Ex-Sony Computer Entertainment Europe president Chris Deering does not believe recent layoffs across the games industry have been a result of corporate greed. Instead, workers who have lost their jobs should “drive an Uber” or “go to the beach for a year” until employment settles.
Deering was a guest on games writer Simon Parkin’s podcast My Perfect Console, where the pair discussed games industry layoffs.
“I don’t think it’s fair to say that the resulting layoffs have been greed,” said Deering. “I always tried to minimise the speed with which we added staff because I always knew there would be a cycle and I didn’t want to end up having the same problems that Sony did in Electronics.”
What a prick. Revenue grew 17% last year but need to lay people off lol.
If they keep making games like concord, the layoffs will continue.
The biggest tragedy with Concord is that the mistake was in the high-level direction. From what I heard, everything past that about gameplay systems and coding was reasonably serviceable. So people did their jobs right, and were doomed anyway by executives.
The characters were laughable as well
Character design is basically high-level direction, which is why I said that. The concept artists come up with ideas and the lead designer decides which one they go with.