59 percent of devs say industry in 'bad' straits, blame investors and mismanagement

Dacvak said:
Half the people here blaming executives and publishers. The other half blaming the devs and their managers. I'm just sitting here like

Glasses Why Dont We Have Both GIF by nounish ⌐◨-◨
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And you probably wouldn't be wrong about that. I feel like there's a lot of armchair analysts thinking they have any idea of how an actual dev (not a spokesperson, not a manager, not a team lead whatever) works and under what kind of parameters he has to do his job. It's easy to blame them when all you have in your head are these stupid memes replicated over and over again for years now in the so called gaming community, especially on social media (for example the "lazy dev" meme). My bet is that this survey result accurately reflects a lot of what is going wrong at the moment. Investors do have influence, and no it's not as easy as to demand of the managers they ignore their demands. Also management is clearly incompetent and we can see this without any doubt in many cases from the last couple years alone. These reasons weigh much heavier than maybe some devs that don't work hard enough or aren't suitable for their positions.
 
It's a variety of factors, but developers deserve their share of blame as well.

I'd also say many people who work in marketing departments and social media/community management don't even deserve their jobs because they actively harm their product's image rather than sell its value.

This gen also showed to me a severe diminished return in graphical fidelity, which is what much of AAA coasts on to sell themselves, and the jump we're gonna see with the Switch 2 + other PC handhelds I think will be a more significant value-add.

Big budget studios need to shrink their productions and offer more variety than bank on the next sequel managing to squeak profit. We're in a place where Sucker Punch and Naughty Dog are probably going to close the gen with only 1 release to their name...better hope it's good.
 
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I believe there's a plot hole on every bad idea, devs must be allowed to think for themselves and be selective on which game they choose to work with, otherwise, this messy situation wouldn't end well.
 
Impossible to have stability and consistency when you are pulling in studios from multiple different countries just to be able a get a functioning game out the door.
 
Men_in_Boxes said:
Then why are the most successful, profitable, popular games generally AAA or GAAS? Maybe tell the "passionate" indie devs to make their games more fun.
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indie games are great. My most played games recently - are Songs of Syx a game made by one person that is basically an city/empire/civilization builder, and Brotato - fun vampire surivival like.
Oh and Japanese AAA/AA like unicorn overlord.

You know what I don't play, GAss or multiplayer. I play some multiplayer on switch but that is local mario, switch sports, etc..

Indie games, single player AA and AAA from Eastern Europe/Asia are best right now.
 
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Reallink said:
You think the surveyed developers realize 95% of the high development costs and investor expectations are a direct result of them earning $250,000+ salaries and benefit packages as they spend much of their days scootering to the ping pong table next to the artisanal juice bars? Or their woke zealot coworkers petitioning studio heads to commission Sweetbaby Inc. to the tune of $10,000,000 - $20,000,000 per title.
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Girl Why Dont We Have Both GIF
 
All of the reasons apply, the DEV's should just do the best job they can depending on the circumstances they are working in, they don't call the shots on what type of game is being made or what's in the game and content, the management and publishers control and decide that.
 
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Loomy said:
You really think 50% of devs at a studio are making over $250k? Average salary is under $70k. And no one is paying a consultant $10m.
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LMFAO, go offer any studio you've actually hard of (nevermind one falling under the the "too high development costs/demanding investors" categories) $70K a year and see how far you get. You won't even have Janitors and Receptionists by the end of the day. Bro small town fast food/retail Jr. Assistant Managers in podunk nowhere make $70K a year these days. Cost per head is also FAR MORE than salary, the employers have to pay mountains of payroll taxes on every employee in addition to incredibly generous benefits packages. And that's without even touching on the overhead related to their luxury amenities and offices.
 
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Reallink said:
LMFAO, go offer any studio you've actually hard of (nevermind one falling under the the "too high development costs/demanding investors" categories) $70K a year and see how far you get. You won't even have Janitors and Receptionists by the end of the day. Bro small town fast food/retail Jr. Assistant Managers in podunk nowhere make $70K a year these days. Cost per head is also FAR MORE than salary, the employers have to pay mountains of payroll taxes on every employee in addition to incredibly generous benefits packages. And that's without even touching on the overhead related to their luxury amenities and offices.
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We can go based on feelings or we can look at actual evidence
 
I agree

Also, there's too much "we need the money asap" from a lot of companies, and games were never based to be fast produced, so things can easily go bad for the developers

Also², woke shit can and will fuck sales. And I hope it does because nobody needs a character with a male voice having pronouns or squared face girls
 
I'd like to think it will correct itself, but that would be pipe dreaming. Either way I already have more games than I'll ever be able to finish, but I so wish people would stop buying the crap that leads to more crap...
 
See this is why I can see AI being a net positive force games are expensive because coding is incredibly labor intensive even for mundane tasks like rendering a cardboard box.

By automating mundane tasks, lowering tech barriers, and allowing truly creative people to do what they do best come up with new creative ideas, AI could make game development more accessible and thus reduce its labor intensive nature somewhat.
 
Shitting on devs aside, there is truth in this, just look a Tango Gameworks, etc, where they do make fun games that are rated well but the studios still get kicked.
 
