Because there is enough willing labour to endure this treatment. AAA companies don’t aspire to make high quality games, they aspire to make games that make money, which does not require quality except perhaps graphic fidelity and certainly doesn’t require the best.
Ok let’s say the buyer does not care about game quality, only good graphics. Even then it wouldn’t make sense to fire the staff that has a lot of experience in crafting the slop games fast and efficiently.
They don’t, they make mediocre games at a mediocre pace of a mediocre quality. They hire the average coder and the average designer, of which there are many. They don’t want to carry headcount through periods of inactivity and don’t need to. Sure either keep the key people and leadership roles, but the grunts doing the work? Fire and hite them back when needed, often on short term contract.
Because there is enough willing labour to endure this treatment. AAA companies don’t aspire to make high quality games, they aspire to make games that make money, which does not require quality except perhaps graphic fidelity and certainly doesn’t require the best.
Ok let’s say the buyer does not care about game quality, only good graphics. Even then it wouldn’t make sense to fire the staff that has a lot of experience in crafting the slop games fast and efficiently.
They don’t, they make mediocre games at a mediocre pace of a mediocre quality. They hire the average coder and the average designer, of which there are many. They don’t want to carry headcount through periods of inactivity and don’t need to. Sure either keep the key people and leadership roles, but the grunts doing the work? Fire and hite them back when needed, often on short term contract.