Terminated: Anonymous Interview with Laid-Off Activision Employee | VGW

VGW's Brian Shea: Activision is, without a doubt, one of the most profitable and well-known publishers in the video game industry. An employee who was laid-off in the infamous Activision casualties sometime in the past year agreed to speak with us, candidly, about the publisher and his time there, under the agreement that his identity be kept confidential.

[Garethvk]

The truth is this happens all the time. My first job out of college was being a lead tester at a gaming company. They were always laying off artists and such once their part in the project was done. They liked me and kept me on running the company store until the next project needed testing. I was abruptly laid off a few weeks later but told I would be returning for the next testing in a couple of weeks. A few weeks later the company merged with someone else and they decided to move all testing to their facility. That lasted a year and the company then went in house again before working with a more established publisher later.

I also worked at another company where I loved going in each day and they treated us very well. Honestly one of the best places and group of people I have ever worked at. Well they got purchased by a big company who in time wanted all testing and such in house. I opted not to move to CA for the higher cost of living and so on for the small raise I was promised, and a few years later they changed up again. It is a very vagabond existence sadly as many good people are crunched in a numbers game. Many execs are under huge pressure to ship X number of units in a quarter regardless of quality. I saw games not even 60% done that the team working on would not sign off on that were pushed out the door. The only real security is to own your rights or company and even then you risk being swallowed up due to the need for funding. Look at Infinity Ward, good track record of top sellers and Activision cleaned house there.

[Dart89]

Great read.

*“[Call of Duty] will at some point fade out as any other franchise,” he said. “You can’t put out so many games every 6 months looking all the same and charge $60 for them without getting to a point where the consumer feels like he already has enough of that type of game to fill its needs.

Only people who don't play any other type's of game would buy the same game every year sadly which is true i know some people who just play cod year in year which is kinda sad if you ask me there are better game's out there that deserve you're money not a game that has not changed anything other than a new title and a few color upgrade's that's what cod has been doing.

Edit:Does anyone know when they lawsuit is set to be against activision?

[Rybakov]

good read and i agree completely with this dude...it is only a matter of time before call of duty falls and i think this year will get the ball rolling on that once all the AAA games hit and you see new engines then look at call of duty and see call of duty 4 once again reskined and named....it really dose suck that they dont think about long term effects of just firing people, they do have families, bills, and most likely student loans to pay (if they havent covered those already) and with this economy even with they money they get its still not enough for them....this world is coming to a cold halt and its gonna be sad when that happens

[Excalibur]

Don’t take this the wrong way because I’m NOT even remotely defending Activision for the EVIL empire we all know it all is but the same can be said of about 99% of all the business today.
I’m in the telecommunications industry (not to be confused with telemarketing) and the same things this guy is saying, I could almost say verbatim.

Business today are in it for the cheap product, lack of consumer interest and the quick buck, that’s it.
If you think any differently you’re just fooling yourself.

[BShea]

Oh and I agree entirely. I would even go as far to say that I understand people when they say "What do you expect from Activision? They're a business." This piece was more meant to show the other side of the news story: the human aspect. We always hear about the franchises that are gone because of these lay-offs, but the employees and talent that is lost paints a far grimmer image for the industry as a whole.

[gamingdroid]

This is how most large business are run though and for the most part, people are replaceable especially in this economy.

The flip side of course is your employee can leave at any time as well. People jump ship every 2-3 years to somewhere else to make more money. Happens in the tech industry all the time so you can't really blame large corporations disinterest in investing in you.

The simple fact is, if everyone was paid equally for their work we would all be living in misery for two reasons:

a) we will have a workforce with no motivation to do anything

b) if resources was equally spread out to everyone, we would all get a very small pie (think of it as human work is a resource that is limited and quantified, then you realize it is limited and the only reason you can afford your products in-store is because somebody else was willing to work for cheaper manufacturing it!)

It's sad, but the way it really is. Imagine if a fastfood employee was paid as much as an engineer. I betcha a whole lot less people would buy the hamburger!

[MasterD919]

This is what corporations do...This isn't just the video game industry doing these tactics.

Corporations will do whatever they want to survive, regardless of those who got them to where they are today.

And of course they'll say "its just business..." but its really greed.