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Video-Game Publishers Outsource Development
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'."
Standby for a flood of "In Soviet Russia" jokes in 3....2....1....
<Sarcasm>This is great! No really -- now my video games won't cost $50+ each.
What? You mean the price won't go down? But we are saving so much money on the labor -- where is all that extra cash going?</Sarcasm>
Sarcasm aside I think those three sentences pretty much sum up my feelings (and most other /.'ers?) on all types of outsourcing (techie or otherwise). It's an excuse to pad the pockets of the fat shareholders at the expense of the middle class.
Too bad smarter people then me have looked at it and can't come up with a solution. I've said this before but I'll say it again: If this trend towards globalization continues I fear we may wind up proving poor old Karl Marx correct. It's really a crying shame too because capitalism actually does drive innovation. Too bad it also drives greed.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I seem to recall that Sim City was ported to the Macintosh by a group in Russia and that a significant amount of the original programming was outsourced to Russia as well? Given that the sim was incredibly slow on a Pentium 3 I had and not that much faster on an old G4, I wondered about the "cleanliness" of the code that went into the sim. There certainly is a huge pool of programming talent in Russia (at least in Kiev that I know of where estimates range from 10-16% of the populace having CS skills), so perhaps the sim code was simply so big that it resulted in the slow performance?
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Games outsourced to Russia are known for their quality
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Yeah because it has nothing at all to do with cost of living (why don't you try living in Southern California on the salary that these folks in Russia are getting) or corporate greed. No it's all the fault of those fat overpaid American bastards.
Hey, see my other post. If this is going to save the industry so much money when is the price of my games going to drop?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Yup... the Simpson's - perhaps the most biting commentary on American life - now has credits for offshore production. From the name of the manager it's likely India or Malaysia. The voices are still American but the graphics are probably done in a country where the sarcasm will not likely be noticed as sarcasm. Nothing is sacred and I'm seriously reconsidering my Simpson's habit.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
I wonder how "All your base are belong to us" translates from Russian?
The problem with such an approach is that cultural differences will likely cause numerous rifts between the marketability of a game and its ultimate appeal. Not only is guy outsourcing game programmers, but he's also outsourcing game designers, which usually has disastrous results. Games are highly subjective, and you can't have one part of the world design a game for another part of the world and expect it do well with no exceptions. Examples abound. At least 80% of all Japanese video games never make it stateside. Most every FPS in existence has little to no appeal in any part of Asia. The most popular MMO in the world, Lineage (soon to be surpassed by its sequel), is virtually unknown in the western hemisphere. Ad infinitum. These methods to save a quick buck rarely pan out in the end, though they look good on paper.
~Tirinal
What we need is a constitutional amendment defining economic treason as a high crime. Economic treason might be defined as sending "high value" work to a location where wages are substantially lower than Americans would earn.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
1)Cultural differences. A culture founded on Confuscian ideals has few reference points with one founded on Hellenistic ones, for example. This pretty much ensures you can't outsource design. It also introduces communication difficulties between designers and coders.
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 outsourced well is the art. This has already been going on for years, and it's only a logical step now to use the company in Saigon rather than the one in London-right up till Kinetix questions how the people you hired could afford the site licenses.
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I suppose it can be good and bad. One of the good things would be cutting development costs, and maybe lower prices. But with the high piracy rates of Asia/Eastern Europe, I'm not sure I'd trust anyone with a large chunk of the code. And I'd say its a lot less likely than it happening here merely because of the legal reprocussions. Going half way around the world to a different legal system to try and apprehend and punish the guy/gal who did it is far more difficult, when compared to staying in your own backyard (USA/Canada) where you know the law.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
When a company has 50% or more of its "high pay" employees outside of the US, kick them the fuck out - they're not a US company anymore.
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.
By that definition, you'd end up banning imports - which would completely destroy the economy of the United States and its trading partners (i.e. the industrialized world.) A better way to handle it would be to crack down hard on overseas tax shelters and then provide tax benefits for companies keeping their labor in the US (or your appropriate nation, international /.ers. I'm not greedy.)
+++Divide By Cucumber Error. Please Reinstall Universe And Reboot.+++
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.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
What? You mean the price won't go down? But we are saving so much money on the labor -- where is all that extra cash going?
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.
Thank you Mario! But our princess is in another castle!