Keep hiring blue hair gender neutral activists and see how much they blame thenselfs for anything in their miserable lifes.
 
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I don't think a log of these devs would like efficient management. No more weekly knitting, no mass hiring, continued cuts where they can be made, implementation of automation and eastward outsourcing, no dumbass consultancy from organizations full of your political allies, higher pressure on deadlines (crunch is often a result of lax deadline adherence), and crunch if that doesn't work.

Investors listen to executives, who listen to managers, who do sometimes actually listen to devs. Yes, you can blame Andrew Wilson for shoveling GaaS down everyone's throat, but there's usually a hopeful ladder climber within these companies that also hypes up their peers and managers on that shit to advance their careers. Blaming investors for this shit when they're paying your salary despite being so far removed from the decision making process is ridiculous.
 
Excuse me sir, can you tell me in your opinion why you think the industry you are in is in trouble?

"Oh yes, its dying because its my fault."
 
What a surprise. Poll the employees and they blame management and targets.

I'll take a guess if the poll asked management, they'd say employees stink right back at ya.
 
I agree with the mismanagement part, there is a lot of bad management in higher places that do not care about a lot of things including employees, or the company itself more than their own position

Mel Brooks Management GIF
 
Loomy said:
My bad, here you go

Also, here's a link to the full report. Salary information starts on slide 34.

The good news is that average salaries are going up. But nowhere close to the exaggerations we're seeing.
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Wow. I skimmed the report and it goes on forever.

I've never seen such detailed questions and charts from any kind of industry or corporation ever. Typically, all the surveys I see are based on careers, feedback, compensation, business strategy and the overall generic question which goes something like "do you believe leadership is doing a good job?"

The link goes to all sorts of stuff like conflict issues and resolution, whether or not something gets their name in the game (credits), etc..... lol
 
Punished Miku said:
If you want free money thrown at you by being on the stock market, it's up to management to communicate realistic goals to those investors. Investors are just a different kind of customer, so it's kind of pointless to blame them for anything.
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I get that in a sense, however it's not like the individual shareholders have much say in the day to day, other than dumping stock. The whole concept just puts a lot of pressure on those at the top to keep squeezing everything down to get more profit. Not a new thing or unique to gaming at all, but with organic growth in gaming slowing down it just stands out.
 
SHA said:
I believe there's a plot hole on every bad idea, devs must be allowed to think for themselves and be selective on which game they choose to work with, otherwise, this messy situation wouldn't end well.
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Not all devs are creative enough to choose what they work on. That's why a lot of them end up at companies like EA and Ubisoft working on annual iterations of the same games. The technical people on the dev team tend to be good at bringing ideas of more creative people to life, but they aren't always good at coming up with good ideas.

I think devs should have freedom to choose to how build and implement, but I don't think they should necessarily be free to choose what they work on unless they're self-funding their games. If they're taking money from someone else to make a game they do have to make what they were paid to make. If they're putting their own skin in the game and taking the financial risk instead of spending someone else's money then sure, let them choose what they make.
 
Loomy said:
My bad, here you go

Also, here's a link to the full report. Salary information starts on slide 34.

The good news is that average salaries are going up. But nowhere close to the exaggerations we're seeing.
Click to expand...

Yep so as I said, salaries, platinum benefits packages, California employer/payroll taxes, and luxury offices/amenities absolutely take the average cost per head to $250k+. The number of base salaries >$100K and number of US workers surveyed correlate almost perfectly (emphasis on the largest group being >$150,000/yr, and remember, that's base salary)

COUNTRY.png


TLtJd0p.png
 
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It's always management's fault.

Are the developers incompetent? Management hired them and could fire them at any time.
Investors with unrealistic expectations? Management lied to them and set those expectations when they asked the investors for money.
 
ReBurn said:
Not all devs are creative enough to choose what they work on. That's why a lot of them end up at companies like EA and Ubisoft working on annual iterations of the same games. The technical people on the dev team tend to be good at bringing ideas of more creative people to life, but they aren't always good at coming up with good ideas.

I think devs should have freedom to choose to how build and implement, but I don't think they should necessarily be free to choose what they work on unless they're self-funding their games. If they're taking money from someone else to make a game they do have to make what they were paid to make. If they're putting their own skin in the game and taking the financial risk instead of spending someone else's money then sure, let them choose what they make.
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Agreed.

It doesn't even have to be that hard to decide. If Honda has successful lawn mower sales that's the division. They make tons of gardening electric tools. Don't like it? Leave.

I don't think any person on earth dreams in high school to work on designing, selling or doing artwork selling lawn mowers and chainsaws, but that's the division and nobody coming has the right to change it and suddenly focus on making bottles of hand soap no matter how much they like it.

Game studios would be more successful if they did some research what to make and make it well instead of living the dream and making a game (or licensing junk like suicide squad or gollum) that nobody wants, where it sure seems like it was just forced into the market hoping it sells.
 
StreetsofBeige said:
Wow. I skimmed the report and it goes on forever.

