#studio closures

[z2z-gaming-and-random-art-ai]

EA & The Many Victims - Who's Next 

Electronic Arts or EA has been well known for a killer of video game studios for pretty much their entire existence. This twelfth and final part who i think will be next for the chopping block at EA, let me know in the comments who you think is next. 

For the full length video of EA & The Many Victims checkout this video https://youtu.be/Xsy1G2L4yMI?si=yQ-h8LyUcOtevFLH

For other gaming related shorts check out this playlist https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFJOZYl1h1CF5oVPNNxPlLJPambfM5BIj

[lizzybeeee]

I will never emotionally recover from this

[askagamedev]

How does a game dev become high priority /necessity to reduce chances of getting layoff axe beyond “have more experience”? Is there any specializations that are safe from the axe?

Some specializations are safer than others due to the rarity of the specialization, but the amount of control you have over your job safety is absolutely dwarfed by the number of factors outside your control.

Imagine a hypothetical scenario - maybe technical artist Neelo is much harder to replace than QA tester Desmal, so among all of the devs on Project Wombat at Infinity Ward, Neelo ranks pretty high up there. However, consider now that Project Wombat is the new secret experimental project that's being developed by one of the core Call of Duty studios. Between cutting from the Call of Duty team or from Project Wombat's team, Microsoft would probably cut from Project Wombat team first, right? Rather than cut the teams down evenly, they would probably decide (quietly) to cancel Project Wombat and lay everybody off in order to save people on the Call of Duty team since Call of Duty is their biggest earner and Project Wombat is still unannounced. This means the fact that Neelo has a higher priority job gets absolutely swallowed by the fact that Project Wombat is a lower priority project when compared to the biggest earning franchise at the studio.

This is because layoffs are often not evenly applied across the board, but strategically. If a big company is cutting 10% of workforce, an underperforming studio with a string of consecutive failures might get shuttered completely, while a consistent earner and high performer like Madden may go untouched or only affected minimally. A studio that has a high performer will likely cut more from the lower performer than the higher performer. A project scheduled to launch in three years might get cancelled outright to save a project that launches in one year. These are all enormous decisions that mostly ignore how individually valuable those of us in the trenches are, because our individual value is absolutely dwarfed by the financial size of these larger decisions.

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[brbuttons]

In 2010, we watched a little movie called Coraline.

The subsequent 8+ years were nothing but other father fanart, theories on the other father, and cosplay this one was surprisingly mostly of the other mother related to this movie.

Despite this, we never saw it in the cinema...

After all this time.

[fullscoreshenanigans]

Is CloverWorks entirely at fault for TPN S2's mangled production?

I see so many people default to blaming CloverWorks for being the sole arbiter of S2's horribly disappointing production (sometimes Shirai is added into the mix too, especially by anime-onlys), but every time I do I'm genuinely asking the question of whether that's true and where they're pulling their information from.

I'm not involved in the animation industry at all so I'm interested in receiving input from people who are more familiar with it, but my understanding is the people in charge of the decision to truncate S2 would be The Promised Neverland Committee listed at the end of the opening credits.

(I could not find a single video of the English dub that aired on [adult swim] for the English credits of S1, so a screencap from the Japanese credits)

TPN Committee is comprised of the following entities: Aniplex (Distributor), Fuji TV (TV Station), Shueisha (Manga Publisher), Cygames Anime Fund, Dentsu (ads)

(Sources 1 | 2 | 3)

kViN from Sakugabooru details what a production company is in this post:

"I personally find it enjoyable to see who is involved in a show, and as you’ve seen there is plenty of information to draw from that. Animation production studios are listed in the credits for each show, so it’s understandable why audiences would imagine they have a ton of influence over a production. It’s even natural to think that the company that is actually manufacturing something would have great input! If you start paying attention to these committees though, you get a clearer picture of the finances of production and how each show is actually made rather than assume that studios that often don’t have much of a say are in charge of everything."

And CloverWorks is the more prominent name, especially for English speakers watching the subbed version of the series.

This is also something that Geoff Thew brings up in the last seven minutes of this video around the 18:50 mark:

"I'd bet good money that the last credits were supposed to roll right after that big stone door slammed shut, and I'd further wager that a combination of fan reactions to and dipping ratings for early episodes is what caused the production committee—who are the ones who actually have final say in this, not Cloverworks or even Shirai—to cut their losses and turn that cliffhanger into a skeleton of a conclusion."

I disagree with him on them making the call to retool the series during the clipshow episode between S2e05 and S2e06 though. It doesn’t seem like they had enough time to do that when a single episode of animation takes on average nine months to complete, even with the ridiculous crunch they seemed to be in. My guess is it was made back in early 2020 after Shirai made everyone involved in production aware the manga was ending that year, with the pandemic potentially factoring in to a degree.

