Do you really think cutting people out will make games better? Money saved will be either put to more bloat, more marketing, or to lift the bottom line.
Is this “trickle down” videogame argument?
Comes down to what the final net effect is. Not every production has to be fully staffed or have the same or bigger number of employees than before.
And with media, the big thing lately is AI taking over for dirt cheap and fast. Maybe it'll work maybe it wont. It's really no different than any other automation except this time it's aimed at artsy people, not assembly line workers or payables clerks. If AI stinks, the content will be junk and companies wont use it anymore. If the content is good at good value/costing it'll be kept. One thing too is that automation doesn't strike, talk back, not show up for work too. All additional perks of automation. The biggest drawback is starting cost, ramp up, and the big unknown if it'll work out. If it sucks, it might just end up a big waste of time.
My first job out of university (late 90s) I was an anlayst. There tons of us and the customer service team was giant. At that time everyone knew how to us a PC, but it was still kinda dodgy, Unix screens, not everyone had a cellphone yet etc... It was a lot of ragtag analysis our team did doing the best we could with Excel 97 and whatever shitty reports that green screen unix program we used did. The customer service/order team were almost an entire floor of people on the phone, processing fax orders, paper pushing etc....
Fast forward to now and the company I work at is bigger than that one. Our customer service/order team is 4 people and everything is automated best as possible. Its so little manual work, they work from home most of the time. No need for faxes, print outs etc.... And for my role, I still got to do reports for manual analysis, but we get automated dashboards and Power BI shit that does a lot of the stuff for us by the time we log in every morning. If youre a decent worker you'll be kept and paid well. If you arent a great worker, you'll be cut.
But one thing's for sure, congrats to all the hardworking IT guys who set up and implement all these new ERP programs and dashboards for everyone to use. Worth every dime. When there's an issue or someone needs training, that team is always there to fix things. No talking back. No striking. No ultimatums like if they dont get their way they'll let the systems rot.