Telltale Employees Left Stunned by Company Closure, No Severance • Hacker News Board

Re: Telltale Employees Left Stunned by Company Closure, No Severance

#151

Post by badpun » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 11:28 AM UTC

ericdykstra wrote: post #142

gaius wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

much of the benefit comes from the fact that one gets to work on games as opposed to B2B SAAS apps or other banal businesses I’ve sometimes wondered if that’s true. I mean debugging a race condition in C++ is going to be the same in a game engine as in a trading engine right? Except the latter will be well paid and secure.

For some people, the mere fact that what they're working on produces joy rather than ??? is worth the pay/security difference, even if the everyday work itself is nearly the same. I can imagine quite a few benefits, to be honest. You get to work with other people who decided to make the same sacrifice, meaning you have something more in common with your coworkers through your work than just picking the highest paying…

> For some people, the mere fact that what they're working on produces joy

Besides joy, games can also bring social alienation and stunted development for kids and teenagers. I for one am not sure if games are making the world better or worse.

Re: Telltale Employees Left Stunned by Company Closure, No Severance

#152

Post by gaius » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 11:32 AM UTC

zemo wrote: post #150

gaius wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

much of the benefit comes from the fact that one gets to work on games as opposed to B2B SAAS apps or other banal businesses I’ve sometimes wondered if that’s true. I mean debugging a race condition in C++ is going to be the same in a game engine as in a trading engine right? Except the latter will be well paid and secure.

If you view your work through a lens of pure abstraction and intellectual curiosity, what's to stop you from working on something that hurts people, just because the problems are interesting?

There are dark sides to every industry, for example when does a game cross the line into being a Skinner box? I don’t think it’s as simple as industry A unalloyed good, industry B unmitigated evil.

Re: Telltale Employees Left Stunned by Company Closure, No Severance

#153

Post by badpun » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 11:33 AM UTC

slg wrote: post #62

avip wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens in the US if you leave your employer when in a degraded health state (let's say cancer)?

You have a few options. Here they are in descending order of preference * Hope your employer is compassionate and keeps you on their plan. I have no data on this, but anecdotally it is surprisingly common. Companies can be heartless when dealing with large groups of employees, but it is much harder to rip away Karen from accounting's health insurance as she is going through chemo. * Hope your spouse (or parents if yo…

> 500,000 - 1 million bankruptcies in the US a year

Really? So, assuming there's 125 million households in the US, a person has ~25-50% (derived with simple probabibility math) of becoming bankrupt over medical bills at some point of their life? That sounds like BS.

Re: Telltale Employees Left Stunned by Company Closure, No Severance

#154

Post by sonnyblarney » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 11:50 AM UTC

pavlov wrote: post #148

sonnyblarney wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. There's little that can be done when a company goes bankrupt. I'm suggesting if people know that the company could go bankrupt, it helps them make decisions. And that severance is a normal part of a contract otherwise

What company is going to advertise months in advance that they might be going bankrupt? That's the surest way to make it come true. This seems like some kind of weird libertarian fantasy where companies and employees have access to the same information and use it to make rational economic decisions. In reality, almost any failing company will use its payroll obligations as a bank of last resort to squeeze out that la…

"This seems like some kind of weird libertarian fantasy"

It's called the world we live in.

If a company's revenues are in decline, if there have been recent layoffs, well then the writing is on the wall.

A company folding should not come as a surprise to any of the employees unless the are utterly in the dark with respect to product development, revenues etc.

It's not a 'libertarian fantasy' to expect that employees etc. will have some idea of these numbers.

There's not much that can be done about solving the 'insolvency severance' deal. Severance beyond legal requirements is a bonus opportunity, and like all bonuses, it's subject to risk.

Re: Telltale Employees Left Stunned by Company Closure, No Severance

#155

Post by CaptainJustin » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 11:59 AM UTC

shady-lady wrote: post #141

vecter wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never is a pretty bad rule. If you want to get ahead in life and advance your career, sometimes working more is the only way to do it. Everyone should decide at the end of the day how much they want to balance work vs. life, but for many people, working hard is the right choice.

