Season 18, Episode 09

The amount of people losing their jobs in this industry is staggering. I don’t have an exact number but it’s likely pushing into the five figure range. If you combine it with last year’s loss you’re easily over ten thousand jobs. And I wasn’t sure if I would use this as a topic to talk […]

The amount of people losing their jobs in this industry is staggering. I don’t have an exact number but it’s likely pushing into the five figure range. If you combine it with last year’s loss you’re easily over ten thousand jobs.

And I wasn’t sure if I would use this as a topic to talk about it, but just as much as I did on the show, I don’t have any kind of an answer for it. Smarter business decisions, sure, but I don’t know that it would have helped much. With each new game (mostly the upper triple A type games) that pulls in tons of awards and accolades, I wonder how much was spent to develop and then market that game. This hobby for us is expensive for them. Making a new console is the expectancy of a loss of revenue out of the gate. Making a new game for that console is also a MASSIVE money sink. And the marketing for both is just a deeper hole.

The cycle was that after a game would release you would then lose a good chunk of the dev staff as they were brought on almost like contractors to help with development. Once the game was released, so were they. But that’s not what has been happening lately. Game sales haven’t really slowed down but the cost to make them has completely gone up. And one solution to bridging that gap is an increase in the cost of the game to the consumer. But there’s likely a limit to that. I’d say the current $70 is probably close to that limit. But I will not be surprised when this massively developed game of some sort releases at a base price of $99.

Like I said earlier, I don’t have a solution for this. And there are probably darker days ahead for the people working in the gaming industry. There’s a domino effect here and they only just started falling over.

There’s no way for me to tie this subject matter into my usual Splinter Cell closing. There is a remake on the way and I hope that can produce enough revenue to bring about a brand new game. But, in keeping with tradition, Ubisoft, it’s been 3,836 days since a new Splinter Cell game (non-animated series or guest spot in another game franchise, remake, BBC radio drama, or VR exclusive) was released.