http://www.vgchartz.com/article/250500/tim-schafer-lay-offs-once-a-game-is-complete-is-bad-for-business/

"One of the most frustrating things about the games industry is that teams of people come together to make a game, and maybe they struggle and make mistakes along the way, but by the end of the game they’ve learned a lot — and this is usually when they are disbanded," said Schafer. "Instead of being allowed to apply all those lessons to a better, more efficiently produced second game, they are scattered to the winds and all that wisdom is lost."

Is Tim wrong here? Is the videogame industry better, and stronger because teams are assembled and disbanded on the fly, providing no job security but allowing for maximum career mobility, or does he have a point?  

I am posting this in the political section, because employment was discussed in the past here, and it was argued that economically this is a good thing.

They both have their upside, but Tim's approach would seem to allow a studio to develop its own indelible culture that comes through in its products. Double Fine makes a lot of really charming stuff as opposed to the crappy corporate faux-cuteness of, say, Zynga, so if they're financially sound, I guess they know what they're doing.

Tim has a point. The studios that can best hold onto talent by moving them to new projects once another project is complete tend to have the best overall products.

Those that hire and cut per project eventually end up with lower quality products because the only people they can hire are fresh out of school. Veterans know not to touch those studios.

There are economic pressures that cause companies to not want to have staff around being an expense, when there is nothing going on.  I posted this thread having to ask what the costs are.  Some see it as liberating, but I have to wonder the toll things take, and how a society would function if no one had long-term employment.  We have an entire middle class in America built on people having stable jobs and taking out mortgages, and staying put. 

On the college new hire thing, I am reminded of the story behind Action 52.  A business guy, to cash in on the NES craze, decides to hire college students to crank out a collection of 52 games, and gives them less than 6 months.  He then figured he would sell the thing for $200 and make a killing.  Well, it was epically horrible.

That's why it's a good business model to have a studio that can work on multiple projects with different launch periods.  You never need to lay off staff.    As one project is complete, that excess staff goes to work on the other project that is now ramping up for its completion....and then back and forth.

I believe Zynga just fired their CEO and their stock is taking a beating.  They did have a decent run, but would have to question the long-term viability of just going with they did.  Zynga's driving mantra is, I believe, "Does it make money?".  In a very competitive environment, one has to wonder if nickle and diming is the way to go, or if you have to have a corporate culture that fans can indentify with, and get attached to.

http://www.geekosystem.com/zynga-losing-money/

Zynga isn’t doing so well these days. Their quarterly performance has been abysmal of late, and they’ve just announced that they’ll be writing off between $85 and $95 million in association with the acquisition of OMGPOP. Considering that Zynga shelled out between $180 and $210 million for the company, that’s a rather massive nosedive. What goes up must come down, after all, and Draw Something didn’t have much of a revenue model. Looks like the Zynga is finding that out the hard way.

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/02/14/zynga-lost-over-400-million-in-2011-while-58-5-million-people-p/

Now here's the bad news: despite earning over $1 billion in 2011, the company ended up with a net loss for the year of $404.3 million. According to the quarterly financials press release, Zynga paid out $510 million for "stock-based compensation expense for restricted stock units issued to employees" -- compensation it didn't have to pay until the companywent public. The company's stock is currently trading $4.35 north of its introductory $10 price per share.

in a sense tim is correct ... it is difficult to build the process, culture, expertise, of a good team. it takes time and time is money. my software team is held together and bring projects in and out and it works quite well.

but... that means that the overall company needs to be big enough to have multiple projects going on at a time otherwise teams will have nothing to do as projects have swells and lulls. only the EAs, Activisions, sonys, and nintendo's of the world have that scale of projects. other companies probably can't justify the paid down time.

I think Tim does have a good point, but each company has their own ideas.

Personally, I believe that people do better work when they're going to be sticking around at a job for a longer while. If you're just a contractor, the entire point is for you to churn out your work, accept your money and move onto the next job. The passion usually doesn't flow when you're just bashing keys for someone who doesn't need you a month down the road.

At the same time, though, some companies like that extra funding between projects and figure it's more efficient money wise, to fire and rehire instead of keeping them around when things are ramping up.

All in all? I think I lean toward Tim's ideology. A happy worker tends to be a job secure worker.

Tim is 100% right. Not only does a team work better together the longer they have been together, but the stability of knowing you aren't going to get kicked out on the street at any time makes for happier harder workers.

Small studios aren't able to do this though, as is likely the case with Double Fine.  A mid-sized studio can actually.  There is also the case of getting properly funded and so on.  

The effect is stuff like Backbone, which is arguably the top studio in emulation laying off:

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2012/10/09/layoffs-hit-backbone-entertainment.aspx

They are currently working on Dance Central 3, and also Midway Origins.