He also mentions this a bit earlier:

"It's just such a slap in face to anyone who ever gave a shit about any version of this story. Including the people telling it, apparently, since neither of the anime's screenwriters nor mangaka/series composer Shirai wanted to take credit for the last two episodes. They probably didn't have much say in how it all went down. That's important to keep in mind before you start yelling at animators or even studios on twitter. I guarantee that every adaption that hurts you personally was ten times harder on the people who actually had to make it. As hackishily slapdash as this finale is, a lot of people probably slept under their desks to get it out the door, if they slept at all."

I always come back to this tiny addition toward the end of S2 episode 2 as an indication that on the creative side of things, in storyboarding and animation at CloverWorks, the care was still there at some level.

It was just squashed down in order to cut and condense 146 chapters into 11 episodes for a production that, as ZersEditor puts here, was "bleeding money."

But CloverWorks is less to type out, so they get the majority of the ire over a tragically butchered production in casual conversation.

[closuretherapy]

The Psychological Impact of AI on Studio Ghibli's Creative Spirit

As a therapist and an admirer of Studio Ghibli's work, I felt called to reflect on this. Let’s keep this ethical. Let artists have their art. Not everything that looks like art carries the soul of it.

⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆

video edit: ctto (pinterest)

⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆

Also, would you be interested in seeing a breakdown of environmental psychology through the lens of Ghibli films?

Let me know, I’d love to create something meaningful.

[fullofvexation]

google how do I do my job when my whole industry is crumbling around me

[dix-rose]

WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN THEY’RE CLOSING MUPPET VISION 3D

[z2z-gaming-and-random-art-ai]

EA & The Many Victims - Victims 20, 21 & 22 

Electronic Arts or EA has been well known for a killer of video game studios for pretty much their entire existence. This eleventh part features victims 20, 21 & 22 with the studios that have succumbed to EA in order of the studio's founding. 

For the full length video of EA & The Many Victims checkout this video https://youtu.be/Xsy1G2L4yMI?si=yQ-h8LyUcOtevFLH

For other gaming related shorts check out this playlist https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFJOZYl1h1CF5oVPNNxPlLJPambfM5BIj

[thebreadwing]

Happy 20th anniversary, bisexuals!

[askagamedev]

As Microsoft shuts down Tango Gameworks, I wonder why they shut it down instead of sell it / divest themselves from the company and let them be on their own. Why is shutting it down the first choice in this situation?

Chances are good that they had considered it at some point and decided against it. It's important to remember that there's both a money and a timing issue at work here. It's no coincidence that it's been almost 3 months exactly since the last round of Microsoft gaming layoffs. The accounting numbers don't look so good this quarter and Microsoft must keep its shareholders happy, so they are looking to save money in some way, but they need to change those money numbers within a specific time frame in order for it to count.

Any number of possible results could have happened, but the general decision making criteria is to choose the solution that results in the most money saved within the time frame to help make the numbers look better. Perhaps they tried, but couldn't find a buyer that was willing to commit. Maybe the prospective buyers didn't offer enough. Maybe they found a buyer, but that buyer couldn't get the money together fast enough and bailed. Maybe the studio leadership didn't want the studio to be sold. Studio founder Shinji Mikami left Tango Gameworks about a year ago after shipping Hi Fi Rush; there may have been difficulty finding studio leadership to take over.

Ultimately, this is all just speculation. Only those within the affected parties are truly privy to the details and it is unlikely anyone with real knowledge is going to spill the beans on this. I feel a great deal of sympathy for those affected and hope they are able to find something new soon.

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Got a burning question you want answered?

Short questions: Ask a Game Dev on Twitter

Long questions: Ask a Game Dev on Tumblr

Frequent Questions: The FAQ

[sableeira]

every time I think the industry I want to enter can‘t get worse another news story breaks and it in fact does get worse

[cruell-summers]

ATW ten minute version happened, karma happened, timeless happened, cruel summer single happened and there's hints at an mv... evermore lpss and getaway car mv we can make it happen

[coffeeworldsasaki]

Now I don't care for the next mass effect (I barely cared before knowing it wouldn't be another Andromeda) but now I'm actually curious of what the fuck they're planning to do

[roeknowsbest]

“Closure” – Roe Knows Best Cart Music Session (CLIP)

[slitherpunk]

this can only funny to me to me at this point. oh who could have seen this coming. hundreds of layoffs and dozens of studio closures. what do you mean there's no video games