I've never seen such detailed questions and charts from any kind of industry or corporation ever. Typically, all the surveys I see are based on careers, feedback, compensation, business strategy and the overall generic question which goes something like "do you believe leadership is doing a good job?"

The link goes to all sorts of stuff like conflict issues and resolution, whether or not something gets their name in the game (credits), etc..... lol
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Yeah it sucks that responses go down every year, but people get half a dozen engagement survey, employee satisfaction survey, survey about the last survey and other bullshit every year, so I get them not wanting to respond. It's also one of those things that studios and publishers look at and think "interesting" and go back to figuring out how to maximize profits.
 
Loomy said:
Yeah it sucks that responses go down every year, but people get half a dozen engagement survey, employee satisfaction survey, survey about the last survey and other bullshit every year, so I get them not wanting to respond. It's also one of those things that studios and publishers look at and think "interesting" and go back to figuring out how to maximize profits.
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Crazy. My company does engagement surveys once every 3 years and people seem good with it. You can't do survey on top of survey on top of survey because it doesn't give managers and HR time to react to even fix the first batch of bad feedback.
 
StreetsofBeige said:
Crazy. My company does engagement surveys once every 3 years and people seem good with it. You can't do survey on top of survey on top of survey because it doesn't give managers and HR time to react to even fix the first batch of bad feedback.
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A lot of bad HR use surveys as a way to make employees think they're listening. The problem is when they don't do anything about the results. For example, they'll ask:
What are your thoughts about the in office benefits?
Employees will respond with "it's fine, but dental would be great"

and the response from management will be "we got a new coffee machine that makes 12 different kinds of drinks!"
 
Last Hearth said:
It's always management's fault.

Are the developers incompetent? Management hired them and could fire them at any time.
Investors with unrealistic expectations? Management lied to them and set those expectations when they asked the investors for money.
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I don't think this is necessarily true. At least not unless it's also true that when games are successful that they're always only successful because management did an amazing job managing the development of the product. We rarely see people praising management for the success of games, but we often see people blaming them for failures.
 
It's a mix of extreme corporate greed, stupidly woke devs that want to use their games for political activism, and unnecessarily huge scope with some games. I see it as mostly a problem with Western AAA gaming. The AAA gaming industry needs to get back to actually making fun games that entertain their audience and stop trying to feed us shitty games filled with politics/angendas and riddled with microtransactions. They cut back on these shitty things and maybe the industry will start to heal and become healthy again.
 
ReBurn said:
I don't think this is necessarily true. At least not unless it's also true that when games are successful that they're always only successful because management did an amazing job managing the development of the product. We rarely see people praising management for the success of games, but we often see people blaming them for failures.
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Those successful games owe their success to management more than you realize. And no, nobody talks about it because it's like referees in sports, you only notice them when they screw up, when they do their job well, they just enables the talent to achieve their potential.
Plus their thanks for a successful game comes in the form of monetary compensation.
 
Just my uninformed opinion, but there is too much investment in the gaming space. So many mouths to feed and the market can't grow fast enough to satiate the hunger for cold hard cash.
 
Reallink said:
You think the surveyed developers realize 95% of the high development costs and investor expectations are a direct result of them earning $250,000+ salaries and benefit packages as they spend much of their days scootering to the ping pong table next to the artisanal juice bars? Or their woke zealot coworkers petitioning studio heads to commission Sweetbaby Inc. to the tune of $10,000,000 - $20,000,000 per title.
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85% of the studio salaries go to the executive. What lalalaland nonsense are you going on about. The CEOs bonus alone could pay half the entire companies salaries.
 
Last Hearth said:
It's always management's fault.

Are the developers incompetent? Management hired them and could fire them at any time.
Investors with unrealistic expectations? Management lied to them and set those expectations when they asked the investors for money.
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An ethical issue then ?
 
Games went from passion projects towards disney sized companys.

What u have now is disney milking the star wars movies for every copper they can find and slamming another 10 titles after it with 30 shows because profits.
The passion that the original 3 movies had is nowhere to be found because moneys have to be made to keep investors happy.

Where the market of actual good and innovative games are these days are indie games and smaller projects and they are booming.
 
Cyberpunkd said:
Even Jason Schreier mentioned once that most predatory monetisation tactics come from devs, not management.
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naturally?
The suits ask for moneyz and devs are the ones who actually have to achieve the vague goals, also in pursue of their own bonuses I presume.
The what triggers the how.
 
I blame the devs for stupid bugs, like the continuous shitshow in Diablo IV, with all the mistakes in the formulas and calculations.
I don't blame them for design choices though, that comes from management.
 
Kenpachii said:
Games went from passion projects towards disney sized companys.

What u have now is disney milking the star wars movies for every copper they can find and slamming another 10 titles after it with 30 shows because profits.
The passion that the original 3 movies had is nowhere to be found because moneys have to be made to keep investors happy.

Where the market of actual good and innovative games are these days are indie games and smaller projects and they are booming.
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Star Wars has not been profitable for Disney in a long time my friend ... it is said that they still dont have recovered what they invested (ajusted for inflation)... is the perfect example of bad management, wich this thread is all about btw.
 
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