Figured I’d start trying to keep this all in one place. Keep in mind these are just the ones I can find news stories for. I know for a fact of other studios losing folks but since I don’t have a source to quote, I’m not adding to the list. Some line items aren’t particularly clear about a number of layoffs, but I will make an educated guess when I sum at the bottom.

Updated: 2/13/09

My official guess at this time is 5,700 or enough to fill about 38 Boeing 737 airliners.

Short notes for a Thursday morning:

• My CBS Evening News spot has been moved tentatively to Friday, I’ve heard. I guess the Congress signing a massive pork-tastic spending bill was a more important story. Yeah, spending $2 billion on national parks is really going to stimulate the economy. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
• I’m blown away by the animation, environments and characters in Prince of Persia. I was about to complain that no one is giving them any credit, then I looked at the AIAS nominations and the game is nominated in Art Direction, Animation and Adventure Game. Whoops. I’m really enjoying the game, but it has some serious QA issues. Still probably the best in the series, though.
• I updated the “About Me” page to better reflect my current situation.
• Even after having the greatest celebrity cast of all time, Red Alert 3 ups the ante by adding Malcolm McDowell and the “Nature Boy” Ric Flair to the cast for the expansion. And I still won’t buy the game because I really don’t care for bread and butter RTSs. How much did all these celebrities cost? Red Alert can’t exactly be tearing up the sales charts, can it?
• Yinzer point. If you are going to have a food-off between Pittsburgh and Phoenix, then maybe you should have a Pittsburgher submit the Pittsburgh choices and a Phoenix….er Phoenixite? Phoenixian? submit for the Cards. While the Primanti Sandwich is often featured due to it’s uniqueness, I think most Pittsburgher’s would call it overrated. Vincent’s Pizza is an inspired pick, although burgh snobs like to call Mineo’s tops. I personally give the nod to Vincent’s. They wrap the Pizza in butcher’s paper instead of boxing it. How blue collar is that? But not going to The O for the hot dog is silly. And I don’t even drink beer, but a beer with a damn chili pepper in it is just a stupid and nasty idea. Where’s the Arizona equivalent of Heinz Ketchup, Pierogies or O Fries?
• Good old Tom Chick explains why MMOs are crap. MMOs don’t have to be crap, but his five reasons are easily on my top fifteen or so reasons why I hardly ever play MMOs. I’d add to the list the following (with the caveat that there are some MMOs that avoid these issues):

1. Required time investment: This ties into Chick’s complaints that he can’t play with his buddies unless he is the same level and his complaint regarding subscription fees. I’ve seen how WoW ruins lives. And for what? So that you can have a Lvl MAX_LEVEL? I don’t want to have to “pay my dues” to get into the meat of a game. This counts double on Korean MMOs where if you don’t live in the game, you can’t even play the game. How hard is it for other MMOs to get off the ground when they know people won’t quit World of Warcraft for fear of being left behind? Why can I play Left 4 Dead online with people of uneven experience and have a great time but I can’t on a stat-based MMO?
2. Ridiculous patois:  I had to read the “Aggro” paragraph in the linked article three times before I understood what was being said. Aggro, mezzer, dps, tank, gimped, buff, nerfed, pally, gank… speak English. The developer can’t regulate this directly, so I don’t particularly have a solution without going all word police like the French.
3. Reliance on Tolkien or Star Wars: Everquest, World of Warcraft, Ultima Online, Meridian 59, Warhammer, LoTR Online (obviously), The Old Republic (obviously), Guild Wars, Final Fantasy XI, even MapleStory. And you thought the WW2 setting was tired! Puzzle Pirates dodged this bullet pretty well, so did City of Heroes. What else? Goal Line Blitz doesn’t count. Of course, non-MMO RPGs have this disease just as bad. Here’s a suggestion: one based on the American Old West. Here’s another: a Ghostbusters MMO. Or even put the Tolkien archetypes in a new setting. How about the Great Depression?
4. Skinner-esque reward structure: Grind grind grind. Oh, look a food pellet. Grind grind grind. Oh, what fun. How about some puzzles? Or some social objectives? Warhammer’s public quests have the right idea, but all the public quests I took part in were just aggregations of personal quests. Instead of you killing four rats, there were ten people killing forty rats together. It’s a start, I suppose.
5. Having to buy the box AND the subscription: My boss made me try Warhammer Online a few months ago. There was no “demo” per se. I had to buy a box just to check out the game. Yes, I got a “free” month with it, but I didn’t end up caring for the game. Console games let me try before I buy with downloadable demos in many cases, but many MMOs don’t. Let me download the free trial and then if I want to extend, add the price of the box to my first month’s payment and mail it to me.
6. Thirteen year olds. I’d love for an MMO to have a server where you have to be over the age of 21 and where acting like a dick is a bannable offense. Sure you will get a lot of false positives, but those who remain will engage in a civil and helpful gaming experience. Make it something that one can earn, a platinum club.

Maybe the years at EA have dulled my nerd rage receptors, but I do not understand the universal outrage over the “Time is Money” downloadable unlock for Skate 2. For those unaware, one can buy the $5 pack which unlocks all locations, skaters and gear which can be earned through the career mode.

