Do you know why Elden Ring, Mario, and Zelda games are good?
It’s because the devs at Nintendo and From Software have people in charge who have been making games for like 30 goddamn years and have become literal masters of their craft.
Meanwhile, all the companies making shitty games are firing people as soon as their game ships and chasing trends instead of focusing on fundamentals of good game mechanics and gameplay design.
…And so then the next quarter when they need more warm bodies to ship something, they basically have to hire a bunch of 20-something fresh graduates who generally have no idea what they’re doing, pay them next to nothing, give them unrealistic deadlines, crunch the shit out of them, burn them out, and then repeat the cycle.
That’s at least one of the reasons why even industry celebrities like Cliff Blezinski got out of making games.
It’s why most game studios’ average tenure is around 5 years… and why a lot of people (myself included) left… because the pay and job stability is better in adjacent careers like just general software dev.
These people are trying to make games that they are passionate about. No game dev gets into it to make money or micro transactions… especially not someone who would want to work for a studio that once crafted flagship titles like Bungie or Blizzard or any of the other big name studios.
People telling game devs that they “should lose their jobs” really need to redirect their ire toward the private equity bean-counting suits - who are making off like bandits while absolutely gutting the future of an industry I fucking guarantee is having its legs cut out from under it by shit like this.
Edit : Holy shit some of the absolute chirplords in the thread below really make me happy I got out of making games. To anyone still soldiering on in the trench that is video game dev work, I salute you… I really wish you had the fortitude to still do it, but I’m a mere mortal. Here’s to hoping you guys are able to get what you need and that the suits just get out of the way.
Also Destiny was a damn good game, with great map design, enemy design, and world building. I don’t know how you blame the developers for the clearly top level decisions to turn the game into a content treadmill where everything was undeveloped and disposable.
Bungie literally deleted content I paid for. They can get bent, they have lost myself and my money, among others, as customers permanently. The result of the company getting less money means people get let go. That’s how business works.
Any person that keeps working with a company that actively harms its customers is not a person that I will support. My personal work ethic and integrity could never allow me to continue to work in such a dishonest place of work. I quit on the spot when one of my old bosses told me to lie and tell a customer that they needed parts replaced for their car that they didn’t need so he could charge them more. Walked across the street and got a job at the competing shop the same day, and ended up getting paid more. If you are good at your job (as good as you seem to think all Bungie employees are), then finding another job will be easy. Sucks for the few good people that might work there, but if they get let go they will have the opportunity to work somewhere better. If they’re a good person, they will likely pick a place that doesn’t actively harm its own customers (and employees).
BTW, I work for one of those evil games companies that do reprehensible things, because I like having a good working environment and having a well paying job. You too have a good day.
You seem to be a decent person based on the fact that you refused to cheat someone, so I’m going to try to reply to each point you made. First, they should NOT have deleted something you’ve paid for.
Bungie literally deleted content I paid for. They can get bent, they have lost myself and my money, among others, as customers permanently.
As you may or may not have seen in the headlines with Helldivers 2, SONY - a massive multi-billion dollar corporation (like Microsoft, EA, Activision, Ubisoft, etc.) are all perfectly capable of making self-destructive monumentally stupid business-centric decisions and in pursuit of boundless greed have hurt their own IP, their industry, and their customers. Sony LITERALLY deleted licenses for movies people paid for, so I’d be willing to wager this a similar call some idiot Sony exec made that was out of Bungie’s hands.
And before you say “Who cares? They should have remained independent and not sold out to some big corporation then.”
If you like big games, this is the current reality you will have to contend with. Bungie is not a tiny studio. The games they make require a literal ARMY to build. The logistical reality of that means that - for them to be able to afford to even just purchase the equipment needed to build and maintain such big games - let alone hire and pay people to work on them for something like 7-10 years at a time before having something “shippable” - they need MASSIVE backing. 10s if not 100s of millions of $ in investment. Even with some of the most successful game launches ever, if they plan on doing it bigger the next time, they need more than they earned to make the next game’s investment back plus more.
The result of the company getting less money means people get let go. That’s how business works.
Not really. A company firing workers has nothing to do with whether or not the company is “getting less money.” A company does do whatever it thinks will make it the most money… Privately owned companies with decent owners - like Gabe Newell do want to make money, but also know their business is making things for people who like games… and he’s personally invested in making the company do that well. And because Gabe isn’t an asshole, turns out customers and most companies kinda like him and Valve and pretty much all their products. He also keeps good people, pays them well, and pretty much anyone working at Valve works there for the rest of their professional lives if they can.
