Video-Game Publishers Outsource Development 786
randomErr writes "According to a San Jose Mercury News article reprinted at the Miami Herald: 'Mark Vange is in the vanguard of globalizing the video-game industry. He employs 30 game developers in St. Petersburg, Russia, who have worked on everything from flight simulators to dragon-fighting games. 'We can get the work done for half the cost that it takes in the U.S.,' said Vange, president of Ketsujin Studios. Similar outsourcing of video-game production is being done in places like China, India, Vietnam and parts of Eastern Europe. California game developers, who are the creative force behind a $10 billion industry in the U.S. market, view the trend with a combination of fear and anticipation'."
Here we go... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Here we go... (Score:3, Funny)
In Soviet Russia, of course!
Re:Here we go... (Score:3, Interesting)
which was displayed over Ground Zero.
http://www.yakov.com [yakov.com]
Re:My Game Plan (Score:3, Insightful)
2004 - 50%
2010 - 60%
2015 - 85%
2020 - 90%
2050 - 90%"
Yeah, I play Master of Orion too. Seriously this will never fly. Despite the USA's firepower, 300 million pissed off people is way too many to handle.
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Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Awesome! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Interesting)
No, moron. That's a symptom of the economy being shitty, not the REASON the economy is shitty. Companies are losing money so in order to cut costs they ship work overseas. You losing your job is yet another symptom.
Yeah it has nothing to do with the massive amounts of unemployment caused by outsourcing and the general lack in confidence that the American middle class has these days.
Pretty much. People that are in industries that can easily be replaced by cheaper foreign labor need to start finding something else to do.
I'll see if you are still so detached and clinical about it when you are in the process of applying for your unemployment extension or filing bankruptcy.
Already been there. Two years ago I lost my job when the company I worked for was sold to a competing manufacturer. Instead of whining to the unemployment office, I started working freelance (I'm a guitar tech, BTW) and haven't needed to do anything else. If suddenly everyone stopped buying and playing guitars and nobody was getting repairs done instead of bitching about it I'd find something else to do. It's quite simple. Work or die. Paint yourself into a corner and you're fucked. I have enough experience in several different areas that I'm qualified for several types of jobs instead of just being able to do one thing.
Re:Awesome! (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re:Awesome! (Score:3, Insightful)
If the employers in the US want to take actions that would put everyone out of work, they HAVE to be stopped. That's all there is to it. The only point up for debat
Re:Awesome! (Score:4, Insightful)
Why not outsource the higher level jobs? Because those people NEED TO BE HERE. Game companies might farm out the low-level artwork jobs and stupid coding tasks to some dude in India, but they still need their designer here. They still need the main coders here. IT companies might outsource call center people but they sure as hell aren't going to outsource their service people, or their own sysadmins. Do you think they're going to fly them in from Russia every time something goes wrong?
What incentives are there to not outsource? None. None at all. Then again, what incentives are there to have run a business in this country PERIOD? Absolutely none. Yet people do it all the time.
What's going to happen when it's accepted that outsourcing is good for profits? Low-level shit jobs will move overseas. Low-level shit job workers in this country will have to find other avenues of revenue. I suggest you look up the Industrial Revolution and see the impact it had on the workers then.
Re:Awesome! (Score:3, Insightful)
Really? Why? Is lead programmer something Indians are incapable
Feed the horse an increasing ratio of sawdust... (Score:5, Insightful)
With outsourcing trends as they are, we are rather likely to get what Neal Stephenson describes in Snow Crash as an globally-distributed layer of what a Pakistani bricklayer would call prosperity. Unfortunately for us in the US, *we* will call it "abject poverty".
Re:Feed the horse an increasing ratio of sawdust.. (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, yes we are [census.gov].
Re:Shoot the damn horse. (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, to keep my job without taking another position in the company I had to move across the country, to an area where cost of living is significantly lower (then again, the only way I could've moved to a place that had a higher cost of living would've been a move to Silicon Valley or New York City). It's been a little rough, but overall it's cheaper to live out here and I've seen a significant increase in pay in the last 2 years (part of it an incentive for moving).
