Jonah thought that this podcast would be another short show — but it evolved into a lively conversation about Spiritfarer and other game news.
The news includes:
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[This episode is unedited, so be prepared for some naughty language.]
This week has some stunning news items, causing an overstuffed, long episode, so big even Jordan’s wife chimes in, and Jonah and Paul argue hotly over the last item. The Gaming Flashback for this episode is Super Star Wars.
This week’s huge news:
Also some listener feedback, plus this week’s Question: “What was your Golden Era of videogaming?”
This week includes a Gaming Flashback about the sticky puzzle game World of Goo, which was one of the first games released without DLC — which is one of the main themes running through this podcast: videogame obsolescence. The guys also discuss James Gunn’s work on Lollipop Chainsaw and speedrun cheating.
The news for the week includes:
All this and Listener Feedback.
Electronic Arts is planning to lay off 1,000 employees, approximately 10% of their employees. In this layoff their also consolidating EA Black Box back into EA Canada. EA Black Box was spun off as a studio outside of EA Canada to work on such titles as Need for Speed but, with the layoffs arriving, they’re going to be merging the remainder of EA Black Box into EA Canada by June 2009. The remaining EA Black Box employees will continue working on Skate 2.
The pink slips should be issued by March 31, 2009 and we’re hoping the folks that have lost their jobs will find new jobs as soon as possible. An Electronic Arts representative said:
“This does not mean that the Black Box studio is closing. The studio is moving to our Burnaby campus to share the facility with EAC and other EA teams that operate out of our state-of-the-art facility. We will operate two distinct studios, each with their own distinct culture and teams, out of our Burnaby facility.” (gamespot)
EA hasn’t mentioned any specific franchise cancellation but we’re going to assume something is going to slip, it’s hard to imagine a company can lose 1,000 employees without impacting business operations. If EA was able to layoff 1,000 people without impacting day-to-day business, then they’re definitely hurting in the management department because that would be a ton of waste.
Big companies may cut costs during hard times but they said they’re, “implementing a plan to narrow its product portfolio to focus on hit games with higher margin opportunities. The company remains committed to taking creative risks, investing in new games, leading the industry in the growing mobile and online businesses, and delivering high-quality games to consumers.”
We’re curious just how much EA is willing to risk on “creative” endevours considering publishers are already hesitant to break new ground. The next few years should yield great opportunities for smaller developers to put on their creative hat and open new doors and opportunities for themselves.