For those folks who don’t want to spend 30+ hours on the game, but want to see all their purchase has to offer, they pay a premium and can enjoy the game at their leisure sans grind (Grind meaning repetition for advancement, not sliding on a rail). For those who want to run through the game the old-fashioned way, that path is available and free. Their game is completely unchanged. In fact, the free way will be more rewarding because they will be gaining skills via the challenge curve that the designers intended rather than jumping around all willy-nilly.

When did selling something that gives value without causing any externalities become an evil? This isn’t ZT Online where he who has the most money wins; it is simple market segmentation. It isn’t evil that the Post Office charges more for two day shipping than for first class, is it? After all, it is the same mail carriers bringing the package to the door, right?

This isn’t even a case of nickel-and-diming consumers, where one thinks that they get the full package at a $60 price point, but then realizes that they can’t get the full experience unless they pay $2 here or $5 there. The $60 game contains everything. Why not be mad at Bethesda for the Broken Steel expansion to Fallout 3? You mean we have to pay to get the rest of the story? Revolting!

Or is it just that consumers look at the cost of producing something as the price that they should pay? Since Skate 2 sans Time is Money costs the same (within a small margin) as Skate 2 with the DLC to produce, does that mean to the horde that they should be valued the same at market? Is that where the disconnect occurs?

Seems to be.

To add to the wonderful exposure from the Orlando Sentinel and WDBO, I just finished an interview this morning on-camera with the CBS Evening News (the national one with Katie Couric). They are doing a story on how the economy is affecting those in diverse fields. My girlfriend says I did great, but I felt very self-conscious.

Anyway, it is supposed to air this Wednesday during the primetime edition at 8, but it may be bumped off. I’ll update this post when I know more. Very exciting, no? I’d just rather have been interviewed about doing something awesome rather than being a chump who was laid off.

Back to looking for a job!

UPDATE: Segment moved to Friday at 6:30pm.

I’m wrapping up Fallout 3 and have been thinking a lot about it. It’s not my Game of the Year and I did not find it as captivating as Oblivion, but I did enjoy it thoroughly for about forty hours. The fact that I did actually play it for forty hours should be testament to that. Anybody who has talked about the nuts and bolts of design with me knows that I’m a kool-aid drinker of the MDA framework. And I think this will help describe where I think the game left me hanging.

When you choose a setting of a post-apocalyptic nature, scavenging/collecting seems to be a natural play aesthetic to work towards. Bethesda even embraced this play type in Oblivion with their Thieves Guild to great effect, weaving it into the narrative.

Fallout presents the following mechanics:

1. Money is necessary to buy equipment needed for the rest of the game.
2. There are many items in the world which have value.
3. You can steal about any item in the game that isn’t tied down.
4. There are many merchants in the game who will trade scavenged items for money and goods.
5. You have a weight limit of items you can carry, but you can carry a large amount of items.
6. Money and other key items have no weight.
7. You can only safely steal when you are not being watched.
8. You lose karma when stealing as opposed to simply scavenging from dead bodies. The karma hit is small.

The first point is the most important to notice. Where in Oblivion, there were numerous quests that give money and loot, this is less-so in Fallout. Thus, these mechanics lead to a dynamic where every player is constantly looting the world for whatever they can find, carrying to the maximum weight limit, selling and repeating. Thanks to points seven & eight, there is little recourse to the character for acting in this way. Point six is more troublesome.

Now, here’s the rub. Because this dynamic system is necessary, it creates a certain kind of economy for every player. The cost of salvaging goods is low: it takes very little labor to steal, it takes very little labor to sell, the fruit is low hanging and abundant. But the reward for salvaging goods is quite high: simply completing quests and visiting dungeons for a few hours gives you the resources to buy anything in the game. In a functioning economy, either the cost for salvaging the goods would go up or the supply of salvageable goods would go down.

It’s quite possible that the unique skill the player possesses of being able to kick ass with ease allows for an economic advantage over everyone else in the Wasteland. As this may be, it still allows the player to be the richest person in the world using only a few game-days work.

This system existed to an extent in Oblivion, yet the addition of one mechanic changed the entire dynamic system: stolen goods must be sold to fences. This simple mechanic drastically increased the cost of doing business as not only did it decrease the margins for stealing goods, but it decreased the availability of the player’s inventory for useless items unless they were planning on passing near a fence.

What happened in Fallout for me was that the aesthetic of living a scrapping scavenger’s life was valid until I had about 4000 caps, at which time I had the capital to buy whatever I wanted. After that, the aesthetic (which was supported by the setting strongly) was ruined.

There is no easy solution to the dynamic imbalance, but there are many jumping off points which could (and may have! Don’t assume!) been playtested:

• Give money weight. This may cause a ceiling in scavenging where the player has to balance between weight dedicated to items used for survival and those used for profit.
• Make crucial items more expensive. I find it hard to believe that ammo and scrap metal are roughly the same value in a dangerous post-apocalyptic society. Why ammo itself isn’t the de facto currency, I imagine is more of a implementation issue. If I had to spend my entire haul to prepare for my next adventure, I wouldn’t be flush with cash.
• Give ammo and stimpak’s weight. To that end, I found myself trading junk for stimpaks when the merchant ran out of money because I could carry an infinite amount of them and they were always useful.
• Make leveling cost money. Set up “master trainers” as they were in Oblivion, but give them a high price to teach your character the next level’s perks.

Scavenging isn’t the end-all play style in Fallout, but it seems with the setting that it would be a reasonable choice.