There are a ton of issues here, and they mostly center around how fucked up the game industry is. Note that I mean the industry as a whole here; the MMO side of things has no monopoly on this.

Problem one is the stupid definition of “success”. As Openedge1 wrote above:

“To me, if you don’t get a million players, why bother. Yea, you squeek by with a tidy profit, but you never reach that marker of notoriety and fame as Blizzard did.”

Why isn’t making a profit enough of a goal? To say that it’s senseless to make an MMO if you can’t be Blizzard is like saying it’s senseless to make an RTS if you can’t be Starcraft. Except that you have the very successful Age of Empires series that I don’t think is even a national pastime in any country.

Perceptions are skewed by WoW’s level of success. EQ2 was perhaps the first victim here, where good PR on Blizzard’s part and a negative reputation on Sony’s part made people think that WoW “won” and EQ2 “lost”. The truth is that EQ2 turns a nice profit for Sony. A “failed game” wouldn’t be on its fifth expansion like EQ2 is. Did it live up to every hope and dream anyone ever had? No, but it shouldn’t have to; it’s a business project, and it’s goal is to make enough money, not win popularity contests.

But, this perception doesn’t just affect game players, it also affects the people making these games. This skewed perception happens at every step of the way. Want a high-profile IP? The company that owns that IP doesn’t want to hear, “Yeah, well turn your world-class IP into the #2 or #3 game out there!” Want to get investment? Promise the moon and the stars before some other company does the same and snags that money. Want to get noticed by the enthusiast press? You better have some reason why you’re more important to cover than yet another story about WoW. Want to get acquired by a larger company? Add 10% to your most optimistic projections to squeeze out a few more concessions.

Which brings us back around to why people get upset at the managers when something doesn’t go according to plan. The rule of business is that if you take the most risk, then you should get the most reward. That’s why someone with a revolutionary idea has to give up a sizable chunk of his company (and therefore future earnings and worth) to get investment; if the project goes south, the revolutionary idea creator has to pick himself up and dust himself off and look for a new opportunity, but the investor has lost a large sum of money.

So, considering game development, who gets the reward for landing a big IP license? Who gets the reward for selling the company to a large publisher? Who gets the biggest bonuses when (if) a game becomes a top seller? Hint: not the QA peons. Yet, when the game doesn’t live up to expectations (translation: doesn’t live up to the promises made by the businesspeople), who gets kicked to the curb?

At EA/Mythic, it looks like it is the QA people (and other little people).

This isn’t an “all managers are monsters” rant. Mark Jacobs is still a human being, and from what I know about him he isn’t sipping brandy from a snifter while various QA people are now worrying about how to pay rent. I also know that Mythic was very generous with bonuses in the past, so it’s hard to hold up the company as the root of all evil in the industry. But, it kind of looks like the “risk vs. reward” balance is a bit out of balance here.

But, that’s not the only way the industry is fucked up. Tobold wrote:

So these people were just following orders?

Damned right they are! Lesson number one in the game industry is that unless you’re a superstar, you’re easily replaceable. There are college kids ready to line up around the block to get your job. And, when it comes to finding your next job it’s better to have a failed game to your name than to be noted as the person that rocked the boat, or that got fired for “not being a team player.” The game industry is still rather small and incestuous, and this is doubly true in the MMO space; your reputation will get around.

As much as people might like to dredge up images of Nazis giving excuses, that’s not the case here. A failed MMO is nothing like millions of murdered people. And, until the economy went to hell, it was better to keep your head down and just look for the next job once you got enough experience. Eventually you might reach superstar status and get some measure of freedom.

But, don’t bet on it. Do you wonder why two of the people ranting the loudest here (Eric and myself) do independent work instead of working at a large company? As I’ve said before, it’s not an allergy to money that keeps me on the outside, it’s a strong dislike for rampant stupidity.

I never said that anyone working in the game industry is a chump. But I do say that if you work in the game industry you *must* know that your job situation is more precarious than if you worked somewhere with a more stable business. Games, like movies, are hit or miss. And if its a miss, you can’t expect permanent employment.

Sort of like taxpayers.

Eric: I’m not sure where to call it. I don’t think what you are writing about is unique to MMO’s either, and while I agree with your sentiment to a point, it’s also a reality of business. As a product is being made a company will push a lot of resources at it and hope for a successful launch. Once launched, if that product does not pay the expected bills, cuts get made to staff and more.

You could be making Tinker Toys and the cycle is the same. Or running a restaurant, or just about anything. I think people should be aware of it and always mindful that they are always at risk of a layoff even when the company is doing well; but I grew up in the rust belt and am more than accustomed to watching folks have their jobs disappear overnight. Perhaps I’m jaded by cultural influences? :)

Lets look at this.

We keep hearing these excuses of various “layoffs” in this industry, how as the game launches, the need for these workers is less as time progresses.
But, did we ever read about how Blizzard had to do all these layoffs?

I do not remember stories about their losses…

Why?

They are separate from the norm. They are a success. Every other MMO is just “trying” to succeed. I am talking present tense as well…not past. The “Golden Age” of the MMO is gone, thanks to the launch of WoW.

Post WoW MMO development has to be one scary prospect.

No other MMO has had such success, and none have even gotten close. To me, if you don’t get a million players, why bother. Yea, you squeek by with a tidy profit, but you never reach that marker of notoriety and fame as Blizzard did.

I can now only wonder why any publisher or even developer would even want to make an MMO in todays market.

And who would want to work for one.

That pretty much sums up the Mythic experience from the people I know. You do what you can but when upper management hands down seemingly arbitrary and at times conflicting design decisions you either implement them or you get fired… sooner. Squeak all you want but when the “Lead Designers” are too busy being PR whores to do any real down and dirty design work it’s not likely to do any good. And by design work I mean iterating and dealing with the details, simply deciding something high level and moving on to let someone else sort out the details is not real design work.

On the other hand it is what the industry is. No one in QA these days should ever have delusions of grandeur about suddenly being promoted onto the design team. At a small studio where you’re a person, maybe. Not likely but maybe. At any studio big enough to make a AAA MMO, ain’t happening.

I think it is just emphasized in MMO creation because MMO development is sort of like car manufacturing.

You might be the best at building the lemons the engineers designed and handed over, but you’re still building lemons. And when they don’t sell, they’re more likely to keep the engineers in hopes that they can come up with something that isn’t a lemon than keep the large force of people that builds them.

Yes, it’s in large part the fault of the management when a game fails. Not entirely, but in large part. Which management? That’s the hard one to figure out. Sometimes, it’s the management that does the firing, so they stay on and a company stays pointed squarely in the direction of failure.

Unfortunately, managers or other employees who get laid off aren’t always the ones who should get laid off. The ones who get to stick around are the ones who play nice and make friends with those who do the firings, and those people are sometimes part of the problem instead of part of the solution.

I might go so far as to blame many of the failures on two things: 1) the wrong people are in charge. 2) the people who can fire employees are too nice (or biased) and let squeaky wheels stay around far too long.

Maybe to serious and far off comment, but you all get my point :)

Not that i dont feel sorry for all those workers…