People bitch about this, and that's fine. But at the same time, those people claim to be for free-market economy. But of course, only when it supports THEIR cause.
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 assuming you have a good reason. But you can't simply ignore all the people who invested years and tens of thousands of dollars in that career. People have 5 year car loans. People have 30 year mortgages. People make long term plans based on the assumption that their lives will be stable long term.
Outsourcing demonstrated to me that I can't count on my government to consider my needs before making a decision. I would say I'm completely meaningless to them, except as a part of consumer spending. I'll be moving into a house with no mortgage by the end of the year. I'll be completely debt free. I will never again finance something. Why? Because I can't ever assume that the amount of money I'm making will remain stable with any certainty. How's that for consumer confidence?
Hell, i would have been ok with outsourcing if i had just been given some warning. How about phasing in this outsourcing over five years? Warn everyone so they can plan, then do it? That's not what happened here. Why? Because corporate executives wanted all the profits now. And the people in washington took their money and did what they wanted. So much for representing us. Fuck the middle class.
This is the stuff that brings about communist revolutions. Follow this trend 20 or 30 years in the future and see where it gets us. Capitalism is fine as along as it's restrained.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
This is an outrage! Next thing you know, Nintendo will outsource to some obscure place, like Japan!
---
Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
Not too long after the EA takeover of Westwood studios, some of the work was contracted out to a group in Germany, keep in mind they did very good work.... but still
Why isn't C++ being taught in public schools now? Being that everything can be reprogrammed (software, robotics, sales metrics, accounting...etc). Programming should be like any of the major subjects such as Science, English and Math.
Soon, programming will be required education rather then an added skill set to profit on just alone.
Life is not for the lazy.
Just because the US middle class hasn't been fully impoverished YET (and we're NOT better off than we were ten years ago!) doesn't mean that continuing outsourcing WON'T do it. Why should one expect a relatively highly-paid workforce with political rights and high expectations to be able to compete with much-lower-paid folk who can't unionize and don't get health insurance or retirement benefits, and will work for peanuts even by local standards 'cause any job is better than none?
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".
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
You've (typically, I must add) confused cause and effect.
Greed is the thing that drives both capitalism and innovation, not the other way around.
The reason centrally planned economies don't work is because, at the heart of it, they tell people not to be greedy. And people don't listen.
Greed is the thing that causes companies to form to make games. Greed is the thing that causes programmers (fresh off a hit game) to demand the big bucks. Greed is the thing that then drives the _people with the money_ to go elsewhere to hire the programmers.
It's their money.
Saying they can do what they like with it is capitalism. Saying they can't pad their pockets is, my friend, central planning.
So far from "proving Carl Marx right" what you're actually doing is making the case for why he is still wrong.
a programmer from sneaks in some malicious code which is missed by the company which outsourced the job?
_________ Help me get a PSP!
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. I'm just saying I doubt they're being held to the same standard as we are here. In a lot of ways a college education is the new high school education. My grandmother to the day she died bragged about finishing high school -- in her time women usually went to the 10th grade and were married off. Now with a 4 year engineering degree I'm a part of the fucking unwashed masses, and your words of comfort aren't putting a roof over my head.
This is infact pure greed, the problem with capitalism is there is very little short term reward for long term planning. Outsourcing does long term damage to the country by providing short term gains. I'd like to know what job you're in? Whatever it is I'm sure an immigrant could and would do it for half your wage. That doesn't make it right or good.
I will tell you right now how this will begin and end. Some kind of electronic "perl harbor" will take place, death and destruction will be caused by shoddy software engineering (not Russian/Indian software either, good old shitty American software). The need to develop rigorous engineering standards for software, like EVERY OTHER ENGINEERING DISCIPLINE will be painfully obvious, and those standards will be developed and practiced by American programmers. But in the meantime, this shit stinks. I have been unemployed for, coming up on, two years here and I have quite a lot of experience, and I know a lot of people in the same boat. The unemployment rate here in Southern California is like 16% (the real unemployment rate, not the rosy numbers the government publishes).
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
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 as the 405.
Here's the moderately simple and brief explanation for outsourcing: Inflation in this country is really out of control, in things we can't trade like health care, tuition, real estate, and things we can't control like gasoline and metals. That's because the government has been pumping so much money into the economy to try to get it to go somewhere via lower interest rates and increased government spending. With all this money flying around it would have already have caused a ton of inflation, and wages would be very high in world wide terms, except people have been able to send the work overseas. That was less possible 20 years ago and almost totally impossible 30 years ago so we have this weird kind of recession where we are losing jobs in anything importable put a lot of people are doing really well in anything we can't export like real estate. The main export of the United States now is inflation. Here's the slightly longer explanation.