Since I moved to the east coast, I've had far more work than I ever had on the west coast. If I had the power to do so, I'd probably hire two more people just to get it finished in a reasonable time frame and to help with maintenance. Unfortunately, they don't want to do that, because they only see the work that's currently slated to be done, not the work that may be coming down the road, or the other work that needs to be done and is being neglected.
As for the US remaining the economic leader or not, I think it depends on where things go from here. Some people think that getting things "back on top" will simply require the "next new thing", but I think the dot.com crap can actually work for the economy if they can use it intelligently. You don't invest millions of dollars into a company with no business plan just because 100 other companies have made money for stock-holders the same way. Inflated stock with no underlying value in the company is exactly what it sounds like, and someone's going to get burned on it somewhere (otherwise, you won't have anyone to sell your stock to and it will be you that gets burned). Now everyone's got a web site and you can do more and more of your business online, or your purchases from home, or anything else you might do that involves business.
As with every new technology, though, we tend to make things easier to the point where low-skilled labor can take over the jobs that used to be high-tech and correspondingly high-paying. Even in the case where truly high-tech jobs are going outside the US, like the story this is all attached to, it's still a very limited export, as there are only so many groups in this world that are well enough known for their capabilities for any publisher to go to them to get work done. id Software has certainly been responsible for development work on more games than these guys in Russia are likely to have put their hands into, but you can't go to id Software and say "build me MS Flight Simulator 2010 and I'll give you $1M". They just won't do it. There are a handful of development companies in the US that work that way, most of them are not well known, and most of them are already owned by one or another of the publishers.
Call-centers in India are outsourcing real jobs from the US, real jobs that pay US employees $5-15/hour, depending on the type of work and the level at which they sit in the call hierarchy. Most of the people I know that have done that kind of work would rather do anything else, and turnover rates are extremely high (meaning most of them do find something else to do). Out-sourced developing is going to remain on a limited basis until development houses are built around the world specifically for this purpose. In order for an American company (or companies) to compete with that, you'd have to have a development house built with a focus on code reuse and willingness to build just about anything for a small price, with reliable schedules (something most developers can't do).
Finally, US unemp
Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Interesting)
But seriously, what do you expect a single game company to do about this? Stand up and be the good guys? Compete with other companies with much lower labor costs? Save the world?
The problem is here to stay; no question about it. Unfortunately, I don't believe this is a problem that the free market will solve without first bleeding the American and European middle classes to the brink of survival. I don't claim to have "the right" solution, but one solution is an export tarrif on wages. Let the Russians develop Russian software, let the Americans develop American software.
Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Insightful)
At which point America will become the outsourcing destination of choice for all those companies trying to make luxury products for the Indian and Chinese markets. Nothing like a little cheap American labor to help undercut the competition in all those high-cost-of-living places like Bangalore and Beijing...
Re:Awesome! (Score:3, Interesting)
That giant sucking sound is all the jobs going to...India...Russia...everywhere else..
People laughed at him...but I still like the idea of a businessman running the country, rather than a politician.
Re:Awesome! (Score:4, Informative)
I presume then that you will be voting for George W. Bush, the first president with an MBA (Harvard, 1975).
Re:Awesome! (Score:3, Insightful)
Protectionism won't work. All the wishful thinking in the world won't change the current economic reality. If US companies are prevented from outsourcing to take advantage of cheap labor then companies that can take advantage of that cheap labor will grow up outside the US. Those companies will, unless blocked from US markets, undercut the US competition, which will eventually go out of business. If the outside competitors are blocked fro
Re:Awesome! (Score:3, Insightful)
They're not shooting themselves in the foot (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea that capitalists can't abandon America is actually part of their rhetoric. It's one of the arguments they like to bring up whenever anyone talks about nasty stuff like tariffs and maybe baning some of those Walmart imports from some of the more brutal regimes. "We can't leave, we need America, we need it's people". Don't be fooled. They can leave and they don't need you.
