In the gaming industry, there is a saying I keep hearing. “Put out a bad game–get laid off. Put out a great game–get laid off. It doesn’t matter.” Sometimes, people will add, “Put out an OK game–get laid off.” The point is that no one is safe. It doesn’t matter how well your game does–you can be on the chopping block.
The biggest example of this is id Software–the developers of the DOOM and Quake games (both of which are considered the grandparent of the first-person shooter). They have been consistent with their games coming out and being warmly received. Their last DOOM game came out last year to much fanfare, and it had an update this year.
In Xbox’s current brutal ‘off with their heads’ rampage, they laid off 136 employees at id Software. The co-founder of id Software (who has long since left), John Carmack released a milquetoast statement that said nothing and included a tasteless and, quite frankly, cringeworthy remark. He would have been better off not saying anything at all, quite frankly. Greg Miller from Kinda Funny Games and Tamoor Hussain from Gamespot talked about it passionately on KFG, and I’ve included the clip below.
With Obsidian, they did not get laid off, but they got yanked off the Forsworn sequel they were working on and told they were doing the new Fallout. This is where mixed emotions come in. No one was asking for a new Forsworn (or rather, very few people), and everyone was clamoring for a new Fallout. The last game in the main series (Fallout 4) came out in 2015! No wonder people are hungering for more.
In addition, there is a Netflix Fallout series going on, and it would have been a perfect time to have a new Fallout game come out. This is Bethesda I’m talking about, by the way. They are the ones who own the Fallout name, but Obsidian made what is arguably the favorite in the series–Fallout New Vegas.
The CEO of Microsoft has said that since being hands off hasn’t worked, it’s now time to be hands on (I’m paraphrasing). I can’t say that I disagree with the premise. Bethesda has two IPs that are basically printing money, and they haven’t done anything major with either series in several years (and, no, Elder Scrolls, I’m not including the countless time Skyrim has been remastered, remade, repackaged, and put on different devices).
On the other hand, it feels really tyrannical to order a team to make a new game that is not the one they intended to make. Yes, even though they have made one before. They were in the middle of making a sequel to their latest game! To be ordeerd to stop that and do something completely different, well, that would not sit well with me.
Everyone is angry about it, and rightly so. It’s been a bloodbath, and the worst part is not knowing when or if it will stop. Also, are any of the upper C-suite taking paycuts? I think not. They can’t do without their third home in Martha’s Vineyard, now can they?
One thing that is ridiculous is their expectations for their profits. I’m speaking specifically about the Microsoft C-suite now. I’d like to remind people that they made a profit last year–just not as much of a profit as the C-suite wanted to make–which was 30%. Which, by the way, is wild. I just Googled. PlayStation made a 9.9% profit last year. Which, to be fair, was over three times the profit precentage of Xbox (3%). But, you will note, that it’s still 1/3rd of what the Microsoft C-suite is demanding from Xbox. Who, again, I must emphasize, made a fucking profit last year.
30% profit is fantasy talk. It just is. Threre is no fucking way this is going to happen. One of the muckety-mucks also said that they want to touch a billion people a day. A day!! Now, I recognize that they’re including all the people playing Minecraft every day and maybe even all the people using Windows products on the daily, but it’s still a ridiculous goal. The fact that the Microsoft C-suite actually said that out loud (or sent out the PR message) and not one of them had an ounce of shame or doubt in doing so said a whole lot to me.
In the video I included above, Tam and Greg talk about the latest round of layoffs that Gamespot (gaming website) has had. (They got bought out by a megacorp. Not to say they weren’t owned by one before because I don’t know much about them, but this megacorp seems particularly bad.) At the end of the section of the clip about layoffs, Tam talks about it and he’s in tears. It’s so painful to watch, and I can see the PTSD in his eyes and demeanor. Again, this is after several layoffs, and he talks about how difficult it is to watch his friends and colleagues pack up and leave for no good reason.
The problem is that there is so very little any one person can do. That’s something I realized when I first became political. As a collective, we can do a lot. But individually, we can’t do shit. I can sit there and boycott whatever, but it won’t make a dent in the money that company makes. Yes, I canceled my Game Pass to make a point, but that point doesn’t matter.
The worst thing is the feeling that we’re nowhere near the bottom. Xbox
is cutting about 3,200 jobs throughout this year (1,600 immediately and then another 1,600 throughout the year), but who knows if that’s the end of it? I know, actually. It’s not. It won’t be. There’s a fatalism to it that I can’t shake. Again, I know this is not restricted to just games, but that’s the pop culture medium that I engage in.
Again, it’s easy for me to say that this doesn’t really affect me because I only play PC games and if I absolutely need to buy a new PC/upgrade the one I have, I can. And the games I buy are mostly indies, which means that they are usually more in control of their own budgets (which, admittedly, are very small). But it just sucks to read about the layoffs day after day. It sucks to hear about the unreasonable expectations of the muckety-mucks who only care about making money.
We are truly in the throes of late-stage capitalism, and it sucks. It’s hard to see a hobby that I enjoy crumbling before my eyes, but, again, it’s just reflecting the world at large. That doesn’t make it better, mind, but it helps to keep that in mind.