The problem is that even when a studio publishes a successful game which brings in sales over many months, you can still generally reduce short-term costs by firing those devs. And investors love short-term profits.
And, optimistically, I think there’s less chance of that happening for Obsidian just due to how many other projects they have going on at once. Then you’re constantly rolling people off of one project and onto another rather than having too many people of one discipline that you don’t need at the beginning of a new project in a single-project studio. In the last 10 years, Obsidian’s got 11 games to its name, so it’s not like they’re taking 7 years to put a game out and hoping it does well enough to justify the next 7 years.
Yeah, fair point. It doesn’t make it impossible for a manager to decide to downsize the studio after a launch, but at the very least, you won’t draw as much attention to that being an option, when you don’t need to pitch a new project while you’re about to run out of things to do.
The problem is that even when a studio publishes a successful game which brings in sales over many months, you can still generally reduce short-term costs by firing those devs. And investors love short-term profits.
And, optimistically, I think there’s less chance of that happening for Obsidian just due to how many other projects they have going on at once. Then you’re constantly rolling people off of one project and onto another rather than having too many people of one discipline that you don’t need at the beginning of a new project in a single-project studio. In the last 10 years, Obsidian’s got 11 games to its name, so it’s not like they’re taking 7 years to put a game out and hoping it does well enough to justify the next 7 years.
Yeah, fair point. It doesn’t make it impossible for a manager to decide to downsize the studio after a launch, but at the very least, you won’t draw as much attention to that being an option, when you don’t need to pitch a new project while you’re about to run out of things to do.