Gaming
GDC Report Reveals Disturbing Trend: Layoffs Impact One-Third of Developers in the Past Year
A significant portion of game development studios have experienced layoffs in the past year, causing a sense of unease among employees who fear potential future cuts at their workplace. As per the annual report commissioned by the Game Developers Conference (GDC), organizers of the world’s largest industry professional event,.
The report clearly emphasizes what is evident. Numerous job losses have occurred, with more happening daily, as companies grapple with ill-advised decisions made during a period of rapid digital growth for the industry, coinciding with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. It seems that quality assurance testers have been the most affected by layoffs this year, with 22% of them reporting being let go, compared to 7% of all developers. Business and finance roles experienced a modest decline of 2%.
When it comes to the ongoing unionisation efforts, only 5% of developers are currently part of a union. However, an increasing number of game industry workers, specifically 57%, believe that unionising is necessary, which is a slight rise from 53% last year. When it comes to demographics, it’s worth noting that a significant portion of the developers surveyed are men (69%), with a majority being of white or Caucasian origin (65%) and falling into the millennial age range of 25–34 years old (35%).
The report also highlights the concerns surrounding AI that we have been discussing in recent months. It specifically addresses the increasing acceptance of generative AI in video game development and the subsequent uncertainty that arises from its implementation. A significant portion of the respondents (49%) reported that they are currently utilizing or are familiar with colleagues who are using generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, DALL-E, GitHub Copilot, and Adobe Generative Fill. Surprisingly, a staggering 84% of respondents expressed varying levels of concern regarding the ethical implications of utilizing these generative AI tools in the development process.
It seems that the once-promising vision of a blockchain-dominated future is losing its appeal. A staggering 77% of respondents have expressed their lack of interest in technologies such as cryptocurrency, NFTs, or Web3, which is quite amusing. Opinions may vary, but we’ll consider the last one a success.
What are your thoughts on this brief glimpse into the industry and the concerns of the developers behind the games we love? Please share your thoughts and any relevant information in the comments section below.
Gaming
Ubisoft says that future Assassin’s Creed games will need more time to be made
As Assassin’s Creed Shadows is about to sneak up on people in November, Ubisoft says that the time between developing games needs to be longer to find the “right balance.” Shadows has been in development for four years, longer than any other game in the series up to this point. That includes the huge open-world epics Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
Shadows lead producer Karl Onnée (thanks, GamesIndustry.biz) says that the latest AC game took 25% longer to make than Valhalla. He says this is necessary to keep the quality of the series that it is known for: “It’s always a balance between time and costs, but the more time you have, the more you can iterate.” You can speed up a project by adding more people to it, but that doesn’t give you more time to make changes.
Onnée says this has as much to do with immersion and aesthetics as it does with fixing bugs and smoothing out pixels. This is because the development team needs time to learn about each new historical setting: “We are trying to make a game that is as real as possible.” We’re proud of it, and the process took a long time. In feudal Japan, building a house is very different from building a house in France or England in the Middle Ages. As an artist, you need to learn where to put things in a feudal Japanese home. For example, food might not belong there. Get all the information you need and learn it. That process takes a long time.”
You’ll have to wait a little longer for Ubisoft to work on each game. Are you okay with that? In what part of Shadows are you now? Is it interesting to you? Leave a comment below and let us know.
Gaming
You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP on PS5
You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP, a remaster that Dragami Games and Capcom both created. You can now pre-order the PS5 game on the PS Store for $44.99 or £39.99. If you have PS Plus, you can get an extra 10% off the price.
The company put out a new trailer with about three minutes of gameplay to mark the start of the pre-order period. Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP is a remaster of Grasshopper Manufacture’s crazy action game from 2012. You play as Juliet, a high school student who fights off waves of zombies.
The remaster adds RePOP mode, an alternative mode that swaps out the blood and gore for fun visual effects. It also adds a bunch of other features and improvements that make the game better overall. You can expect the graphics and sound to be better as well.
The game will now come out on September 12, 2024, instead of September 12, 2024. Are you excited to get back to this? Please cheer us on in the section below.
Gaming
This Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 zombies trailer is way too expensive
Is there really anyone who is following the story of Call of Duty’s zombie mode? We’ve known about the story in a vague way for a while, but we couldn’t tell you anything about it. It looks like the “Dark Aether” story will continue in Black Ops 6, but we don’t really know what that means.
For those of you who care, here is the official blurb with some background: “Requiem, led by the CIA, finally closed the last-dimensional portal, sending its inhabitants back to the nightmare world known as the Dark Aether, after two years of fighting zombie outbreaks around the world during the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War timeline.”
Wait, there’s more! “Agent Samantha Maxis gave her life to seal this weird dimension from the inside out.” Even worse things were to come: senior staff members of Requiem were arrested without a reason by the Project Director, who turned out to be Edward Richtofen.
Black Ops 6 will take place about five years later, and it looks like it will show more about Richtofen’s goals and motivations. The most important thing is that you will probably be shooting an unimaginable number of zombies in the head. This week, on August 8, there will be a full reveal of the gameplay, so keep an eye out for that.
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