Institutional Knowledge
Ongoing coverage on Institutional Knowledge.
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If knowledge if power, why are game companies setting it alight?
Recent waves of layoffs in the video game industry, including significant cuts at Microsoft, are leading to a devastating loss of institutional knowledge. This collective wisdom, crucial for development workflows and efficiency, is often undocumented and passed between colleagues. Companies like Nintendo are highlighted as prioritizing the preservation of this knowledge, while others risk reinventing the wheel and facing increased crunch due to employee turnover.
Making Fallout and Elder Scrolls games will "be harder than ever now" following Xbox cuts, say laid-off Bethesda devs calling loss of institutional knowledge "staggering"
Former Bethesda Game Studios developers report that recent layoffs at Xbox, impacting dozens of staff, will make developing core franchises like Fallout and The Elder Scrolls significantly harder. They expressed concern over the staggering loss of institutional knowledge and its potential impact on future projects, including The Elder Scrolls 6.
"Keeping teams together doesn't seem to matter to people, but for us it did": Star Wars Zero Company's director on what the industry can learn from XCOM 2
Greg Foertsch, director of Star Wars Zero Company and former art director on XCOM 2, emphasizes the importance of keeping development teams together to foster institutional knowledge and trust. He argues that this cohesion, demonstrated by Firaxis Games' work on the XCOM series, leads to better games and is a valuable lesson for an industry frequently impacted by layoffs.
