Being prepared for redundancy

As we wait for some confirmation on the current state of Pandemic Studios Brisbane, ex-Pandemic programmer, Tony Albrecht has written about how the redundancy has affected him on a personal level. While he was much better prepared for it this time, Tony describes some of the difficulties and life changing realities that a redundancy in the current game industry climate brings.

From his Seven Degrees of Freedom bog..

I really feel for the people that have just managed to break into the industry and have been laid off, especially since the market is flooded with good people that have been made redundant from any number of studios that have been recently shut down by EA. Or THQ. Or Midway. Or pretty much anywhere. It's a very volatile industry now. Forewarned is forearmed - keep your eyes open for delayed milestones, delayed milestone payments, sudden dramatic scope changes in the game, groups of experienced people leaving, anything that should make you nervous. It is surprisingly easy to ignore this stuff, to blindly tell yourself that it'll be OK and it'll all work out fine. I know, I've done it myself.