Expectations are a CEOs excuse to ensure a franchise stays dead.

I worked at Sony for a few years around 2000 and it was constantly setting goals it never met (unless they made everyone work 60-80 hours at the end).

whose*

Yes, but you see they need to use those funds to do AI! AI is gonna be the biggest thing ever, and once AI replaces everyone at their jobs, then everyone will spend all their money on AI right? Let's just replace the CEOs with AI and call it good.

short term roi is all they care about, they want to make money right now even if it fucks over whoever is in charge next month- even themselves

I once worked on a game that should have cost 1 million, actually cost 5 million, made 12 million, and was considered a failure because the execs wanted 17 million. Absolute joke.

What game?

also, hey...nobody thought forza 8 was going to work as a live service game. NOBODY. It's on microsoft for forcing turn 10 to make a game that was doomed to fail instead of a normal sim. I worry playground's fable will suffer the same fate in a year or so. Turn 10 deserved better.

That hits. 🫠

It's my concrete-solid conviction that above a certain level of power, the individual becomes invincible from "below." The worst that can happen is that such an executive jumps to the next job for +30%. "Always has been," as the popular astronaut-with-pistol image goes.

With games taking about 7 years to develop, this current wave of game layoffs comes from games that were during the heyday of game production that started in 2018.

Answer: The person that gets to keep their job and will likely get a bonus for laying people off. The system is broken.

To be fair, it's not the CEOs job to do those things either. That would be a project manager or similar. I'm not exactly sure what the CEO actually does though, apart from getting paid a silly amount...

the CEO is the face of the company, it's technically his job to take the blame for these things, but hell will freeze over before CEOs do their jobs

The correct reaction. I think we're seeing hedge fund managers try to do pump and dumps here.

initiate the honkening. A plague of geese be upon ye.

👀

It is well-established that people high up in systems are evaluated more favorably when they make bone-headed decisions, but do it with confidence. You do not have to have competence to get into the "Executive" class. Yet, everyone below is judged and vilified when they make single mistakes.

See, the good thing about being an indie dev is that if things go south, you only have one person to lay off... for better or worse 😅

Also the irony that “untitled goose game” with its almost laughably low budget became an indie classic is not lost on me

Stardew Valley is the ultimate example of that. Made as a passion project by one extremely weird guy and it absolutely crushed all competition in its genre

This pissed me off so bad with the new Dragon Age game. They claim it sold less than they were expecting, but it was their best selling single player game on steam ever. And I am pretty sure they layed off most of the team because they set unreal expectations.

At the same time they dropped "any and all" support almost immediately,when companies like Larian, CD Projekt RED, Obsidian [...] have proven time and time again that it is extremely good for a game and its long-term sales, when the devs keep up patching/improving their games.EA releases and forgets

btw: bsky.app/profile/wari...

Thanks for sharing this

They're like politicians: they'll NEVER EVER blame themselves.

Lookin' at you, Star Citizen

they are still working on the game and its slowly getting to what they promised, not to mention star citizen isnt the main game they’re working on

It should be with all the money people put into it 😂 At this point they could just be updating it to avoid a lawsuit. Or they actually want it to be finished and will but with the prices they charge the game isn't worth it. Especially for a forever beta

they prices they charge dont have to be paid, you can pay £45 and play the game without having to spend anything more than that, and the game has been getting quite close to the “finished” state that they want for 1.0 release

Yes but to be actually viable they constantly push more and more expensive bundles and ships you can technically play for cheap but to fully enjoy and experience the game you'll be spending more than that.

eh i feel like that’s more of a personal preference, some people enjoy the grind but fair

In some ways yea but I've also seen friends put so much money into it that I'm gonna be real upset if it doesn't make its promises considering it's budget. And I don't even play it

there was an episode of divorce court where a dude got ditched for spending the entire downpayment for a new house they were saving up for on star citizen instead

I'd love to be like haha that'll never happen with any games I play 😎 (except I'm also an MTG player 😭)

hey, at least it's easier to re-sell MTG cards than ships on star citizen, which is what the guy claimed to be doing

Do you know what a normal budget for a AAA title is? CP2077 spent $174M in dev, $142M in marketing, and another $85M on DLC. Star Citizen has raised *over $800 million dollars* This should be _THE BEST GAME_ until GTA VI. Instead it's vaporshit.

