Layoffs at id

Zenimax have confirmed that there have been a unspecified number of layoffs at id following the completion of Rage. A mouthpiece at the publisher added that ongoing development of Doom 4 and other titles has not been affected, and that id are still actively recruiting and hiring.

Probably all the people who think elaborate maze-like exploratory level design is cool

Yeah, actively hiring for Rage 2 to make up their loss.

Eh layoffs after a game release is normal. Like if you have someone worked for Rage 1 that they can just use for Rage 2... just release that worker. Or they'll rehire the guys when Rage 2 starts... or just go with guys fresh out of college. I'm a lil surprised they waited this long to release them.

40oz said:

Probably all the people who think elaborate maze-like exploratory level design is cool

It has been for thousands of years. Where have YOU been?

Hopefully id has learned a lesson or two.

Don't take risks on a new IP in order to work out the bugs in your monumental IP so that monumental IP has a better chance of getting an A+?

If said lesson transmorphs into "Don't risk making new IP" then part of me is going to die inside. Repeatedly. Again.

Looking forward to Doom 5 and Quake 5 then! Plus the inevitable return - once again - to Castle Wolfenstein.

Aren't people laid off at the end of most game projects?

Thanks for makin' our game - NOW GTFO.

fraggle said:

Looking forward to Doom 5 and Quake 5 then! Plus the inevitable return - once again - to Castle Wolfenstein.

To be fair, there's a chance each time that a good game pops out if they keep pumping.

Yep most people are laid off at the end of a project. Its pretty normal.

printz said:

To be fair, there's a chance each time that a good game pops out if they keep pumping.

Isn't that sort of like using an infinite number of monkeys to reproduce Shakespeare?

Or my personal favorite take on it, and infinite number of rednecks riding in an infinite number of trucks shooting shotguns at an infinite number of signs will reproduce Shakespeare in braille.

geo said:

Yep most people are laid off at the end of a project. Its pretty normal.

And, of course, not just in the games industry. Any industry that has the highs and lows of big projects also has cycles of hiring and redundancy.

I've heard that big studios in other industries like Pixar will be working on one project then when that project leaves a certain phase the people working on it will work on that certain phase on the next project. Since the games industry hasn't really worked out any systems like this yet there are problems such as the mass layoffs and lack of pre-production.

Like an assembly line type thing except for media production? That's pretty cool.

Yep, the video game industry could learn a lot from Henry Ford.

40oz said:

Like an assembly line type thing except for media production? That's pretty cool.

Cool eh? Creativity is NOT helped by this kind of pacing.

Kaiser said:

Yeah, actively hiring for Rage 2 to make up their loss.

Maybe they should FIX the existing texture issues on the PC port of RAGE before moving onto the sequel?

printz said:

Cool eh? Creativity is NOT helped by this kind of pacing.

Are you suggesting that layoffs are better for creativity, then? :P

Xaser said:

Are you suggesting that layoffs are better for creativity, then? :P

I'm suggesting that a pipeline game-making system might be the reasons games are so similar between each other and so not special. Because really, it shows.

Yeah, because working at once certain part of a project certainly doesn't help him become better at it. He's better off working at parts he both is and isn't good at, and get laid off at the end for good measure.

Enjay said: And, of course, not just in the games industry. Any industry that has the highs and lows of big projects also has cycles of hiring and redundancy.

Game industry's pork cycle, innit.

Some animation studios used to lay people off when an animated movie came out, but now they usually do 4 movies at once. Writers write, storyboarders storyboard, modelers model, motion captures capture, animators animate. Then they just keep the movies coming off an assembly line.

So if ID works on 1 game at a time for 6 years... there's no reason to keep people on who have finished what they're doing.

dammit geo

Sorry I did bad right :-(

The creativity of Pixar movies (or at least the originals of each franchise) shows that it is possible to be creative under an assembly-line system. Besides, whether a game or a movie is creative depends far more on the creative leads of the company than on the guy who's been rigging models for animation for forty-eight months straight.

Is it bad that I laughed at this? I love how fast ID turned into one of the many crappy cookie cutter developers. I wish they would 3drealms and die already.

Did anybody think this would NOT happen when they sold the company? Heheheh.