Tag: joy
Layoffs are sucking the joy out of video games | This week’s gaming news
The production pipeline for mainstream video games has always been hectic. The AAA factory is powered by rigid marketing plans and periods of soul-sucking crunch, and while this process has resulted in incredible games over the years, it’s also been detrimental to developers’ mental health and long-term job stability. Layoffs have long been baked into the video game industry, but in recent months, this trend has been running in overdrive, and it’s happening at studios of all sizes.
This week’s stories
Kojima Films
Hideo Kojima is partnering with Sony to build a new game that’s actually more like a movie. Of course, you could say this about any of Kojima’s games since Snatcher, but this time around, he’s doing the Hollywood thing on purpose. The new project is codenamed PHYSINT., and it’s a return to Kojima’s action-espionage roots, but it’s definitely not Metal Gear. Apparently it’s going to blur the boundaries between film and games, and it’ll take advantage of Sony’s connections in movies and music. Kojima Productions will start working on the new IP after finishing Death Stranding 2, which is set to come out in 2025. Kojima is also building OD, an Xbox movie — sorry, game — made in collaboration with horror director Jordan Peele.
Xbox on other platforms
It looks like Xbox is preparing to release some of its exclusive titles on PlayStation and Nintendo platforms. A handful of reports rolled out this week suggesting Starfield, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Sea of Thieves and Gears of War are all slated to hit PS5 or Switch in the near future. Xbox head Phil Spencer neither confirmed nor denied the reports, and instead teased an event next week that should clarify the studio’s multiplatform plans.
Layoffs in 2024
Both Sony and Microsoft have delivered their first showcases of 2024, highlighting all of the big, shiny games coming out soon, like Hellblade 2, Avowed, the Silent Hill 2 remake and Stellar Blade. The trailers for these titles are as vibrant as ever and the marketing beats are just as breathless — but, man, it’s really hard to get excited about video games right now. Rampant layoffs have cast a shadow over the industry, and even if 2024 turns out to be a banner year for video game debuts, it still feels shitty.
In the first month of 2024, an estimated 6,000 people in the video game industry lost their jobs. This figure is steadily climbing and it’s building on a rash of layoffs in 2023, when an estimated 10,500 video game jobs were cut. I don’t want to just drop these numbers without context — 2022 saw about 8,500 layoffs and this was considered terrible. 2023 eclipsed this total and, just six weeks in, 2024 is on track to do the same.
Here are some stats from January alone: Riot Games laid off 530 people, or about 11 percent of its workforce, and closed down its experimental publishing label. Devolver Digital laid off 28 people at Artificer, a team it purchased in 2021. Dead by Daylight studio Behaviour Interactive lost 45 people. Sega of America fired 61 workers. Microsoft laid off nearly 2,000 employees across Activision Blizzard, ZeniMax, and Xbox the same week that it became a $3 trillion company. Unity plans to drop 1,800 employees by March, and this is on top of the 1,000 jobs that the studio eliminated in 2023. Embracer Group gutted the team behind Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands and laid off 97 people at Eidos Montreal, canceling a new Deus Ex game in the process. The holding company already terminated about 1,000 jobs in 2023 and its restructuring efforts are expected to last until March.
Recent layoffs have affected studios of all sizes, and they’re happening even as the industry’s leading companies grow financially. If it sounds like I’m repeating myself, that’s because I am — I reported on the layoffs crisis at the end of last year, and things have only become more concerning in the first weeks of 2024. The video game industry received an influx of attention and cash during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, and today’s layoffs are a response to a period of unchecked growth and corporate consolidation.
All of this instability provides an unsettling backdrop for the hype coming out of the video game industry this year. It’s tough to get excited about Xbox’s Avowed when we know people lost their jobs during production, and it’s hard to enjoy Devolver’s next edgy showcase when it just downsized a studio it didn’t need to buy in the first place.
At the same time, we’re seeing how unionization can help protect the people who make video games. Though dozens of people lost their jobs at Sega of America this year, the studio’s AEGIS-CWA union negotiated to save some roles and offer severance to temp workers. Unionization efforts have been on the rise since 2021, and the appeal of collective bargaining is only clarifying as the firing squads take aim.
Through our union efforts, we’ve been able to more than double the number of saved jobs, and to offer severance to our temp workers.