You just move the "middle"... (Score:3, Funny)
Simple economics (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not altruistic if someone outcompetes you for a job.
Then why don't they make games for themselves? Why does everyone want in on the American economy?
First, many great games are created by foreign developers. Second, there is no such thing as an "American" economy. There is only a world economy.
That's why this "chicken little" crap doesn't make sense
Re:Awesome! (Score:2)
That's the deal. Our economy depends on money moving around. Certainly doesn't help if the money moves overseas OUT of the economy.
Re:Awesome! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Awesome! (Score:2, Interesting)
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Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Insightful)
If you imagine a world with free electricity due to fusion power, and sufficiently advanced robotics such that providing a basic standard of living for everyone isn't too expensive, communism sounds pretty reasonable. So just sit back, wait for your robotic butler to be invented, and look forward to the revolution.
Re:Awesome! (Score:2)
And an excuse for me to become one of the fat shareholders!
Re:Awesome! (Score:2, Troll)
Solution...become a shareholder.
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Re:Awesome! (Score:4, Interesting)
Seeing this reminded me of a brilliant monologue from the film Network [imdb.com], which will be thirty years old before too long.
In this scene, Howard Beale, an insane TV news anchor, is being given a dressing down by the president of the network for exhorting viewers on the air to stop an important business deal. Ask yourself if this is the kind of world you want to live in.
See this movie. It is at least as quotable as anything by Quentin Tarantino. Find it, rent it, watch it. Apart from the fashions and faded film stock, you'd swear this film was made last month.
Schwab
Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Insightful)
'not even half joking...
Mark
Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Insightful)
It was a tolerable to export no brainer manufacturing to China but when they started exporting skill jobs, capital and intellectual property they signed their own death warrant. In industry after industry a critical mass of capital, intellectual property and expertise will develop in these outsourcing hotspots. When it does they will reach a point they don't need the obnoxius executives in the U.S. who are taking the lion's share of the wealth. They will, and in some cases already have, take all the expertise, talent, market insight and knowledge they've developed, start their own companies and bury their former American benefactors.
A key problem with American business is its become incredibly short sighted and is so fixated on quarterly results it simply isn't looking at the long view. They saw this huge boon in their bottomlines with cheap labor but they failed to realize in another decade or two executive in China will be calling the shots and they to will be expendable. Of course American execs, not being entirely stupid, are countering by wholesale looting of their companies now so they and their families will have all the money they need by the time their companies and the U.S. economy collapses. Hopefully they are also smart enough to park their wealth in something besides U.S. dollars. Warrent Buffet, one of the smartest business men in the world is betting heavily against the U.S.dollar with Berkshire Hathaway. He took a look at the half trillion dollar budget deficit and the half trillion dollar trade deficit and quickly realized the U.S. is currently being run by retarded chimps.
America had some huge advantages after World War II since it came out of that war unscathed versus the rest of the world, and in fact had been transformed in to an engineer rich, manufacturing dynamo by the war. The GI bill further pushed a well educated population that did lead the world. That huge advantage, and the prosperity it engendered, unfortunately corrupted America to the point it simply isn't globally competitive any more. The rest of the world meahwhile has recovered from the ravages of World War II and the Cold War, is hungry and is now very well educated compared to the U.S.
Add in to this the fact the U.S. government is now completely corrupted. Just look at the insanity, bribery and fraud perpetrated in last years Medicare bill. We are reaching the point the drug and healthcare industries have effectively purchased the government in the U.S. and health costs would drive a dagger in to American competitiveness if cheap overseas labor didn't. Health care and pharmacueticals appear poised to be among the few industries in the U.S. that will prosper in coming years.
