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Comment by tenpoundhammer | Hacker News Reader

> The layoffs, which will mostly be in non-game-development areas like publishing, will impact Activision, Blizzard, and King. In one case, an entire studio of 78 people was shut down—Seattle-based mobile game studio Z2Live.

> The implication is that the positive results reported came thanks to a fairly narrow bench of franchises, with many of the company's efforts outside those franchises not meeting expectations.

Sounds like the good properties did great and the second tier properties did worse than expected. I'm not sure why a company would chase bad money with good, sounds like a reasonable choice to reduce properties and downsize in favor of bolstering properties that are working and growing.

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That's a trend with oligopolies in the entertainment industry. The same reasoning propels movie studios to remake the same franchise movies every year. Costs for AAA are large already -- why take risks?

IMO this is a sign video games are reaching the stage of Neil Gaiman's "American Gods," where popular franchises become part of the culture with life of their own.

As a consumer, I'd rather the large players invest in new creative ideas. Create new franchises and more diverse ideas.

But I'm not their audience for video games nor AAA movies...

> Costs for AAA are large already -- why take risks?

You say that, but many of the games that Activision is focusing on, were new projects not too long ago.

Specifically, Hearthstone and Overwatch, are relatively new, when you compare them to the real old projects, like World of Warcraft, and the Diablo francise.

Them only focusing on these projects means that they have effectively given up. They will stagnate, with no new projects. Just merely rehashes of the same old thing that they have been doing for years.

Giving up on growth doesn't seem like a great strategy to me...

I would much rather have new properties as well. It's unfortunate that economic incentives don't align to make that more common. Although kick starter has helped a bit. Maybe new properties could be like startups and have lottery style exit strategies... I don't just thinking out loud. Great comment.

With the availability of Unity and other engines funded by AAA companies, that's enabled startups to pursue new game concepts using AAA efforts as a foundation. That's an ideal model. AAA games are both the standard bearer and the entry level. It's up to gamers to pursue and support a community built on top of that for more experimental games.

Wherever there is attention, someone will monetize it.

We don't need so many increasingly massive AAA games. All the best games we remember from the 90s were made by much smaller teams than work on big budget games today.

That's a good point assuming that's all under their control.

But one of the highest performers "Destiny" decided to end their relationship abruptly. This led to a bunch of marketing staff with jobs dedicated to a product that doesn't exist anymore and a bunch of under performing products that can't necessarily absorb those jobs.

Its not Destiny's job to subsidize that staff and those B-Tier games. But its unfair to frame this as layoffs amid record profits when its so obvious that next year is going to be a completely different situation that Blizzard had no way to prepare for.

Destiny 2 was underperforming.

It was mentioned in the earnings call yesterday.

Under performing compared to analysts predictions, which affects stock price. That doesn't necessarily mean they lost money working on Destiny.

And even if it they were negative, when Destiny left Blizzard still abruptly has an excess of dedicated support staff for a game they are no longer working with.

If a Hurricane destroyed Disneyland... Disney would have to a shareholder responsibility to lay off the workers from that park while they rebuilt. It's not a reflection of corporate greed, but a fundamental part of decision making.

I was under the impression Layoff was technically different from firing only in: We are ending our relationship with this employee, and _not_ looking for someone to replace their existing responsibilities. I'm honestly confused by all the uproar -- it seems like relatively predictable and expected behavior.

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