Yes, capitalism in the form of “some people who don’t do the work and don’t understand the product make the key decisions and keep the profits” is a shitty system. A worker owner collective can have better outcomes.
Removed by mod
Holy mother of based. I remember when I worked at Activision, and Toys for Bob got spun off by Microsoft. Before they became independent, I DM’d the studio heads articles about how to turn a company into a worker cooperative. Then in 2024 at GDC, there was a very large talk about worker cooperative game studios. I’m glad that this idea is becoming mainstream
keep in mind though, i agree dev studios need to take those risks at times if they know they have a good idea in their hands, but dont shoot for the moon like highguard did.
What do you mean shoot for the moon? Highguard offered nothing new, nothing unique, just another shitty hero shooter late to the table and still trying to cash in on long dead hype. They didn’t shoot for the moon; they shot their own foot off.
attempting to make a second live service game in a row is an extremely high bar for any company to take regardless of what theyre trying to make genre wise.
That’s just greed and desperation bereft of creativity, not real ambition.
Yeah never pull an unknown games. Subnautica makes the worst mistake by going to a publisher. Never give someone power over your ip when you know the default is to be malicious.
The publishers control the marketing since time immemorial.
This is not just an issue in the Games industry.
I am always reminded of Steve Jobs’ “The Lost Interview”. In it he details how John Sculley took Apple’s visionary tech innovation driven product culture and made “sales & marketing” the primary driver behind Apple. Almost leading to its total collapse. (Steve Jobs got re-hired to Apple shortly after that interview and turned it around.)
Any “manager” that believes they can effectively drive a technology driven company/department/team, without being an (active) engineer in heart and mind, will drive it into the ground.
And none of that, “I used to be a COBOL programmer for 2 years at the start of my career 40 years ago” malarkey. You lose the skills, you lose the mindset, you lose the ability to innovate in technology and will inevitably kill what you’re selling with your “KPI’s”.
Ah yes, Steve Jobs well known for being a developer and not sales and marketing guy.
