next »

[WarpQueen]

I was invited to hold a talk at Sweden Game Conference last week, and I thought I could share some of the things I talked about here. The topic was "How to Keep Your Employees".

Now, this is something the games industry can honestly suck at at times. I guess most people have heard stories about 90 hour crunch weeks (or months), after which people are fired anyway once the project is done? (If not, read about that here: http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html )
Well, that is obviously bad, but there are a lot of things a company can to right to keep their employees as well. The most important factor is to have good managers.

I have a lot of other stuff listed on the blog: http://warpzonestudios.com/keep-employees/

Anyway, this going for not just the games industry, but jobs in general. What has your employers done good/bad to get you to stay or leave? Do you agree with my findings? 

[motorherp]

The unfortunate truth about the AAA games industry these days is that it's completely controlled by the publishers and the relationship between publishers and studios is parasitic rather than symbiotic.   I don't think most publishers even think in terms of studios these days but only in terms of game franchises.  Once a franchise falters they have no issue with chucking the studio and all its employees out with it. 

Studios making AAA titles have huge upkeep rates and sadly most publishers simply don't think it's worth investing in those studios and paying those upkeep rates whilst they're between franchises in the hope they'll come up with another killer franchise.  It's simply less of a gamble to cut them loose and buy up another studio with an existing new prototype which has franchise potential.  The only way for studios to combat this is to attempt to develop new ideas and prototypes on the side whilst working their current project so they immediately have something new to show when one project ends.  Publishers will rarely give allowance for this though and the pressure on time and resources from the extreme quality bar, moving feature goals, and tight deadlines on the current franchise set by the publisher can be so great than many studios simply cant develop such side projects whilst keeping the publisher happy. 

Sadly it's also not viable to break away from publishers and still develop AAA titles since the cost is far too high, and even if you could raise the money I wouldn't recommend going 'all-in' which is what it would likely take since the industry is far too fickle to take that kind of risk on.

I guess what I'm saying is, I liked your article, but if you're a AAA studio it's probably all futile anyway.

[WarpQueen]

I missed this reply somehow, sorry for the delay in my reply.

We don't aim to be an AAA studio. I have worked in AAA, and that is really hard.
There is a middle ground here however. When I started working for Paradox Interactive, we were around 20 people. That is a really nice size for a studio. Up until about 70 people I'd say everyone can get to know each other a little bit. My ideal would probably be around 40 people though. That also reduces the demand on middle management people.

Making smaller projects so there is no need for external financing would be ideal too. That is the dream!

Edit: right now, we are just two people though.

[motorherp]

I come from the same background, been through the triple A meat grinder enough times to recognise the patterns and now I work for a smaller independent studio.  I kinda figured you weren't really targeting AAA, it's just that the issues you cited such as prolonged enforced crunch times and periods of over-staffing followed by big layoffs are problems that only really effect AAA studios and only because of their relationships with publishers.  It's not really fair to call that out without acknowledging the root of the issue which isn't really anything to do with the studio's managers or recruitment policies.

[WarpQueen]

Not sure I agree. I've seen a lot of smaller companies crunch way too hard as well. While not making AAA games. It is prevalent in the majority of the games industry afaik. The cause might be publishers, or it might be that developers sign contracts they know won't work, just to get the funding. I think that whole dynamic needs to change. That could be a whole 'nother blog post though. I'm happy there are a lot more small, new-thinking publishers sprouting up everywhere now though, I think those are part of the change.

Over-staffing and layoffs are probably a lot more common in AAA though, that part I agree with.