Its unlikely the U.S. will pull out of its competitive tail spin without massive improvements in education, massive health care reform, and a complete gutting of our corrupted governemnt which is spending money like a drunk sailor. Unfortunately we've found a flaw in our two party system in that both the Democrats and Republicans are equally corrupt, and nearly indistinguishable from one other so we can't fix out government through the ballot box. If the U.S. doesn't get a cadre of smart people in power, with a mandate for reform we are doomed, and that isn't going to happen in this years election. Both main party presidential candidates are equally bad, so much so I would really rather take a chance on Nader though he doesn't really have the breadth and sobriety needed to really govern.
Re:Awesome! (Score:2, Insightful)
Economics 101 (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, that isn't how the economy works.
When you are producing a commodity product, like lumber, coal, or oil, then competition drives the price of your product down to the average total cost of producing that product. In theory, in a commodity market the profit margins are enough by the end of the year to leave each firm in the industry with exactly zero profit. If games were a commodity, reducing either the variable costs or the fixed costs would result in a reduction in price.
Games, however, are not commodities. In fact, they are much closer to a monopoly market. When a company makes a game, no other company can produce that same game. If I want to purchase Diablo II, I have to pay Blizzard exactly how much they are asking - no one else can provide that product.
I can purchase Fallout 2 instead, and there is some price sensitivity there. However, I would not necessarily purchase Fallout 2 over Diablo if Fallout was $10 less. Game companies run the demand curve, and price their games accordingly - $50.
In general, when you are the sole provider of a product you should charge as much as necessary to maximize the equation:
Profit = (Price - Variable Cost) * Quantity.
Quantity = Func(Price)
Changing the cost of producing the game has no effect on the Variable Cost or the Quantity, and therefore should have no effect on the price you pay for the game.
Re:Economics 101 (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually that would be the supply curve.
And wow, people are still surprised a company would make the rational choice to use cheaper labor that is readily available? Shocking!
I don't see any video game companies making unusually high (above market) profits, this is just competition. If anything, it means more money available to develop more games, which is (more shock coming) good for the consumer.
Re:Economics 101 (Score:3, Insightful)
Dead wrong. Under "Communism" (very loosely defined), Soviet Russia and China have both brought literacy, crime control, and medical care to about 2 billion people. Under "Socialist Democracy" European nations, India, and Canada have brought the same to another billion people. With the collapse of Soviet Russia, the Eastern Bloc nations have had serious increases in infant mortalit
Re:Economics 101 (Score:3, Insightful)
Two, I'm not going to get into yet another long drawn out flamefest with someone who isn't likely to have his mind changed no matter what is said. But you've obviously given this topic some thought so what the heck. My primary problem is that you are distorting my original statement assuming I equate capitalism with the United States (which is less true each passing year), and proceed to compare it to c
Re:Economics 101 (Score:3, Interesting)
Which jobs should be kept here? Manufacturing hardware that let's American consumers like you buy a PC for less than a 1000$? Or is it patriotism only when YOUR job is being protected?
And remember (Score:3, Insightful)
I love it when people claim 'The US has an unemployment rate that's the envy of the world.' No we don't. The rest of the world just reports it in an honest manner.
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Re:Awesome! (Score:2)
It doesn't add up - when a company oursources they never lower prices they just make more profits. GO USA...
Re:cause != effect (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't some people do it because they enjoy it?
Re:cause != effect (Score:3, Funny)
Sim City (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sim City (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sim City (Score:2)
Re:Sim City (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, because this is an excellent idea (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Yeah, because this is an excellent idea (Score:2)
Re:Yeah, because this is an excellent idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, because this is an excellent idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Even the Simpson's..... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Even the Simpson's..... (Score:2)
Re:Even the Simpson's..... (Score:5, Informative)
Whose job is it to set up all the timing, thumbnails, and notes so the overseas animator doesn't screw up? Layout artists and timers, working here in the US. Although they succeeded in exporting the actual animation jobs, they made the remaining jobs here much more valuable. There's not too much room for screwing up when getting a reshoot of a bad scene takes weeks - hence, timing* is a very important position.
