I picked up a local paper the other day where there was an advert for a course to teach you to be a games designer. The ad made the following claim – the games industry is recession proof. Really? Tell that to the masses of developers losing their jobs.
Last week information was leaking out that Sony Studio Liverpool aka Psygnosis, who have been around for years and produced the WipEout series would be losing half of their team due to cuts.
This week Namco have announced it will be reducing it’s workforce by 10% and Take2, publishers of Grand Theft Auto and BioShock are set to announce today that it is looking to cut 20% of staff. All this after it is claimed that we are coming out of the recession!
It seems that only a minority of titles are enjoying massive sales while the others fail to recoup costs. We can only hope that this doesn’t stifle creativity and we aren’t left with awful family friendly mini game collections till the end of time.
That was all a bit serious and depressing. Something more fun in my next post. Promise!