HOWEVER… if the owner is an asshole who would, for completely random example, rather build himself a magic theater than provide his team members a decent salary and job security… or even worse… a company is publicly traded, their goal is to absolutely rocket the share price THAT QUARTER at ANY legally viable cost - even if it fucks them over long-term. So even if the publicly traded company made a billion dollars last quarter, if by firing 250 people they normally pay $50K a year, they make $1.00001 billion as a result and that makes the stock go up by $0.002… most CEOs will sign off on that. Hell, most CEOs would let their own children starve if it meant the share value went up by 5% that quarter.
Really a gigantic publicly-traded company letting people go has less to do with their success, and more to do with fiduciary responsibility to maximize share price each quarter.
Any person that keeps working with a company that actively harms its customers is not a person that I will support.
Objectively good take, though I also would suggest try to start from a point of empathy and assume no one LIKES working for an evil company (unless they’re something like a hedge-fund management company or something kind of inherently exploitative - then maybe they’re just an asshole).
My personal work ethic and integrity could never allow me to continue to work in such a dishonest place of work. I quit on the spot when one of my old bosses told me to lie and tell a customer that they needed parts replaced for their car that they didn’t need so he could charge them more.
Really awesome thing for you to do. Seriously, hats off to you for that.
Walked across the street and got a job at the competing shop the same day, and ended up getting paid more.
Car repair shops - as you clearly even provided with your own example - are literally on every street corner. I have a feeling that - in addition to being a pretty stand-up dude - you must be pretty great at your job to be able to literally walk into some place to get immediately hired for more money, but the idea that any person working in the game industry can just immediately quit and find another job across the street as easily as that is unfortunately just not how reality works.
To become a game developer, most people will have to go to some sort of higher education institution… whether a dedicated trade-style game dev school or some prestigious engineering program at a major university. Many would need to take out some sort of loan to learn this BUT EVEN IF THEY DON’T (because I can see you typing “not my problem they took out money for something they couldn’t afford”)… yes, you can self-teach (much more so these days than in the past), but most people will need to learn via some sort of program designed to teach the trade. And even if you are lucky enough not to need any loans, many companies will ask you to move, have decent computer equipment to at least do the portfolio-type work needed to even convince a game company to give them an interview for the job they are applying for, or provide some sort of credentials that cost money to show you are certified to even get your resume even in the middle (let alone the top) of a pile.
All of this means financial risk. Less places to work means it might be hard to stay in the same city if your company fires you (unless you’re in like Seattle, or San Francisco or New York - which is crazy expensive and makes people financially desperate on its own but that’s a whole different discussion).
Anyway, I personally know guys who moved and bought houses to start a new job with a game company where that was the ONLY game company in a 3-state radius… and it closed within a month, throwing them into financial ruin. When there’s financial risk for the workers, it’s MUCH harder to stand up and say “hey don’t do that” if you’re worried that you’re going to lose your job at the only shop in town.
If you are good at your job (as good as you seem to think all Bungie employees are), then finding another job will be easy.
Not necessarily… because you see - a SHIT-load of these companies are run by these fucking ghouls who have fired a collective of something like TENS OF THOUSANDS OF GAME DEV PROFESSIONALS over the past handful of years. These people didn’t lose their job because they aren’t talented. And neither did probably at least 25% (if we’re being assholes and assuming a fuckton somehow aren’t talented - which is asinine) of all the others who now those ex-Bungie folks will be competing with for LESS positions from the other companies who have cleaned house the past couple of years (again for no other reason than to artificially boost the share price of their publicly traded companies).
Sucks for the few good people that might work there, but if they get let go they will have the opportunity to work somewhere better. If they’re a good person, they will likely pick a place that doesn’t actively harm its own customers (and employees).
Yeah… I’m sure they all have a super long list of AAA game companies that aren’t publicly traded or run increasingly by private equity firms that they can apply to that are MUCH more ethical and don’t do things to actively harm their customers and employees.
Does any of what I’m rambling about here make sense?
