Support NeoGAF

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Companies amped up on stuff thinking covid sales trends were the new norm, which it obviously wouldnt be.

That'd be like Peloton home cycling on $3000 machines would be a norm and all gyms shut down and reopened would shut down permanently when covid diminished.

Just about everything went back to normal.

The key difference is tech is mostly digital based. So their thinking was if they hired and invested like crazy into more employees and games, that is full capacity production to satisfy the bump in home gaming during stay at home covid. The second covid is over and everyone goes outside, gaming dropped.

Other industries were different. Any company that manufactures and ships stuff (your typical crap on 50 aisles at Walmart) were hit and hired in a different way. Any company already maxed out on manufacturing couldnt really do anything unless they were able to find more people and material to run a graveyard shift. And any company needing to expand machinery couldnt easily as covid made it harder to do that and it can take 6-12 months to get a machine fully operational and tested and more people trained on it. so for a lot of places they just said fuck all the hardcore machinery and people costs, we'll just max out what we have, jack up prices and wait till covid is over. Then its back to normal like 2019.

Thats why with your typical food, drink and potato chip maker you didn't see giant swings in hiring and firing. They just waited it out and made do with what they had.

The biggest change production wise was often maxing put production adjusting machinery to solely focus on the best sellers (efficiencies) and reduce down time making the niche stuff. And because coavid was so shaky with supply and people hoarding stuff, stores agreed to that strategy.

 

[Three]

This looks worse than pre-covid

 

[64bitmodels]

ya think?

It is disappointing that gaming returned to pre-covid levels. i kind of wish the growth kept going up. Gaming's audience has been mostly stagnant since 7th gen.

 

[Papa_Wisdom]

Considering alot of these companies earn mega money they sure do have idiots in charge. What normal person wouldn’t understand that covid was an exceptionally strange set of circumstances that contributed to that short term growth and after it was over it would return to normal (or get worse than pre pandemic levels) as the world got back to normal.

 

[kikkis]

I think that is pretty good since money is much more expensive than in 2019 due to central banks.

I think gaming will keep growing. After covid lots of causual male gamers went back to social places, only to find out real life doesn't have much to offer for them.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Oh and another reason why digital based companies like gaming shot through the roof in terms of workers is because it's a desk job that can be done at home.

A company making shit on a factory floor is tons of production, shipping bay and fleet truckers. During covid these guys all still had to go to work, but with covid companies mandated masks, spacing out, etc.... the last thing HR and plant managers want to do is hire more potentially germ infested people that might infect the entire floor.

With gaming it's WFH. No company has to worry about that. So with gaming revenue zooming in 2020 as people were on lock down they amped up hiring sprees not needing to worry about on-premise germs.

 

[diffusionx]

Interest rates are like 5% higher than they were in 2021, money isn't cheap enough to flow to endless GAAShit where they "project" Madden levels of monetization.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Interest rates are like 5% higher than they were in 2021, money isn't cheap enough to flow to endless GAAShit where they "project" Madden levels of monetization.

Yup. Thats a good reason too.

Investors weary on debt and risk will just put a chunk of money into safer investments, bonds, or guaranteed stuff (bank notes and shit like that paying decent interest rates to keep them happy). Tossing it into something unpredictable like gaming isn't worth the hassle.

 

[Fredrik]

A company making shit on a factory floor is tons of production, shipping bay and fleet truckers. During covid these guys all still had to go to work, but with covid companies mandated masks, spacing out, etc.... the last thing HR and plant managers want to do is hire more potentially germ infested people that might infect the entire floor.

Yup. I’m ”making shit on a factory floor”, went to work every day during covid, masked, visor, 4 shots of vaccine, there was a rule to not stand close to other people and only 2 people at each table during coffee break, no new people, no at site meetings, etc. The higherups concluded that if there would be a covid breakout at the production we would go under, just getting components without insane price increases when the whole industry were hoarding and electric cars had some kind of priority were bad enough.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Yup. I’m ”making shit on a factory floor”, went to work every day during covid, masked, visor, 4 shots of vaccine, there was a rule to not stand close to other people and only 2 people at each table during coffee break, no new people, no at site meetings, etc. The higherups concluded that if there would be a covid breakout at the production we would go under, just getting components without insane price increases when the whole industry were hoarding and electric cars had some kind of priority were bad enough.

Our company mandated being siloed between office and warehouse staff during covid, not only were all office staff ordered to work from home for 2 years, but when we returned we still had to avoid each other.

They wanted to prevent as much office and blue collar guys interacting they even rescinded access doors for almost all people. Only certain people's keyfob could get into both office and warehouse doors. My keyfob was restricted to office only for a year until everything opened up, nobody really cared anymore about covid and I'm going to assume everyone's keyfob went back to normal access.

 

[Fredrik]

Our company mandated being siloed between office and warehouse staff during covid, not only were all office staff ordered to work from home for 2 years, but when we returned we still had to avoid each other.

They wanted to prevent as much office and blue collar guys interacting they even rescinded access doors for almost all people. Only certain people's keyfob could get into both office and warehouse doors. My keyfob was restricted to office only for a year until everything opened up, nobody really cared anymore about covid and I'm going to assume everyone's keyfob went back to normal access.

It was a wild period. My wife actually did chemo during that time so it was extremely stressful since her immune system were at the lowest and a simple cold were dangerous, but the strict rules helped and I never brought anything back home and at work the production were running during the whole covid period.

 

[DenchDeckard]

This looks worse than pre covid, we are considerably down vs 2019....and there's those saying we aren't in a recession or about to enter one.

The best year for gaming in decades and the industry is down vs 2019. That's a scary thing to see.