What if Destiny was $60 with 2 FREE expansions? (Destiny)

by General Vagueness , The Vault of Sass, Monday, July 14, 2014, 19:50 (3791 days ago) @ Cody Miller

Barring the fact that gamedev has changed over 40 years ( I mean, even modern indie dev looks dramatically different than the one man productions of yestyear) the idea that you can't take large chunks of content from pre production to ship in a couple months time while still finishing the rest of the game seems like a pretty well established fact.

And why do they insist folks keep working during that time? It's because of the backwards and inefficient way that game studios are managed. If it worked like the film industry, where you are hired, do your work, then leave when your work is done, then you wouldn't have artists and programmers sitting idle getting paid for nothing, thus requiring they work on content that can't be shipped with the game.

Throw in unions to cover healthcare, retirement, working conditions, and overtime.

One of these days the concept of a game development studio where you have permanent staff will be a thing of the past. Ken Levine will just hire people to make his game on a per project basis.

That... seems like a bit much. Is that really how it works with movies? I heard about companies forming and disbanding a lot, but no permanent employees anywhere? That seems unlikely, surely the larger companies have permanent employees-- and yes, I mean besides CEOs and managers. Regardless, it doesn't address other creative industries (which I would go into more detail about, but frankly I don't understand the industry side that well).
That's not to say I'm not in favor of unions or rules protecting retirement, working conditions, and all that, game developers deserve to have their rights and interests represented and protected like other workers in the free world, I'm just talking about the turnover (if that's the right term).