I think it's too convenient to chalk the recent games industry layoffs as simply part of an economic downturn. It certainly doesn't seem like business as usual, that would be bleak if it were. Although as one friend said to me "they'll still need to make games".

A lot of people who've recently lost their jobs will stay quiet on the topic, finding new employ is a bigger priority than dwelling on what's gone. Meanwhile, others are calling this normal, which does get a reaction from me.

All of the layoffs are unfortunate. Some seem like honest cuts, while others smell of corporate politics and market maneuvering.

What we're seeing doesn't jive as a fair representation of game sales and /or profit. It's far more about current expectations of shareholders: That every public company should downsize and prove that they're 'agile'. I've repeated this same sentiment in comments on other blogs, but I'm burning out on the rationalizing press releases and the people who readily buy into them because it supports their 'free market' religion.

What's sad is it will trickle down. Publishing will decline for awhile, at least until the next quarterly results are in. Shipping successful product won't guarantee contracts for the next game. This will affect the smaller, privately-owned studios too. And there are a lot of resumes floating around right now.

=(

Image is everything right? Google has been the golden boy for a few years now, but the dogs were ready to jump on any scent of weakness. When analysts hinted that the souring economy might make Google slip, their stock plummeted for the first time since their great incline.

It's all turned out to be nonsense, hasn't it? Google's Q1 2008 profit report is in a word, exceptional.

This is an example that makes me feel our world has gone insane, that our economy and day-to-day well-being is based upon stock markets, corporate culture and trademark / logo appeal that are all just one step away from disfavour from the mob. It's not enough these days to be an upstanding business that maintains healthy sales and employs a solid workforce: Each and every quarter report must show leaps above the last, else stock tumbles.

Does anyone else not see this as insane and unsustainable? It's inflation at every step of the way, any hint of a ceiling = dropped stock.

It's not like our markets are filled with savvy economic engineers, instead it's become a culture-wide gambling addiction. This is the supposed great free market. And it has very real-world consequences. We even gamble on the very land that we live on.

We've created a very strange culture for ourselves, where the dictators are some sort of wagering mob playing with numbers that I'm more and more convinced they don't truly understand. Sure, they see and craft arcane patterns, but they clearly don't relate to reality, it's far more about perception.

I don't mean to pick on Google in particular, if anything they represent a possible change in business, where the directors of a company hold to values above the dictation of shareholder value. Or at least I hope so.

Yeah, I know... I'm in a heavy-handed mood.