You were wronged, my friend… and no one is trying to excuse that, but the issue is being caused by some assholes at the very top of ALL our favorite game companies… and basically saying “sucks to suck, if they’re cool at their job, it’s just as easy to find another as just walking across the street” to a bunch of lower-level people (who - again I can’t stress this enough speaking as someone who WAS one of those types of people before I quit making games - just wanted to make a fun game that they could see people like you share about how much they loved playing it) because the suits did something shitty that no one thinks is good - is not really understanding the reason as to why it occurred, and what can be done as a consumer, voter, citizen to make it so this sort of shit doesn’t happen anymore.
Bungie shits in your mouth, consistently, over the course of D1’s life cycle.
“No it’s not Bungie, it’s Activision!”
Bungie splits from Activision in D2
Proceeds to release Shadowkeep
“Crickets”
Fast forward to Lightfall.
“Noooo, it’s Sony! Sony is at fault!”
God damn, the excuses Destiny players make for what is a shit company will never cease to amuse me. Idk what Bungie’s collective cum tastes like but it must be fucking ambrosia considering the lengths the community goes to defend them. That corpo-speak in the TWABs is puttin’ in work!
you’re obviously someone who is completely and willfully ignorant to what goes into game development
Icing on the cake? Shadowkeep is the first expansion dropped by Bungie for d2 without Activision. It is also widely acknowledged as the worst expansion. Congratulations, you’ve written an essay and proven you just shouldn’t be weighing in on this. At all.
The more words you use in your next essay won’t help, you don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s almost like you got an AI to spit this out with how much cherrypicking you do. What’s the term for a sealion that weighs in on something they know nothing about?
No I just don’t read what you’re saying, mainly because I’ve got better things to do with my time than to read a nobody bloviate about something they don’t understand. Your experience doesn’t matter, do you know why?
I’ve refuted your claim that it’s somehow all the publishers fault. You, for some reason, think that Bungie releasing a terrible expansion the first time they’re free from a publisher somehow doesn’t obliterate your argument.
You’re absolutely sealioning btw, you can keep the corpo speak to yourself. I’m not reading it, because it’s just a waste of my time. There are plenty of devs to defend, Bungie is not one of them.
No they don’t, you ghoul.
You don’t get hired at Bungie by being a shitty game dev.
You make shitty games or get fired by having shitty management or a parent company run by a shitty exec.
Shit like this is what is making the game industry suck and why you are seeing more bugs and more garbage and as long as companies fire people after every project, and no one sticks around, it’s likely to just keep worsening things.
Do you know why Elden Ring, Mario, and Zelda games are good?
It’s because the devs at Nintendo and From Software have people in charge who have been making games for like 30 goddamn years and have become literal masters of their craft.
Meanwhile, all the companies making shitty games are firing people as soon as their game ships and chasing trends instead of focusing on fundamentals of good game mechanics and gameplay design.
…And so then the next quarter when they need more warm bodies to ship something, they basically have to hire a bunch of 20-something fresh graduates who generally have no idea what they’re doing, pay them next to nothing, give them unrealistic deadlines, crunch the shit out of them, burn them out, and then repeat the cycle.
That’s at least one of the reasons why even industry celebrities like Cliff Blezinski got out of making games.
Not a fan of Joe Rogan, but go watch John Carmack - one of the singular greatest programmers of the last 40 years and basically also one of the creators of the FPS - tell Rogan that game dev is harder and less secure and pays less than Facebook.
It’s why most game studios’ average tenure is around 5 years… and why a lot of people (myself included) left… because the pay and job stability is better in adjacent careers like just general software dev.
These people are trying to make games that they are passionate about. No game dev gets into it to make money or micro transactions… especially not someone who would want to work for a studio that once crafted flagship titles like Bungie or Blizzard or any of the other big name studios.
People telling game devs that they “should lose their jobs” really need to redirect their ire toward the private equity bean-counting suits - who are making off like bandits while absolutely gutting the future of an industry I fucking guarantee is having its legs cut out from under it by shit like this.
Edit : Holy shit some of the absolute chirplords in the thread below really make me happy I got out of making games. To anyone still soldiering on in the trench that is video game dev work, I salute you… I really wish you had the fortitude to still do it, but I’m a mere mortal. Here’s to hoping you guys are able to get what you need and that the suits just get out of the way.
Also Destiny was a damn good game, with great map design, enemy design, and world building. I don’t know how you blame the developers for the clearly top level decisions to turn the game into a content treadmill where everything was undeveloped and disposable.
Nope. But what the other guy said still stands.