^ it's not doing anything truly innovative enough to be worth that budget imo HOWEVER I don't hate on people for believing in it, I'm a fallout 76 player but the habits shown by the devs are worrying.

they are developeing fully dynamic server meshing with seamless server transition without loading screens which hasnt rly been done before for a large scale mmo. server meshing has been done before but not to this extent and uts already in the game but not fully

i mean rockstar spent ~400 million on rdr2 with ~8 years development. CIG has like 1/3 dev team of rockstar (they are actively hiring) and star citizen isnt their main focus, so to me its no surprise its not finished yet

That's still half the price, and it should be their main focus considering it's their main source of income that's the real problem I see personally

Also star citizens been in production since 2010/2011 that's a lot longer than rdr2 and while yea they're trying something new shifting the focus means like another decade or so until it gets close to release.

while i do see your point, their main focus has always been Squadron 42, most of their resources are allocated to that game and star citizen has been mostly a bit of a background project, with more devs being freed up recently you can see a lot more progress on SC lately

You know what, that makes a lot more sense, while I still don't like it that did help inform future opinions so ty for the information!

And even if they do layoffs are still coming.

Meanwhile EA: bsky.app/profile/euro...

I don't believe that every CEO is evil, especially in smaller companies. However, I saw with my own eyes how pitches are designed to attract money from people who don't care about games, and how they do it? By inflating the returns. When that inevitably doesn't happen, investors pull the plug.

They are probably not evil before becoming CEO. But the role of a CEO in modern capitalism is inherently evil and thus it is inevitable it will turn people evil.

How is the role of a CEO "inherently evil"?

The fundamental role of a CEO in modern capitalism is to maximize return for shareholders. Which is to say: finding the best way to ensure the least money possible is paid to employees and that customers get the worst possible deal they will tolerate. I don't know how that could be anything but evil

If a company isn't publicly traded, it doesn't have shareholders to answer to

And? Does that make the CEO's job less 'strategizing how to pay as few people as little as possible while also trying to determine the maximum amount we can rip off our customers before they stop buying'? They're just doing it for their own greed then, not the shareholders. Not significantly better.

Not quite right, most private companies have private investors and sometime is even worse because you are not forced by law to disclose informations, so all the health of the company is kept behind closed door.

The CEO might have the controlling share of the company but, without revenues, they can be manipulated by pulling the plug on investments. I have seen a few CEOs do the bidding of investors because strapped for cash.

I mean you can just say they are all evil. If the ceo of a small company doesn't want to be called evil they can change their title, and if they care about not being evil they can make the company worker owned and directed.

I find the ones that have more skin in the game sometimes have morality. But it also depends where they start. When the goal is to make a lot of money and not "Make a great product that also happens to make a lot of money". Breeds evil.

its ok! theyre all evil inherently by association, whether such is believed or not!

evil is what evil does

don't forget the shareholders,the board, investors or whoever the CEO has to listen to. I think CEOs are the just the face of the company and the scapegoats. They're still pieces of shit though

I mean the layoff would be happening either way in that scenario, so at this point I dunno why game devs don't take on a more Independent contractor take on things

I've had to go this route during the current mass layoff tsunami because finding full time work is extra competitive and never a sure bet. It's a vastly inferior quality of life. Full time positions include healthcare benefits, for one thing. I'm lucky I can afford to weather it.

Luckily (quality may vary) I live in a state that can handle a lot of things like Healthcare... For now...

Remember, "HR" stands for "Human Ressources" not "Humanistic respectfulness".

I’m framing this!