Midway Games
Submitted by softwarejanitor on Tue, 08/12/2008 - 12:00pm.
::
Anyone else see the article about them laying off 130 (over 2/3 the office) people here in Austin? The competition amongst developers (and artists, QA, etc) for game company opportunities was already fierce before this, now its just going to be that much harder. This has to be a pretty significant percentage of the gaming company employment in the area as a whole. I'm not sure what the total number of people around here working in that industry is, but it can't be more than a thousand or two.
- softwarejanitor's blog
- Login or register to post comments
Oh, I forgot to mention that the article was on the front page of the 8/12 Statesman's Business section.
Relatively recently (possibly up to 2 years ago, I can't remember) they said the gamedev population in Austin was around 1100 people. And I believe it was only 90 people, there was some confusion about the layoffs, though NCSoft and Spacetime also had some, so it is over 100 total. The other interesting statistic is there's about double the number of companies there were 2 years ago - people aren't always leaving the industry or finding another job, a lot are creative types and business types and starting their own companies. A lot of these are small, innovative types, that will be the industry in times to come...
But still, nearly a 10% drop in jobs in such a short period of time is a pretty major blow to a fledgling job market. Do you think that in the short run at least that this will cause a drop in salaries?
Austin's game industry has been around for around 30 years. I wouldn't exactly call that fledgeling. The Game Career Guide publishes salary reviews. I don't think they target Austin specifically, but you could see general salary changes in the industry year to year through it.
http://gamecareerguide.com
Make that 25 years (Origin Systems was founded in 1983)
25 years old or not, its still fledgling in size compared to places like Chicago, LA or SV/SF bay area. Origin Systems back in the early 1980s was pretty much just Richard Garriot... I remember playing Akalabeth on my Apple II back in the day...
EA (SF): 1982
Activision (SF): 1979
Sierra (CA/WA): 1979
Atari (SF): 1972
Midway (Chicago): 1988
MS (WA, with Flight Simulator as first game): 1982
LA is mostly either big guys (mentioned above), newer studios, or media companies with game divisions that are relatively recent. Sony only got into the industry in 1995 with the PSX.
So they aren't all that earlier. True there may be more developers per company, but there are 60 companies and growing here with all the layoffs. And Austin has traditionally focused on MMOs and licensed games (with some exceptions). Also, you only need 10 people to make a good game even now. Tropico may be old now but it's still a great game. And some studios have even less when developing for DS or iPhone.