*timing is literally someone timing out actions with a stopwatch, notating them on an exposure sheet to dictate precisely how, when, and where keyframes and inbetweens fall. The timer has the most control over how a show looks in terms of the actual animation.
Re:Even the Simpson's..... (Score:5, Interesting)
First is the script. They call the actors in and record the audio. Then come what are known as storyboards. For the storyboard, the script is broken down into scenes with specific backgrounds and settings. These are drawn out on notecard-sized slots, and are essentially the whole episode, in thumbnail roughs. These storyboards are then refined into what are known as layouts. Layouts are one step removed from the final background, and have all the info the background artist needs to draw/paint the background, done at full size, minus the coloring. With the layout are basic starting key poses, which are drawings at full size that show which characters start off where, and in what pose, etc.
Along with the layouts and basic key poses (and model sheets, don't forget the model sheets) are the exposure sheets. Exposure sheets for TV animation differ greatly from feature animation - TV animation has to pack a lot more info into the X-sheet because the work is being done overseas (and because the animator probably doesn't speak English, or doesn't speak it well.) The foreign animator must not only do inbetweens but key frames as well. Very often on the x-sheets for TV animation, the timer draws dozens of thumbnail sketches describing the arc of movement, poses, etc. Although these are not full-size key poses, they are used as the definitive guide as to how the overseas animator should be drawing, posing, and timing key poses and the inbetweens.
So, essentially, the entire scene is planned and laid out here in the states, the overseas animator/bg artists get layouts and model sheets that tell them how things look, and the exposure sheets and thumbnail notes dictate how the characters move. Is there any creativity left to the overseas animator? We hope not (I'm only partially joking here) - otherwise we might just be looking at a reshoot (overseas studios are actually picked based on whether they "get" a particular style of animation or not. For example, Disney TV animation tends to be a bit more "cushioned", and picking a studio that's used to doing animation that way would make the Simpsons look like they're moving way too much.)
I'm putting a big emphasis on timing because for US TV animation, timing is the road to being a director, and it's usually the closest thing to actually animating that you're going to get working in TV animation in the US.
All Your Base (Score:2, Funny)
Moving to Russia and... (Score:2)
GJC
Good luck... (Score:2, Insightful)
Need Constitutional Amendment on Economic Treason (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Need Constitutional Amendment on Economic Treas (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Need Constitutional Amendment on Economic Treas (Score:3, Interesting)
Nonsense. You need to read some first year economics. Just to help you, try the sections on Comparative and Absolute Advantages.
Also, read the section on Protectionism. Why, because the next logical step in your statement is to propose subsidies to American developers and restrict imports from overseas (through quotas, traiffs and embargoes), read up on them. You'll learn that protectionism increases the cost of living while preventing a short term increase in unemployment or a financial loss to some o
Bad idea for several reasons (Score:2, Informative)
2)Work ethic. Missed deadlines, shoddy work etc are mentioned in the article. What isn't mentioned is the shit approach to aftersales-Eastern European games are notorious for never being patched.
Essentially, the only real part that can be ou
Nothing new (Score:2, Redundant)
Um...since when did "video games from Russia" become a new thing? Tetris anyone?(although I seem to recall the original programmer got screwed somehow out of most of the profits).
And Asia? Has anyone forgotten that true jem, "all your base are belong to us"?
Oh, and since nobody else has said it, I might as well get it over with:
"In Soviet Russia, video game PLAYS YOU!"
Good and bad? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Good and bad? (Score:2)
here's an idea (Score:2, Insightful)
At the least, put a HIGH tariff on thier products - the same way we currently do with imported steel.
If the company isn't willing to give back to the country that allows it's existence, the country should cease to allow it's existence.
Unfortunately, this'll never happen with our current gov't.
half the cost (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, let's just hope that Vange gets paid half of what is normal in the U.S. and the price for the games are half as much so that the unemployed, underemployed, and those working a minimum wage to compete with Russia can afford the games.
Unless, of course, the primary market for these games is Russia.