Today, video game enthusiasts throughout the country announced that they are outsourcing their playing to countries like Burma, Zaire, and Elbonia, where people can be found to play video games much cheaper than in the USA.
Going overseas for ports or original game development is not nearly a new thing. This has been happening for quite some time.
My first personal experience was with "Out of this World" back in the early 90s (92-3ish). The original game was done in France. (I guess you can say it was actually an import into the US.) The Windows 3.1 version was done by a Russian company.
I've seen many games started up in Canada, Australia and Eastern Europe because of the exchange rate of the dollar. All this occured in the early 90s.
It's also been common to outsource concept art, models, animations, movies, music (especially if you want an orchestral score, eastern european orchestras are cheap compared to US ones), and, yes, even programming for sometime.
There are plenty of good development houses in Europe that have been making games for American publishers for years.
It's less common to go to Japan and Asia for US published titles, but it happens occasionally.
I don't see any major change in the way we (the games industry) do overseas development, but I don't see the entire industry of course.
I'm an independent video game developer and I'd like to point out that the indy scene has been international for quite a very long while.
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.
American Jobs belong to YOU.
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Actually, yes we are.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
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 of the less efficient producers.
If anything is "economic treason", surely increasing the cost of living so that more people live under the poverty line (ie don't earn enough to live in the most basic of conditions) is.
Before you argue, read up on the topic. Also don't forget that unemployed people must get retrained or get left behind. We've been through this all before (check out the automobile industry prior to Ford's Mass Production). How many farriers are around today? Do they meet demand?
Western cultures are moving into more service based industries. This includes research and development all the way down to tourism. Why? Because we are good at it, can often provide excellent quality at a low cost. Don't be close minded and freak out because some code monkey jobs were lost to overseas, learn extra skills (project management, a language other than english, teaching etc) so that you can enter industries that your economy excels at. We are still designing, specifying and developing new products, we just get them made OS.
"The big question in our lives is how to be at the same time a hedonist and in a hurry" - Alain Ducasse (?)
"Let's see how much money they make when they wipe out the American middle class. How many games are the CEOs going to buy? There's also a wonderful concept to business called: Not shooting yourself in the foot for the sake of a temporary increase in profits."
Population of China - 1.4 Billion
Population of India - 1.0 Billion
Population of America - 0.3 Billion
"Not only are such global imbalances unsustainable but in the US, a lasting recovery cannot be built on a foundation of ever-falling saving rates, ever-widening current-account and trade deficits, and ever-rising debt burdens."
Morgan Stanley global economist Stephen Roach
America has an old population compared to India. Our Baby Boomers are retiring and asking for handouts and we won't have enough people working to fill the jobs of the impending wave of retirees or to pay for all of the medicine they're going to need.
If the American middle class evaporated it wouldn't be the end of the world for multinational corporations, including those based in the US. Most of our tax dollars are going to go old people who want expensive pills for free.
Education will suffer because kids can't vote and your average retiree is worried about immediate needs not the long term health of this country. I love democracy but America is headed down the crapper because of it.
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http://houndwire.com
Step 1: remove as much wealth from your name as you can, anyway you can.
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.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
When you stop looking for work, you're no longer counted as 'unemployed'.
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.
...is that just a generation ago, it was computer technicians and programmers who put millions of Americans out of work by replacing their positions with machinery. ...just sayin'....
Hear that. I don't mind acknowledging that I am not competitive with software designers in St. Petersburg if the 'other side' could acknowledge they are overpaid; perhaps much more than we are. Palo Alto was so expensive to live in firefighters were living in shelters at one point - is that right for a guy risking his life for 45-60k a year? (I dunno the figure)
A lot of free-market purists say the market rights itself but if so then why are we still subsidizing farmers? Many people, perhaps too many make sacrifices to do the job they love. Who'd really want to have a career in the military, FBI or CIA at this point? Get shot for 20-30 years for 50k a year and a pension? If you're smart enough to be in the CIA you could do a CEO's job. Models won't get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day, CEOs can rob my mom of her retirement, and yet I'm supposed to feel guilty for my salary?