(3/5)
— AEGIS-CWA 💙 #UnionizeSEGA (@takesAEGIS) January 31, 2024
Bonus Content
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The futuristic action-RPG Stellar Blade is coming out on April 26, exclusive to PS5.
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Dave the Diver, the pixelated non-indie game that somehow got nominated for Indie Game of the Year, is coming to PS4 and PS5 in April, and it’ll get Godzilla DLC in May.
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Johanna Faries has replaced Mike Ybarra as the president of Blizzard. Ybarra quit during Microsoft’s downsizing in January, and Faries was previously the head of Call of Duty under Activision.
Now Playing
Now that I can actually talk about it, I want to say that Persona 3 Reload is absolutely delicious. The Morning After host Mat Smith wrote our review, go give it a read if you’re a freak like us.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/layoffs-are-sucking-the-joy-out-of-video-games–this-weeks-gaming-news-174541450.html?src=rss
ther – a horrid whisper echoes in a palace of endless joy (Album Review)
Game Pass Ultimate subscribers can now spread the joy of gaming with five friends
Microsoft has announced a new friend referral program that allows you to invite up to five pals to give Game Pass a try.
The Xbox Game Pass Friend Referral offer lets Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass members give five pals a free, 14-day PC Game Pass trial.
Invited friends must be new to Game Pass to redeem the free trial.
The joy of standing still in Vampire Survivors
Forgive me, I’m someone who’s recently got a Steam Deck and I’m going through the honeymoon phase. Except it’s a phase which is unlikely to end? Anyway, it’s proven to be an excellent way to rinse Vampire Survivors, a game I wouldn’t – I have nothing against those who do – play upright on a monitor. Survival is best served on the couch, curled up like a shrimp with the blood draining from my arms as I hold the TV slab at some atrocious angle.
Anyway, I’ve come to realise that Vampire Survivors might be a game about running away, but actually peaks when you come to a standstill. There’s a special kind of joy to be had when you’re able to stop and idle.
Fact Premiere: Lyra Valenza – Joy Divided
Artist Signe Dige patchworks together a glitched-out assemblage of 3D scans and CGI in the video for ‘Joy Divided’, the first single from the debut album from Danish duo Lyra Valenza. Lyra Valenza are back for the first time since their 2020 EP, Nightshade Edition, with ‘Joy Divided’, the first single from their debut album, […]
The post Fact Premiere: Lyra Valenza – Joy Divided appeared first on Fact Magazine.
The joy of barely succeeding in Betrayal At Club Low
For all its flamingo thigh stews, misshapen clothes model characters and pizza-themed DJ-ing, Betrayal At Club Low is an old-school, dice-throwing RPG through and through. Every interaction you have at Club Low is determined by the rolling of dice, whether it’s simply attempting to spark a conversation with a hard-of-hearing bartender, or bluffing your way into VIP backrooms where your blown fellow agent Gemini Jay is currently being grilled by the intimidating Big Mo.
Whether you’re successful in your endeavours depends on whether you can roll higher or equal to whatever value is thrown by your opponent, with each face corresponding to a particular Skill Dice you’re trying to deploy to win that scenario. A lot of the time, your skill numbers aren’t nearly good enough to beat your fellow clubber outright, but for me, the thrill of Club Low comes from clinching a very plain, and highly unremarkable draw, earning you the accolade of ‘Success. Barely’ in the ensuing results breakdown. It may not sound very sexy, but in a world where the odds are fully stacked against you, barely succeeding will do me just fine here, thanks.
Paul O’Grady spoke of ‘joy’ at Battersea Dogs and Cats Home return as interview recorded before his death to air
The joy of feeling like a guitar-thrashing rockstar in Hi-Fi Rush
Man, do I love the feeling of jamming out a guitar riff in games. Sure, in reality, I’m slumped on my couch in a position that my body will give me payback for when I’m thirty, but in my fantasy, I’m a musical prodigy whose guitar licks are so epic it would make Slash cry. My joy for virtual jamming came as a direct result of playing hours and hours of Guitar Hero. Harmonix held my music taste in its death grip, and almost breaking my fingers on those flimsy plastic buttons trying to conquer Through The Fire And Flames is a precious memory of mine.
So yeah, I love a good guitar sesh, so when I saw that Hi-Fi Rush was about a wannabe rockstar that smacks evil megacorp robots with his guitar to a catchy rock OST, Tango Gameworks had my attention.