Can somebody explain why game makers don't start their own companies together?

Submitted ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨onlinepersona@programming.dev⁩ to ⁨gaming@beehaw.org⁩

It seems like every other week a game studio is massively laying off employees; sometimes after years of development. What I’m reading is that it’s a quick way to lower expenses and pad the investors’ pockets, flooding the market with developers and reducing their value, to then hire them back a few months later at lower salaries.

So, what’s holding back gamedevs from banding together to either unionize or start their own companies with better conditions that the purely money-driven studios? Why aren’t they trying to be better? Nobody willing to invest in them? Does starting a company together mean they will now be the bosses who have to answer to the investors, ensure returns, and fire employees? Is the world just an entire shit-cake?

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ag_roberston_author@beehaw.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
They do. There are plenty of indie Devs.

The reason why everyone doesn’t do it is because it requires significant capital to be able to support a dev team through production for a number of years.

Not to mention they will still have to deal with publishers potentially fucking them over, as shown with the Helldivers 2 PSN fiasco.

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- helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  They do. There are plenty of indie Devs.
  
  Exactly. In fact, there are so many indie Devs that it’s nigh-impossible to break through the massive numbers of them. Occasionally there are breakthroughs like Stardew Valley, Hades, Vampires, etc.
  
  On the other hand, you partner with a company like Microsoft or Sony and you’re basically guaranteed success. They put up all the capital to make sure you make it to release (albeit probably a rushed, half-baked one that you just fix later because why not). Even if your game blows ass and is completely broken, full of DRM, microtransactions and ads, gamers still buy that shit up.
  
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BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
That’s exactly what will happen.

A lot of new studios will form out of the ashes of these layoffs.

That’s why you often see “from the former developers of X game” or similar in marketing for new games.

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- scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  When Google fired all of those staffers last year there was a report that there was a huge bump in startups being formed. That’s where actual innovation happens, not at large companies but the small startups. I see that happening now too. They’ll eventually get bought up, but the cycle will repeat.
  
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- onlinepersona@programming.dev ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I seriously hope so. Hopefully they make good games, become successful, and turn into the thing they hated.
  
  Anti Commercial-AI license
  
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regul@lemm.ee ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Because game devs have to pay their rent.

If they go off to form their own studio, they probably have to take out a business loan to pay themselves for the time being. Interest rates are high right now, and rent and food are both expensive. It’s a huge gamble to make a game and put it out on the assumption you’ll be able to pay back 6%+ interest on whatever you took out. Games are not a reliable money maker. Especially from new studios.

Even if you get some sort of deal with a publisher to fund your first endeavor, there will still be strings attached to that, and publishers are pretty tight with the purse strings right now.

Which means really the only viable option, assuming you’re not already independently wealthy, is that you have to work another job to work on the game in the meantime, which means it will take even longer to come out.

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- Dymonika@beehaw.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  the only viable option, assuming you’re not already independently wealthy, is that you have to work another job to work on the game in the meantime, which means it will take even longer to come out.
  
  Or be ConcernedApe.
  
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  - GammaGames@beehaw.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Which means using up your savings and relying on your partner to support you
    
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  - Fluentem@lemm.ee ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Except he also didn’t work on Stardew Valley full-time for the first
    
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  - Cwilliams@beehaw.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Stardew Valley FTW
    
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- blindsight@beehaw.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  To add to this:
  
  Ain’t no way a brand new game studio is getting a loan at 6%. If they can even get a business loan at all (good luck!), it would be at a much higher interest rate due to the risk, and/or require assets to be held in collateral (only an option if you’re already wealthy to begin with…)
  
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HubertManne@kbin.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Why does anyone who works not make their own company? It takes capital and a certain skill set as well as a risk tolerance.

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Kolanaki@yiffit.net ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
They do, though. Like, all the time.

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- dillekant@slrpnk.net ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  There were a bunch of game company closures in Australia in the 2000s and now there are a bunch of Australian indie devs, as an example. The cycle takes a long time though.
  
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- Beegzoidberg@beehaw.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Right, like wild light
  
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Eiim@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Indie studios do in fact exist. I haven’t bought a game from a major publisher since… uhh… well, I guess I bought Portal for $1 last year, does Valve still count as a major publisher?

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derbis@beehaw.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
As a counterpoint to most of the cynicism here, this is how the company I now work for formed. Caveats include: the founder had a lot of money because he had previously worked for a big name Internet company when it was a startup, and we spend almost all of our time as contractors for other studios rather than developing in-house IP.

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pelletbucket@lemm.ee ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
it takes time for a company to become profitable. the intentionally make sure to pay us so little we never have any run out

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HaywardT@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Beyond just game studios, why aren’t there more employee owned companies?

When Starbucks was unionizing I made the comment that if I were the corporation I would just get out and let the employees run it. I got flamed for this attitude. What is so terrible about employee owned companies?

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- millie@beehaw.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  People literally buy into the idea that they wouldn’t know how to do anything if they weren’t being told what to do. They think that value comes from above.
  
  They think that when a company sells them raspberries, they invented the raspberry bush. They don’t realize that the raspberries were already there. They certainly don’t realize that they themselves are another kind of bush. Or that the labor bush operates without a company to own it and sell its labor berries.
  
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  - HaywardT@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    What can be done to change this?
    
    I think a lot of people need someone to blame for their own unhappiness, too. I would like to see this change, but I am not sure how it can be done.
    
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- Midnitte@beehaw.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Probably because the owners want to take all of the profit and employees do not have the capital to make the investment.
  
