I'd like to stop hearing about them too. But I'd rather stop hearing about them because companies are genuinely terrified of laying off their staff for fear of mass retribution, rather than people not talking about it. So if you want the news to lay off on the layoffs, you gotta forget the lie of "there's nothing you can do about it", and start being the change you want to see in the world.
not sure if anyone's said this yet but the visible pixels on the new ace attorney release is actually because for some reason it uses nearest neighbor scaling, so it looks different depending on what resolution you're playing on
im like 85% sure they just used clips from bren's playthrough because I cannot imagine who else would be putting up that gorilla png followed by the jingling keys
huh! is this like the Cooptional Podcast with gaming news but with my favourite funny boys? awesome. note: thank you for jiggling keys on my face, PST. really helping viewer retention.
QA person here. Woolie is spot on with the differences between internal and external QA. If you're a "faceless drone" from the "external studio" you don't get a lot of sympathy and people definitely look down on you even though you're doing parts of the job on hard mode. You might get devs asking questions about how a bug is written when they don't know if your studio has a defined way to write a bug up. I'm internal and I've been guilty of looking at an external bug and going "what were they thinking with this one?" and then i remember that they likely have their own processes and quotas I'm unaware of. All that being said, I have a good relationship with my devs and producers and most teams are extremely communicative with us. I 100% believe this is because a notable portion of the studio got their start in QA and were promoted internally. If you think QA might be for you and you're shopping around so to speak, seeing if QA has any upward mobility is a HUGE green flag. Even if you don't currently aspire to go into other departments, that's a good sign doing QA there will be a lot smoother than doing it elsewhere.
When worlds collide, You can run, but no can hide, When worlds collide, You’ll laugh so hard, You’ll swear you died, When worlds collide, Hold my hand, I’ll be your guide, When worlds collide. Buckle, Buckle, Buckle up for the sweetest ride, And prepare to have your mind blown wide, When worlds collide, When worlds collide, It’s a curious thing, Bet ya never heard a Start button and a Super Beast sing, In his metal chest are some working parts, But is that any different from a beating heart? He’s from PST, and he’s from CSB, But that don’t mean this collaboration wasn’t meant to last, One came from fighting games the other’s art gave his fame, So let me hear ya holler for this inter-podcast acclaim, You, You, You can run, But no can hide, When, WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE.
couple things I wanted to comment on- on the point about it being way easier to go loud than quiet, it's a good point to bring up because basically every game Snake Eater onward has a lot of mechanical emphasis on exactly this; in giving Snake tons of lethal options and very few nonlethal ones, it then becomes that much more emblematic of the character himself in that he commits to what he believes in no matter how hard it goes against what he's been assigned by others- in his case, people believing he's nothing more than another soldier with a gun; in your case, the game designers betting you're gonna take the loud path since it's easier the other point, about MGS4 using SIXAXIS, *yeah they went hard with it*. there are a few weapons in MGS4 (they're mostly spoilers) which literally can't function without controller gyro, and the game broadly uses it a ton throughout, like even in moment to moment play you can shake the controller to dispel your current camo if it's set to automatic
People really underestimate the value of traditional companies. I know tech people love the sort of new paradigm of tech companies and whatever, but they're prone to crazy layoffs, they have no consistency, they will abandon you at the slightest provocation. At legacy companies you can at least earn some of that sweet sweet nepotism, they'll be running code from the 80s only 2 other people within 500km can maintain, and would sooner die than swallow their pride and do layoffs. That's the kind of toxicity we need in our employment
One interesting thing is that a majority of the CMs from Bungie that got laid off, or moved to Riot, got laid off again. Another very notable thing, Joe Blackburn the Creative Director for Destiny 2 resigned. From the outside looking in, Bungie seems to be a mismanaged hellfire.
I would love to know if any of you guys watched Steak Bently's "MGS4 Was a Mistake" video because it's. Great. It's a wonderful critique and love letter to all of MGS but it's also something I wouldn't recommend watching if you don't want spoilers on the series.
