Great job! You're fired!
Weekly recap: The gaming industry routinely asks too much of developers and then thinks too little about throwing them aside
Earlier this week, we saw one of the cruelest games industry "facts of life" play out for the umpteenth time when Sony laid off developers at its London and San Diego studios. Layoffs are sadly common in most fields these days, but there were a couple of compounding factors to make these cuts particularly bothersome.
First, there was the reason Sony gave for letting the unspecified number of developers go. Here are the key parts of the two official statements given about the layoffs.
In English, the Sony London statement roughly translates to "Great job! You're fired." The San Diego comment is similar, but without the first part.
"London Studio have done a great job in leading the way in VR development, and as their first project nears completion it is time to plan for the next VR project. The team will take all their learnings and experience as they move forward, however in order to achieve its ambitious goals, the Studio will need to restructure around the needs of the new projects."
And for the San Diego explanation, "As projects are completed, it is natural to review and restructure teams around current and future needs. We wish our departing team members success as they pursue new opportunities and we have nothing but heart-felt thanks for their contributions to PlayStation."
In English, the Sony London statement roughly translates to "Great job! You're fired." The San Diego comment is similar, but without the first part. It's tough to say which one would be worse for a developer to hear.
In the case of Sony London, you had a team of developers exploring a cutting edge frontier of gaming with PlayStation VR Worlds, a five-game collection aiming to show off what VR can do in the same way Wii Sports made people understand the appeal of Nintendo's motion controller. It launches October 13, alongside the PlayStation VR headset. But these developers, who by Sony's own admission did "a great job" and almost certainly put in long hours to deliver on time, are being sacked just before the big payoff of having people actually play their game and appreciate their efforts.
Sony was less direct about what the laid off developers in San Diego were working on, only confirming it wasn't the MLB: The Show franchise. That leaves downloadable games-as-a-service titles like Kill Strain, or possibly other VR projects, as the studio head had hinted the San Diego team was extensively involved in VR earlier this year.
It's a bit concerning what these moves say about Sony's faith in PSVR, but it's more troubling that a phenomenally successful gaming company feels its workers are so utterly disposable. It's downright haunting that this sort of treatment is par for the course in the industry.
Earlier this week, I wrote a story about IGDA survey results underscoring racial and gender disparities in the games industry. The press release for the survey also included a factoid about disabilities in the industry, but I left it out of the story since there was no accompanying information about pay or equal opportunity, as there had been with race and gender.
This industry is nothing without its employees, and they deserve better than this.
"31 percent of respondents also reported some sort of disability, predominantly in the area of mental health, whereas only 19 percent of all US citizens and 14 percent of Canadians report having disability," the IGDA said.
That factoid presents a Gordian knot of questions about causality and correlations, and I don't have answers that would pass peer review for a scientific journal. What I do have are friends and acquaintances who broke themselves to make games, who spent years burning the candle at both ends and sacrificing enormously at the behest of successful publishers. I look at what they gave up mentally and emotionally to be a small part of a big game and I can't possibly view the trade-off as being worth it. I don't believe they do, either. And they were the "lucky" ones who got to keep their jobs after shipping.
Layoffs may be a necessity at times, but with a new VR platform that will need games, a booming console business, and a thriving bottom line, I can't fathom why this would have been one of those times. Could these cuts save some money and help Sony maintain its profitability? Sure. Are there kinder and potentially more effective ways to work toward the same results without discarding quality people, sapping institutional knowledge and experience, hurting morale for those who remain, and perpetuating one of the ugliest "facts of life" for game developers? There must be. This industry is nothing without its employees, and they deserve better than this.
Elsewhere on GamesIndustry.biz this week
EEDAR's Patrick Walker lays out the reasons why Pokemon Go is a hit (AR is not one of them)
Will Luton looks at the problem of inflation in free-to-play economies
Mike Jennings sizes up what the PS4 Pro means for developers
In other news
Razer launched zVentures, a $30 million fund for startups and emerging tech
Riot estimates that 100 million people play League of Legends each month
The Assassin's Creed franchise hit 100 million copies sold this month
Keywords Studios announced half-year results were ahead of expectations
CCP has moved its management team to London, but kept its HQ in Iceland due to Brexit uncertainty