Legally exploiting others and making a fortune is a dream job.
EDIT: not my belief btw, this is how things mostly work in the business world but most people who do that aren't self conscious enough to recognize that
EDIT: not my belief btw, this is how things mostly work in the business world but most people who do that aren't self conscious enough to recognize that
So, HNers, are all these companies closing (Telltale, Capcom Vancouver) because some courageous entrepreneur put their ethics, heart, and soul into a game company and just couldn't make it work, ending up penniless alongside their former employees? Or were they just not making "enough" money anymore? or what? What are the profits like in the game industry? Who gets them? If I follow the money, where does it go? Genuinely curious.
As for where the money went? Salaries, publishers, investors. There's still a grudge held for the new CEO, because he laid us off without severance; if there was another round of layoffs with severance months earlier, everyone would have been understanding. We all knew our games didn't sell well anyway.
A lot of those people will find it difficult to get other work. Most employees in a game studio are not engineers -- games has 10 artists to 1 programmer. And the big tech companies don't have a culture of respecting non-engineers. So, where does a character TD go who has experience with painting vertex weights in Maya for a rig? To another games studio.
Outside of that though, the team and culture was amazing. I loved everyone I worked with, all of the developers were smart, capable and talented. Not just the engineers, but also the artists, sound designers, cinematics team, etc. These people are very understood outside of games, because they are as much "problem solvers" like engineers as they are creatives.
I still meet with ex-alumni from the studio to play Rock Band -- in fact, we're meeting up again tonight.