It’s too often these days that hyperbole with titles and headlines is taken too far. With all the serious stuff going on in the world, journalists, writers, we need to pick our words more carefully, more sensitively. Read this headline from PC Gamer’s Joshua Wolens: Bungie lays off 220 developers in shocking bloodbath as it aggressively refocuses on Destiny and Marathon: ‘We were overly ambitious’ | PC Gamer
First, it’s not “shocking” that Bungie is laying off 220 developers.
It shouldn’t be shocking to anybody that follows gaming, especially a gaming publication, that developers are being sacked left and right. There’s been numerous reporting on this happening over the last couple years. It’s happening not just in the gaming sector, but almost every company. Cutback, they suck, but they happen.
It’s disappointing, disturbing, yes, but it’s no secret game companies have dramatically over staffed. This is a management problem and the saddest part of this, beyond of course the 220 devs losing their jobs, are that some of the highly paid executives that greenlit this hiring splurge likely were not culled in the same bottom-line pruning actions.
I don’t know the last part for a fact, so definitely look up the details there before getting too riled up, but it’s well known that companies cut the bottom before they shave or cut too deeply the top. When it’s the top that made the most grievous error: over hiring.
But let’s sharpen the dictionary sword with the definition of “bloodbath” and start with Merriam Webster: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bloodbath
Sorry, but 220 people losing their jobs cannot be categorized as “a great slaughter.” It’s also not an economic disaster for the world, but it’s certainly an economic problem for those 220 people. I hope all of them find jobs quickly and receive generous severance packages, but they still have their lives, their health. They aren’t dying, they are just moving from one job to another. It’s depressing and disruptive, but it happens.
This also isn’t a “notably fierce, violent or destructive contest or struggle.” No, it’s a disruptive shakeup of people employed at a gaming company that most or all never should have been hired in the first place.
It’s like blaming the pizza for having too much cheese, when you don’t like cheese. Many of these bigger gaming studios are bloated with people. Too many freaking people. If I was working right now in any major gaming studio, I’d be polishing my resume post haste and figuring out alternative plans. If that applies to anybody reading this, please stop reading and get on this, ASAP.
Bungie management is to blame here. Management needs to go first, not last.
Which brings us to PC Gamer article headline #2: Former Bungie devs show fury and sorrow over layoffs, following the revelation that CEO Pete Parsons allegedly spent at least $2,414,550 on vintage cars in the past 2 years | PC Gamer
This article and headline, btw, is much better, by a different author and has a particularly biting quote: “I remember the Friday before the first layoffs, me and another CM were in the lobby and I was literally talking about how I didn’t have enough money for groceries … Pete [Bungie CEO] walked right up to us and bragged about a few new EXPENSIVE cars he bought and that we should come to his house and see them.”
Groan.
Maybe instead of firing people, Bungie should/could have made smaller, more nimble dev teams and had them turn in game projects. Nope, we’re just going to axe most of the team and send a percentage of people to our bigger, more profitable game projects.
Sigh.
So, now those teams become too large? I can’t be the only one to see the management problem here. Next year or two years from now do we hear that these teams are being cut because games didn’t perform as well as expected.
Excess pressure, that’s what more people bring. Just wrote about this recently: OPINION: Maybe the problem isn’t AI, it’s too many people working on a single game?
The problem when you hype up something too much, when something else comes up, you need to hype it even more and at some point absurdity rolls in. Alas, to the writer of our headline overkill article, Joshua Wolens, your editor should have toned down your title and verbiage. I know, I know, the marketing, the clicks, the views, etc. Good writing is being replaced by excess hype and that’s almost as criminal as people losing their jobs, because readers become more and more distrustful with overblown, hyper-reactive article headlines.