  It takes a certain benevolent capitalist to convert their business to employee owned (Bobs Red Mill intensifies). Such businesses only represent 12% of the private sector
  
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  - HaywardT@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    That’s a much higher percentage than I expected.
    
    Benevolent capital is out there, especially in the startup phase. I find it arrogant and ignorant, but available. It does require risk-sharing which I find doesn’t fit the vision of the borrower.
    
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- acastcandream@beehaw.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Hades II just dropped by SGG, which is basically what y’all are calling for. This system is viable once you’ve had your first quasi-successful game. That first game is the problem though - it’s a massive hurdle. So many groups seek bigger companies to support them. After that, your theirs. Especially if you make a hit.
  
  There are also other factors such as running a studio means running a business. If you’re a developer, you might have very little interest in that. So you instead get hired by a company which enables you to get a paycheck as you do the thing you actually enjoy.
  
  Additionally, there is marketing and distribution. Do not underestimate how much connections matter when marketing and distributing your game. And yes, everyone needs to market. They can’t all be Hi-Fi Rush (which yikes they weren’t safe either) shadow dropping. Though they also had a big studio to help them capitalize so lol
  
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- Kichae@lemmy.ca ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  They don’t fulfill the fantasy of being a rent-seeking social parasite.
  
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  - HaywardT@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    So you are saying employees in employee owned companies are rent seeking social parasites?
    
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- novibe@lemmy.ml ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  The system literally disincentives and makes coops less competitive.
  
  Opening a coop is harder, more expensive, have less subsidies or tax benefits, less opportunities for investments/loans etc.
  
  And all of this makes running coops more expensive, thus less competitive, thus the ones that do manage to open either can’t grow or die.
  
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  - HaywardT@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    To me the opposite appears true. Beyond economy -of-scale can you give me some examples?
    
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- PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Employee owned companies are more stable in economic downturns but they also require much more diversification to replace the owner/manager roles where there is actually shit to do. Big item being the book keeping.
  
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  - Seraph@kbin.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I'm not following on why manager roles are different from traditional companies.
    
    The book keeping? You mean splitting the profit? Why wouldn't you assume everyone has a % stake?
    
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  - HaywardT@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’m a better bookkeeper than I am a coder. I would join.
    
    So many roles can be fractionalized that it seems doable.
    
    Strategic leadership and consensus might be difficult. Design by committee could be the biggest enemy.
    
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millie@beehaw.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Tryin’! I gotta put out a tabletop RPG first. Smaller market, plus I need to finish the rule set to use it in my games!

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- ivanafterall@kbin.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Can you give us the gist or is it under wraps?
  
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  - millie@beehaw.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    The tabletop system is intended to be modular, with subsystems that can easily be added, removed, or tuned for different genres. The initial playtest I did was in a zombie survival setting, currently we’re doing a campaign that’s got a bit more of a Shadowrunny type feel, mixing technological dystopia and magic. The idea is to put out a core book in those settings as well as a fantasy setting and a space opera setting, so people can mix and match subsystems and do whatever they like with it.
    
    I applied programming concepts to the design of the mechanics themselves in a way that I hope makes them more intuitive and tries to maintain a steady flow of tension and release without a bunch of pausing to check stuff once you know the system.
    
    I don’t want to give too much of the details away, but I do plan to release a system resource document. And it’ll be released under an anti-corporate license, so other small creators can make modules for it, but big companies will have to shell out if they want to play ball.
    
    Once that’s ready to go I have a couple of video games planned using the same system. One of them ties heavily into themes of abuse and autonomy, the other is about time travel. I have some of the early stages of the art and some shaders and stuff done for these, and have set up a few mechanics, but they’re still kind of on the back burner. I’ve been teaching myself music theory and composition so the soundtrack doesn’t become an afterthought, and I feel like there’s still something conceptual I’m missing at the core of the visual design. I’ll get there, though.
    
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- HaywardT@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  You are the hero we need
  
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Kissaki@beehaw.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

What I’m reading is that it’s a quick way to lower expenses and pad the investors’ pockets, flooding the market with developers and reducing their value, to then hire them back a few months later at lower salaries.

That sounds like what I see people comment on Lemmy. Those opinions or impressions are not necessarily true though, or seeing the full picture.

People are laid off, which makes the news. But many others remain employed, those don’t make the news. Many others founded or found new companies, which don’t make the news.

Creating your own company, with all its investment, management, and risk involved is much scarier, higher investment and risk, personally and professionally, than being employed. Some people are willing to take that leap, others not.

I imagine profitably in creating games is very hard. You need to grow a user base or publicity. The market is flooded with games, publishers, and developers. Only the big ones have marketing budgets big enough that the marketing makes a bigger impact on profitability than the quality and discoverability of the product. (Like CoD investing a similar amount into marketing as the product development cost. And marketing is effective - more than a good game or product.)

Either way, I don’t feel I have an overview of the whole market situation, or statistics on the broader market and development people movement. But I’m sure “why don’t people start their own companies” is a wrong premise. They do. Some do. We just don’t see it.

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DebatableRaccoon@lemmy.ca ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Short answer: money. It’s no secret devs are usually overworked and underpaid so even a large-ish group of developers from even some of the more popular companies getting murdered simple can’t afford to start a business. Some of them could go the Kickstarter route but few would be successful as is the way for Kickstarter.

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Rolive@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
You see the results of indie devs that are successful but you don’t see the ones that failed.

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helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

what’s holding back gamedevs from banding together to either unionize or start their own companies

Same thing as any other business: money.

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HaywardT@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
fed.dyne.org/post/146187

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