Bungie literally deleted content I paid for. They can get bent, they have lost myself and my money, among others, as customers permanently. The result of the company getting less money means people get let go. That’s how business works.
Any person that keeps working with a company that actively harms its customers is not a person that I will support. My personal work ethic and integrity could never allow me to continue to work in such a dishonest place of work. I quit on the spot when one of my old bosses told me to lie and tell a customer that they needed parts replaced for their car that they didn’t need so he could charge them more. Walked across the street and got a job at the competing shop the same day, and ended up getting paid more. If you are good at your job (as good as you seem to think all Bungie employees are), then finding another job will be easy. Sucks for the few good people that might work there, but if they get let go they will have the opportunity to work somewhere better. If they’re a good person, they will likely pick a place that doesn’t actively harm its own customers (and employees).
With every word out of your mouth, you paint a more detailed picture of just how shitty a person you are despite your supposed ethics.
Feel free to pick up the brush and continue painting at the bottom of this message…
I hope you have an excellent day as well.
BTW, I work for one of those evil games companies that do reprehensible things, because I like having a good working environment and having a well paying job. You too have a good day.
You seem to be a decent person based on the fact that you refused to cheat someone, so I’m going to try to reply to each point you made. First, they should NOT have deleted something you’ve paid for.
As of 2 years ago, Bungie became owned by Sony. The 2 guys who founded Bungie are no longer in charge. One of them left, and the other is basically a recluse, but who when we HAVE seen on camera, comes across as a guy who just likes making good games.
As you may or may not have seen in the headlines with Helldivers 2, SONY - a massive multi-billion dollar corporation (like Microsoft, EA, Activision, Ubisoft, etc.) are all perfectly capable of making self-destructive monumentally stupid business-centric decisions and in pursuit of boundless greed have hurt their own IP, their industry, and their customers. Sony LITERALLY deleted licenses for movies people paid for, so I’d be willing to wager this a similar call some idiot Sony exec made that was out of Bungie’s hands.
And before you say “Who cares? They should have remained independent and not sold out to some big corporation then.”
If you like big games, this is the current reality you will have to contend with. Bungie is not a tiny studio. The games they make require a literal ARMY to build. The logistical reality of that means that - for them to be able to afford to even just purchase the equipment needed to build and maintain such big games - let alone hire and pay people to work on them for something like 7-10 years at a time before having something “shippable” - they need MASSIVE backing. 10s if not 100s of millions of $ in investment. Even with some of the most successful game launches ever, if they plan on doing it bigger the next time, they need more than they earned to make the next game’s investment back plus more.
Not really. A company firing workers has nothing to do with whether or not the company is “getting less money.” A company does do whatever it thinks will make it the most money… Privately owned companies with decent owners - like Gabe Newell do want to make money, but also know their business is making things for people who like games… and he’s personally invested in making the company do that well. And because Gabe isn’t an asshole, turns out customers and most companies kinda like him and Valve and pretty much all their products. He also keeps good people, pays them well, and pretty much anyone working at Valve works there for the rest of their professional lives if they can.
HOWEVER… if the owner is an asshole who would, for completely random example, rather build himself a magic theater than provide his team members a decent salary and job security… or even worse… a company is publicly traded, their goal is to absolutely rocket the share price THAT QUARTER at ANY legally viable cost - even if it fucks them over long-term. So even if the publicly traded company made a billion dollars last quarter, if by firing 250 people they normally pay $50K a year, they make $1.00001 billion as a result and that makes the stock go up by $0.002… most CEOs will sign off on that. Hell, most CEOs would let their own children starve if it meant the share value went up by 5% that quarter.
Really a gigantic publicly-traded company letting people go has less to do with their success, and more to do with fiduciary responsibility to maximize share price each quarter.
Objectively good take, though I also would suggest try to start from a point of empathy and assume no one LIKES working for an evil company (unless they’re something like a hedge-fund management company or something kind of inherently exploitative - then maybe they’re just an asshole).
Really awesome thing for you to do. Seriously, hats off to you for that.
Ok… here’s where you veer off a bit. Game dev studios are not car repair shops. There are literally only a HANDFUL of major game companies in the world. Look - here’s an interactive map that shows pretty much EVERY major (and many minor) game company… in the WORLD.
Car repair shops - as you clearly even provided with your own example - are literally on every street corner. I have a feeling that - in addition to being a pretty stand-up dude - you must be pretty great at your job to be able to literally walk into some place to get immediately hired for more money, but the idea that any person working in the game industry can just immediately quit and find another job across the street as easily as that is unfortunately just not how reality works.
