Schafer labels 'rountine layoffs' as bad practice
Tim Schafer has called out the latest industry trend of routine layoffs as bad business practice.
In the current climate, many developers have taken to trimming their staff as they close one project with everyone from BioWare to id showing fast staff turnover.
Schafer called out this practice stating that it was counter-productive to dismantle a team that had just built a good dynamic.
The Double Fine boss began, "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. 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."
"After Psychonauts," Schafer continued, "we could have laid off half our team so that we'd have more money and time to sign Brtal Legend. But doing so would have meant breaking up a team that had just learned how to work well together. And what message would that have sent to our employees? It would say that we're not loyal to them, and that we don't care. Which would make them wonder, 'Why should we be loyal to this company?' If you're not loyal to your team you can get by for a while, but eventually you will need to rely on their loyalty to you and it just won't be there."
Thanks Wired.