This is a really interesting and thoughtful article but I feel like there's an understated undercurrent here that has me worried, which is; many publishers are becoming more comfortable outsourcing entire development processes to countries specifically because they are cheaper. The thing is, I've seen this before (and still am seeing it) in the tv/film animation industry and uh, you know what happened there right?
- Basically all animation is produced in countries with few to no labour laws
- Even japan is becoming too expensive to make animation in locally because of downward pressure on salaries
- CEOs love countries like the phillipines and colombia where they can just assassinate union reps if they get uppity
- The US animation industry basically doesn't exist anymore outside of storyboarders and management
if this starts happening with games it's going to be apocalyptic for the north american game industry. There's things that could prevent a slide like that from occurring but seeing even the beginnings of it is deeeeeply worrying, ngl. Get unionizing, yall