I don't really see outsourcing as such a big deal. I just don't understand why some CEOs get paid so much money to supervise a workforce halfway across the world for a company that is officially located in a third world country. It really seems the company could increase shareholder values by moving the CxO to those cheaper countries as well.
Well! (Score:5, Funny)
Westwood / EA (Score:3, Interesting)
Outsourcing is exported inflation. (Score:5, Insightful)
Next to be outsourced... (Score:4, Funny)
I don't see what the big deal is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Does anybody have a fucking clue about what country the words 'Nintendo' or 'Sega' comes from? Can you guess where the international headquarters for Sony is located?
Truth is that the video game industry has never been primarily American. It's always been international.
Everyone needs to quit bitching. Nothing to see here, move along, goddammit.
Re:I don't see what the big deal is... (Score:3, Interesting)
Heh, you're slightly glossing over the fact that Sega was founded by an American (something most Japanese are completely unaware of). I agree wholeheartedly with what you're saying though.
In Soviet Russia (Score:3, Funny)
The irony, of course.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The irony, of course.... (Score:4, Funny)
Not the last thing to happen in PC gaming. (Score:3, Insightful)
The gaming industry is one that can get away pretty easyly with a high throughput of titles, because gamers always want the new and shiny with more polygons.
I expect the gaming industry to take a hit as soon as OSS gaming engines and tools like crystal space or Blender get a grip. We'll have games for free, the mod community utilizing them (they work for free allready) and the money will be made in providing not a game but the service around it: Servers, special distributions (just like Linux), gaming leagues, high quality mods, automatic online updates - think 'Loki Linux Installer' which makes maintaining UT under Linux easyer thatn under Windows - and other stuff like that.
Closed Source Games are going to be the last thing to experience the OSS impact, but they're going to feel it nonetheless.
In fact, this outsourcing thing is a shure sigh for a local industry to get moving into service rather than pushing for cheaper production. No way can anyone in Europe or the US outprogramm a slavic, indian or far-east programmer for the same amount of money. As soon as people hereabouts will get that, the pain will stop.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Capitalism reers its ugly head. (Score:3, Insightful)
So why don't you move to Russia? Ok, maybe that's a little extreme. But you could at least try getting the hell out of SoCal. I just moved out of LA last year. My salary dropped by more than 50%, but my standard of living has actually gone up a little. Not to mention that my quality of life is definitely higher, and my blood pressure is probably much lower now that I'm not having to deal the parking lot known
Re:Capitalism reers its ugly head. (Score:2)
Re:Capitalism reers its ugly head. (Score:2)
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Re:Capitalism reers its ugly head. (Score:2)
You are right, but harsh and unsympathetic to those that have lost their livelihood despite significant investments in their education.
Having said that, I'm not sure that I'll shed a tear when some of the other middle-class jobs outside of the tech industry move overseas too...
Re:Capitalism reers its ugly head. (Score:2, Interesting)
If I step out of my situation, I agree with you completely. If I step back in my situation, I say that how outsourcing has happened was just not acceptable. It sure feels to me like my entire career was gutted in just a few months. I'm sure may others feel the same way.
If you want to destroy an entire profession in your country, that's fine
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Capitalism reers its ugly head. (Score:3, Interesting)
Step 2: wait one year.
Step 3: While waiting one year, find a relative who will let you live on their property for about two years.
Step 4: file bankruptcy.
Step 5: live in your house without a mortgage for 5-10 months while they foreclose, save money.
Step 6: move in with the relatives, have no bills, save all your money, pay cash for a place to live.
Re:Capitalism reers its ugly head. (Score:3, Interesting)
You know what the funny part is, I had to goto college to be a programmer because nobody in the states will hire you without a degree, but how many of these Russians have degrees comparable to an American education? I'm not saying they're not good programmers, they probably are.
Re:Easy workaround (Score:2)
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Re:Face Facts (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Bill Lumbergh (Score:3, Funny)