To become a game developer, most people will have to go to some sort of higher education institution… whether a dedicated trade-style game dev school or some prestigious engineering program at a major university. Many would need to take out some sort of loan to learn this BUT EVEN IF THEY DON’T (because I can see you typing “not my problem they took out money for something they couldn’t afford”)… yes, you can self-teach (much more so these days than in the past), but most people will need to learn via some sort of program designed to teach the trade. And even if you are lucky enough not to need any loans, many companies will ask you to move, have decent computer equipment to at least do the portfolio-type work needed to even convince a game company to give them an interview for the job they are applying for, or provide some sort of credentials that cost money to show you are certified to even get your resume even in the middle (let alone the top) of a pile.
All of this means financial risk. Less places to work means it might be hard to stay in the same city if your company fires you (unless you’re in like Seattle, or San Francisco or New York - which is crazy expensive and makes people financially desperate on its own but that’s a whole different discussion).
Anyway, I personally know guys who moved and bought houses to start a new job with a game company where that was the ONLY game company in a 3-state radius… and it closed within a month, throwing them into financial ruin. When there’s financial risk for the workers, it’s MUCH harder to stand up and say “hey don’t do that” if you’re worried that you’re going to lose your job at the only shop in town.
Not necessarily… because you see - a SHIT-load of these companies are run by these fucking ghouls who have fired a collective of something like TENS OF THOUSANDS OF GAME DEV PROFESSIONALS over the past handful of years. These people didn’t lose their job because they aren’t talented. And neither did probably at least 25% (if we’re being assholes and assuming a fuckton somehow aren’t talented - which is asinine) of all the others who now those ex-Bungie folks will be competing with for LESS positions from the other companies who have cleaned house the past couple of years (again for no other reason than to artificially boost the share price of their publicly traded companies).
Yeah… I’m sure they all have a super long list of AAA game companies that aren’t publicly traded or run increasingly by private equity firms that they can apply to that are MUCH more ethical and don’t do things to actively harm their customers and employees.
Does any of what I’m rambling about here make sense?
You were wronged, my friend… and no one is trying to excuse that, but the issue is being caused by some assholes at the very top of ALL our favorite game companies… and basically saying “sucks to suck, if they’re cool at their job, it’s just as easy to find another as just walking across the street” to a bunch of lower-level people (who - again I can’t stress this enough speaking as someone who WAS one of those types of people before I quit making games - just wanted to make a fun game that they could see people like you share about how much they loved playing it) because the suits did something shitty that no one thinks is good - is not really understanding the reason as to why it occurred, and what can be done as a consumer, voter, citizen to make it so this sort of shit doesn’t happen anymore.
Bungie shits in your mouth, consistently, over the course of D1’s life cycle.
“No it’s not Bungie, it’s Activision!”
Bungie splits from Activision in D2
Proceeds to release Shadowkeep
“Crickets”
Fast forward to Lightfall.
“Noooo, it’s Sony! Sony is at fault!”
God damn, the excuses Destiny players make for what is a shit company will never cease to amuse me. Idk what Bungie’s collective cum tastes like but it must be fucking ambrosia considering the lengths the community goes to defend them. That corpo-speak in the TWABs is puttin’ in work!
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Icing on the cake? Shadowkeep is the first expansion dropped by Bungie for d2 without Activision. It is also widely acknowledged as the worst expansion. Congratulations, you’ve written an essay and proven you just shouldn’t be weighing in on this. At all.
The more words you use in your next essay won’t help, you don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s almost like you got an AI to spit this out with how much cherrypicking you do. What’s the term for a sealion that weighs in on something they know nothing about?
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You… please name the logical fallacy I’ve employed.
I’ll wait.
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No I just don’t read what you’re saying, mainly because I’ve got better things to do with my time than to read a nobody bloviate about something they don’t understand. Your experience doesn’t matter, do you know why?
I’ve refuted your claim that it’s somehow all the publishers fault. You, for some reason, think that Bungie releasing a terrible expansion the first time they’re free from a publisher somehow doesn’t obliterate your argument.
You’re absolutely sealioning btw, you can keep the corpo speak to yourself. I’m not reading it, because it’s just a waste of my time. There are plenty of devs to defend, Bungie is not one of them.