> working hard is the right choice working long != working hard

&& working long != more done

Re: Telltale Employees Left Stunned by Company Closure, No Severance

#156

Post by laputan_machine » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 12:27 PM UTC

reboog711 wrote: post #100

thrower123 wrote: post #26

Adventure games seems to be a segment that is especially prone to boom and bust cycles. This has to be at least the third major collapse, following Infocom and LucasArts. Even when well executed, the formula is hard to keep fresh, and the emphasis on story and writing leads to generally poor replayability. Particularly now, in the youtube/twitch age - most of the enjoyment of these kinds of games is watching the stor…

We share different views of the world... First, Infocom was arguably supplanted by Sierra and other graphical games. They died during an oncoming boom. Sierra's reign [and LucasArts earlier titles] in the late 80's to mid-to-late 90s were very much the golden age of adventure games. Second, LucasArts went on for about 15 years after they stopped creating / releasing adventure games. Their last Adventure game was Grim…

Wadjet Eye, for me, have to make some of the best adventure games I have ever played. Heartily recommend Technobabylon and Gemini Rue.

Re: Telltale Employees Left Stunned by Company Closure, No Severance

#157

Post by JansjoFromIkea » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 12:33 PM UTC

WillPostForFood wrote: post #40

dogma1138 wrote: post #3

I wonder how much the closure was financial mismanagement vs their business model simply catching up to them. TTG shtick was essentially “emotional abuse simulators” all their games had one trick get you attached to characters and see them die with very little actual player control over it. They were one trick pony and the novelty wore off rather quickly. Their games also were based on expensive franchises and they o…

Their games steeply declined in sales after the first Walking Dead. From selling many millions to the last few selling only a few hundred thousand in spite of high profile licenses like Batman.

I wonder how much this decline was to do with how heavily they embraced things like Humble Bundle

I for one never bought a Telltale game because I knew they'd wind up as either in part of a pretty solid bundle or even just a full fledged Telltale bundle. Can't think of another company in the games industry who so willingly devalued their whole catalogue as quickly. Assume the goal was to get loads of people up to date so they'd pay full price on launch for the next season of w/e but...

Re: Telltale Employees Left Stunned by Company Closure, No Severance

#158

Post by stuaxo » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 1:13 PM UTC

c3534l wrote: post #70

ta987654321 wrote: post #19

This studio closure hits a little close to me, since I know a few former employees: - They really did not see a full studio closure coming so suddenly. Yes, they were aware that they were struggling, but the 25% staff reduction was supposed to keep the studio sustainable. - They were in the planning stages for an original IP, their new leadership realized too late that expensive IP licenses were unsustainable. - Thei…

There were people who moved to accept a job at that company a few months ago who got fired. Imagine uprooting your entire life, moving across country for your dream job, for the sole purpose that management can keep up appearances that they're a functioning company so people won't jump ship. The company was scummy and ran into the ground because of incompetence.

Always ask about a companies profit and revenue streams in an interview.

Re: Telltale Employees Left Stunned by Company Closure, No Severance

#159

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 1:44 PM UTC

dleslie wrote: post #107

elvirs wrote: post #105

"One employee, a source told Kotaku, had been working until 3 AM the night before" Moral of the story, never work for any company until 3am.

_Never_ work longer hours than you would be willing to be paid hourly for given your salary. _Never_. I've been interviewed at companies where it was evident from my questions that I would make more working half time at my current employer than the hours typically worked at the prospective employer. Really, I don't see why overtime is so rare in our industry. Not having it is more often an excuse to over utilize and…

[deleted]

Re: Telltale Employees Left Stunned by Company Closure, No Severance

#160

Post by pavlov » Tue, Sep 25, 2018, 1:47 PM UTC

sonnyblarney wrote: post #154

pavlov wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What company is going to advertise months in advance that they might be going bankrupt? That's the surest way to make it come true. This seems like some kind of weird libertarian fantasy where companies and employees have access to the same information and use it to make rational economic decisions. In reality, almost any failing company will use its payroll obligations as a bank of last resort to squeeze out that la…

"This seems like some kind of weird libertarian fantasy" It's called the world we live in. If a company's revenues are in decline, if there have been recent layoffs, well then the writing is on the wall. A company folding should not come as a surprise to any of the employees unless the are utterly in the dark with respect to product development, revenues etc. It's not a 'libertarian fantasy' to expect that employees…

A privately held 100-person game studio doesn't share its evolving revenue numbers with creative staff. Why would the business owners do that, really?

Most private companies are strictly compartmentalized and keep production employees in the dark about the business side. Some startups do the "anyone can peek at our sales numbers and cash flows internally" thing, but that's definitely an exception even in the startup world.