky.social•1 day ago

When I was at EA as a consultant to help them manage resources better I was told flat out that burn out was not a factor because they had "1000s of resumes of people that would kill their parents to work as a game dev."
EA also assembly-lined their production of visual elements...

bsattva.bsky.social•1 day ago

...so that it didnt really matter if someone quit because it woudl be easy to get another person to come in and draw 300 different kinds of shrub or draw all the kits for the premier league teams.
They know and they dont see it as an issue.

adanct.bsky.social•1 day ago

Save a little money in the moment when they are handing out the bonuses. Lose a lot of money when they have to hire a new employee and spend a month teaching them your system. Lose a lot of money when the next game does poorly cause the jump calibrator was fired last year.

tronknotts.bsky.social•1 day ago

Gamedevs I know who are at risk of layoff seem to spend at least 80% of their time and energy creating plans to prevent job loss or financial ruin, no more than 20% on making their games better

bustronaut.bsky.social•1 day ago

I hate to be that person, but the stress/fear is the point

chainedvictory.bsky.social•1 day ago

Games industry folks should probably start talking IATSE, honestly...

https://iatse.net/

maoukurosai.bsky.social•1 day ago

Over the long term? They're losing money. But for a single profit quarter or project? Saving money.

So of course the correct option is short term gains at the expense of long term sustainability.

zendervai.bsky.social•1 day ago

Honestly, I would disagree on this. There's a *lot* of money sunk into maintaining a high turnover environment, but a lot of executives are completely oblivious to it because it's not overt on the spreadsheets. You hire someone, you're spending weeks or months paying them for not much output.

zendervai.bsky.social•1 day ago

Having to get together a whole new team for every project means wasting a lot of money right off the bat while they figure each other out and figure out what they want to do and how. While maintaining people means you have much less of an adjustment period and the more money correlates to output.

lutinlyes.bsky.social•1 day ago

If the executives are being rewarded with bonuses from the investor class for firing and hiring, then from the point of view of the executives this is the "correct" decision. It doesn't have to make sense to the proles.

zendervai.bsky.social•1 day ago

That wasn't the point of what I was responding to though. It doesn't save money, it actually costs a lot more money. It might be the decision the executives are rewarded for, but that doesn't actually change that they're blowing titanic amounts of money on nothing.

buildabarns.bsky.social•1 day ago

I’m not a suit wearing big shot executive but I would simply not burn and discard the people who make the thing that makes us money.

lutinlyes.bsky.social•1 day ago

This can probably be extended to every industry in this modern late-capitalist hell scape.

lupin-chevalier.bsky.social•1 day ago

I don't know of any other industry that routinely destroys its own production pipeline as thoroughly and frequently. It's like trying to run a restaurant but you do a full kitchen strip and refit every seasonal menu change.

topiuusis.bsky.social•1 day ago

More and no need to even stick a monetary value on it, it does have a real effect on company finances. Probably the reason why indie devs can already make pretty much indistinguishable games with a fraction of the money and employees.

topiuusis.bsky.social•1 day ago

And I emphasize that I'm a HR BBA student. The research has been done, the data exists, I'm not hypothesizing here. These big corporations are led by people who believe their opinions over facts or are so evil they're willing to pay a lot of money just to be cruel.

ben332w.bsky.social•1 day ago

I can't tell you about direct labor hours, but I can give a rough guesstimate of my own situation in $$$. Every one of my coworkers is stressed about something, or sick,or redoing work, or waiting on equipment for four hours a week.

We have thousands of employees. It's at least seven digits impact.

ben332w.bsky.social•1 day ago

We're only janitors. Our hourly rate isn't that high without benefits. Every single other industry is going to be more impacted.

qlippot.bsky.social•1 day ago

Nobody ever accused the c-suite in AAA companies of long-term planning.

If anything, I suspect the drive for shareholder value selects against it.

roguespyke.bsky.social•1 day ago

I remember when Nintendo was struggling in the Wii U era, Iwata said that there was no point in laying off employees because "How can our employees make amazing games if they're always afraid of being fired?"

sannish.bsky.social•1 day ago

I know that my productivity and motivation to work drops significantly when there is yet another round of layoffs and studio closures. Like today!

mermaidseph.bsky.social•1 day ago

Speaking from experience: The amount of time spent on onboarding and whatever training is needed is insane. Unless someone is actually in your space actively causing problems it really doesn’t make ANY fucken sense to fire good people with years (sometimes decades) of experience.

aldanar.bsky.social•1 day ago

WAY more. They probably save a few million overall, but likely lose upwards of tens of millions. But capitalism dogs only ever concern over IMMEDIATE profits. Even if it costs them BILLIONS later, as long as they make a couple million now? That's good enough for them.

lykusiah.bsky.social•1 day ago

I'd say nobody's thinking ahead, but I think that'd imply that the suits making these decisions have an iota of understanding of creative processes that goes beyond "work fast."

What do you mean you can't fire someone & hire someone with the same job title & get equal results guaranteed? 😒

wirewitchviolet.bsky.social•1 day ago

That and how often people are forced to reinvent the wheel with systems and tools they keep having to remake because their past work was at another company or just thrown out.

acidmphino.bsky.social•1 day ago

Yeah, this is what I don't get with the layoffs, the cost in terms of stress and drop in productivity must be massive compared to the actual dollar figure saved... it makes no logical sense. But I guess this is what corporate brainrot does to people.

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