I had a similar experience with MGS3 on Vita. I played it on Xbox 360 first, didn’t get far in, because I hated the controls so much and I was baffled people loved MGS so much. Then I played on Vita and somehow I finally understood the controls. Then I loved it.
"I can't believe we're talking about layoffs again" welcome to [podcasting about the games industry circa 2022-present] Been listening to gigaboots for a while and they had to rebrand their "talking about layoffs" segment like three times in the last couple months as to not make it more and more depressing
Last year, there were about 10k layoffs in the year. So far just in January 2024 we're already at about 6k. Also unionization efforts are down. Especially in the south. And ESPECIALLY with people like the governor of West Virginia taking a hard line stance against unions. And finally (i think) when is Walmart offloading those copies of Starfield. The game might be mid, but i like it. And 3 cents for a physical copies is a steal. P.S. demn Billy really deadnaming Like A Dragon like that.
I think with all the people hardline against the usage of AI, they're kinda missing the potential. Currently laws are behind and they do need to step in to protect workers, we can all agree on that. But ideally, AI can be used to allow workers to create better things. For example in game development when there's bigger and better technologies, they don't make games of the same scale but faster and easier... They make them bigger and better with an ever increasing budget. AI could be integrated into an artist's workflow, do they really need to spend 8 hours making textures for random objects in the distance? Do they really need to waste hours creating lower poly versions of the same model for LODs? It can hopefully reduce tedium while letting the artists work on the cool stuff. But again, laws need to step in to protect people as it's not ideal to just have everyone's stuff webscraped freely to produce shovelware
49:37 I think AI Gen will end up being tacky when used for consumer art, but I think it'll be used for internal company messaging, which will be a loss of a ton of jobs for corporate artists. I'm with Cameron where I'm just going to be looking out for it when I'm looking at new games or artists to follow and just avoiding it. I paused so sorry if this point is expressed later, love the show, two thumbs up.
Hey all. Useless comment!! Forewarning I heard news about a certain someone not being in podcasts, I don’t know you guys by voice to name yet. I got worried. Then I heard he voice and my heart warmed. 🎉 The taliban are on twitch. They are learning twitch culture, how long untill the taloban post ok twitterer (x) “poggers, drones b lining to American Andy’s”
I think AI art will have more humanity and more fresh and new pieces of work put out that we currently get today, cause were at the point of constant derivatives, reboot and just change it a little infinite sequel bait with corporate input for corporate output of the same plot with slight changes and no humanity already.
8:30 its never entry level devs that get canned. Its always the employees that cost the most eventually leaving mediocre talent that affects the product. If you ever wonder why a company you loved stopped putting out good content *cough* bethesda *cough* just look how many devs that worked on the games you love got canned
It's why you see pop up dev teams that decide, fuck it, we're making what we want. And then they make something good, like ex-Dice devs making The Finals. Never follow the studios, follow the developers.
I really like this show but you guys gotta stop referring to videogames as art. Media designed purely for consumption shouldnt be considered art in any case whatsoever and it muddles the discussion by adding unecessary discourse. Art isnt being automated, its MEDIA, and as brendan said in the last episode its insidious in the way it begets infinite slop. Art will never be automated, media will, and the creativity behind media will buckle under automation more than it already has after devs and writers sold their souls to big entertainment companies. Look more into how the modernist movement failed: turn art into a commodity and castrate any sort of poignancy or discomfort from it, thats why all offices have some random cubist painting laying around. If you want to talk about how automation ruins the economy, talk about the jobs and industry, not the human touch behind things since nobody cares about that apparently
And before anyone mentions people do care about that human feel behind media and thats whats art: no, its not. Most books and music is produced by hundreds of people while executives choose the best (most convenient and marketable parts) for the public. The jump from bootcamp slop and AI isnt the jump between art and slop, its the jump between sloppy and sloppiest