I feel I get paid enough to have the American dream - you work hard and you can have a career, own a (small) place, put a car in the garage, and maybe still afford a kid if you and your lady make enough. Carly would disagree - it's not our god-given right to have a job - but nobody's outsourcing her job, or thinning her multi-million dollar a year salary... yet.
Why do Americans think they're the only ones who deserve decent jobs? Is the rest of the world supposed to sit in poverty forever while America maintains its enormous salaries? I don't think so. The rest of the world is becoming educated, becoming skilled, and deserves good jobs just as much as America. And another hint - there are a lot of gamers in foreign countries too.
Geeks in Russia are more like Americans than American geeks are to other Americans. People are people, and there's no sense in this mindless nationalism and xenophobia.
This is a common misconception. As the American Middle Class suffers and becomes poor the growing Middle Class in India and China provide all the markets capitalists need. They're abandoning the American middle class. Americans want too high a standard of living for their (capitalists) liking. We expect 40 hour work weeks, Unions, job security and maybe even a little real Democracy (very little of that, but it's still a nusance when you're building a new call center and the locals won't let you because it's a death trap, and they passed an ordinance against death traps in the last election). China and India are ideal. They have so many people that it's physically impossible for enough of them to join the middle class and stem off the supply of cheap, desparte labor.
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.
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Wish I had mod points right now. Most corporatism- and globalization-related problems would go away if companies couldn't hide behind the argument that shareholder dividends are priority #1. I think it would be better if it were enshrined that every company's priorities were:
1) To better the living conditions and well-being of society and mankind as a whole;
2) To ensure that current and future employees cannot be 'let go' unless there is *no* other way to reduce costs for the company (ie., senior execs ' pay is based upon company performance -- they lose first, then employees).
3) Maximize shareholder value.
Of course no one will ever let this happen, as it means the end of the golden parachute/handshake/Enron behaviour/etc.
ERROR 144 - REBOOT ?
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. People predicted that Japan would kill us back in the 60's. They didn't. The fact is, that as a foreign economy steals jobs, it also adds consumers. This is an overall GOOD THING for the total world economy. And it's mainly the shittiest jobs getting outsourced anyway.
I've said this many times on slashdot, but as long as America innovates and steals talent from overseas through our university system, we'll be fine. If not, we'll fail.
People used your same arguments in the 50's to argue that textiles and manufacturing jobs needed to stay in America. Today, if our economy was based on that, we'd be decadeds behind Asia and Europe.
America's economy is a constant process of innovating new high-paying jobs and exporting of old, no longer "cool" jobs. Anyone who can't see this has neither a historical perspective nor grasp of basic macroeconomics.
- mritunjai
yeahhhh, I'm gonna have to ask you to move your desk again. why don't you move it to india!
They're using their grammar skills there.
"I also anticipate that the federal, state and local government will want to tax me at a total rate of:
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.
"Derp de derp."
and raise everyone's standard of living. That's really the problem with America. Not only is our Middle class too well off, but our poor are _far_ too rich. I mean, what good's being a rich capitalist if you don't have some truly desperate people to push around?
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And I am a Democrat. Look, go to college, get your education, work hard and you WILL have a job.
Or you can whine and complain that Indians took your job while you sit on your ass and do nothing. What? You going to ask for the government to bail you out and give you MY money? You can't earn your own damn money so you losers have to tax me and take mine?
If you are stupid it is under your control, work harder if you arent as intelligent as me. Get degrees, spend 10 years in college, and write a great resume. IF you still can't find work then you can always be a teacher.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
I couldn't agree with you more (until the last paragraph, but I'll get to that). Ten years ago I was in high school, so I can't exactly say that I'm better off than I was then, because it's almost a given. However, just over 5 years ago I was starting off in the same job I hold now, and today I make almost twice as much as I did when I started (which isn't bad since I was making more than any of my friends or anyone I knew my age when I started), and all of this after having shifted school from a full-time to part-time portion of my life.
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
-PainKilleR-[CE]
This is not the last thing to happen in PC gaming.
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.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Some of us spent years at university to study for our profession, you know.
I can't keep doing a degree in the latest new trend. I'm just glad I don't live in America - where business and politicians seem intent on sending high-paid jobs abroad.
Why doesn't the government there realise they will have less tax returns and more social costs if this trend continues?
--- "We've always been at war with Eastasia."