Good call.
Can you imagine happy game developers and what the potential might be?
Isn’t Double Fine a good example of this, having recently split from Xbox Game Studios?
From what I can tell Tim Schafer seems like a genuinely good guy to work for/with.
imagine happy game developers and what the potential might be
Yeah. Apparently in the '90s, bioware was a very excellent company to work for, and two of my uni peers went there. They produced some great titles.
I mean, the question then becomes do they then become that which threatened to destroy them?
The politician is Avi Lewis, leader of the (federal) NDP, and it’s a good call. Nuking the Bioware studio in Edmonton is a major blow to a blossoming industry in Alberta that has been building around their success for the last 30 years.
Alberta needs more than oil and gas, and helping when EA’s decision threatens to ruin 30 years of game dev industry growth here overnight is how we ensure that can happen. There is undoubtedly people that Bioware attracted to computer science and software development attending the U of A, Grant MacEwen, and other tech schools in Edmonton today who were planning to, or hoping to stay here for their career. They’re in class wondering WTF just happened and assuming they’ll have to leave Alberta to follow the industry… Vancouver and Montreal are calling to them.
We should show them we give a fuck about what’s been built here. That’s a pipeline worth paying into, imho.
Hell yeah. This is a bailout I can get behind!
We need Steelco and BioWare as new crown corporations, c’mon Carney Liberals be centrist instead of conservatives.
There are other studios, also struggling to stay afloat, who would also be demanding more government supports if this went through I imagine.
I’m not opposed to the idea of govt funding for the games industry, but I also think it should have strings and be more broadly available. Like having Canadian content in the form of showcasing Canadian landscape or general cultural aspirations, history, or even just showing the Canadian flag / Canadian backgrounod characters. Eg. The Long Dark. (I think they may already get some funding for canadian content, now that I think of it).
Make a CIV-like game to show case/educate about all the different First Nations groups, or a Valheim-like one that has FN mythology at its roots. Maybe a “Universal Health Care” game in the style of Railroad/Theme park tycoon, where you’re trying to build out health services while balancing various mechanics such as union contracts, public funding, covid crisis/trucker blockades, US lobbyist aggressors, etc.
As for Bioware employees buying the studio… I know game developers who have been earning six figures+ for decades since leaving University. One, when told the average family income in Canada, was in utter disbelief that the average could be like half of what he’d made as his entry level salary in the industry. These likely aren’t the sorts of people that ‘need’ urgent government support.
Standing Stone games did it with Warner Brothers. Dungeons & Dragons online never shut down, it’s owned by the devs now.
Couldn’t this be better litigated as a criminally bad business decision that took the most valuable thing in the industry and smashed it to pieces?
Would they get the IP though? I think BioWare has a lot of talent, but creating successful new IP is no joke. I’m guessing EA and its overlords won’t let the IP go easily.
If they retained some of the talent (specifically the writers) they could make another Mass Effect adjacent game and call it something else. The articles start writing themselves, “The main people behind Mass Effect are working a new game.”
I don’t think it has to be a “triple A” game to be a commercial success.
Companies reinventing themselves has been done before many times (Black Isle Studios -> Obsidian; Squaresoft -> Square -> Square Enix; Konami -> Kojima Productions) and the Canadian government has thrown money at fiscally riskier projects.
I feel like this sets a precedent that companies can just extort the government over layoffs.
Very different outcomes than corporate bailouts. It would literally move means of production into workers’ hands. Reduces the size of the private capital controlled part of the economy. Easier to see if you picture it done routinely for failing companies with otherwise profitable enough businesses for their employees. You’d end up with a large socialist sector comprised of democratically owned and run firms that owe debt to the state.
Initially these firms may not be able to produce the yearly return to external shareholders to be considered profitable investments by private capital, but they might be able to make enough profit to pay worker salaries and upkeep. That alone is a big win for their local economies. Some would grow. Others would fail. The quality of life and/or pay would improve in the survivers.
