I wanted to write out a topic mostly to talk about the current happenings of the Australian video game industry and ask for comments and opinions on the matter. Since the recession and a more focused timeline of the last 2-3 months the Australian games industry has taken a few substantial blows in both studio and employment size. The game development industry in Australia is what I would classify as being at a mid level of industry size and activity. We have a number of small and large studios around the country both indie and publisher owned. But we are in no way to the size of say the USA or the UK. At the last count we where somewhere at the 1600 employed Australia wide mark. Although that size may we smaller now due to recent redundancies. It's been a really rough year for our small sector in game development. And for the last few weeks I've been thinking in the back of my mind on how we as an industry in Australia are going to mend ourselves back to the point where the industry is growing and not shrinking. My questions to anyone here who wants to give an opinion or provide information are: 1:. In your respective countries. Has your game development industry ever encountered a moment in time where more jobs where being lost then being created? And if so how long did that period of shrinking go for? 2: What were the main factors that changed your local industry for the better and stopped studio collapse and redundancies? Was it due to the actions of the worker / game developer, was it saved by government support or overseas influence. Was it due to better games coming out of the country? Or was it a number of things? Thanks for reading.

In America, the game industry has gone through several cycles of contraction and expansion in last 15 years. Currently it's in a contraction cycle but there are still jobs available at the hotspots (California mostly). The games industry is usually quick to rebound, the last time there was a major contraction (around the mid 90's) it rebounded within 1-2 years. The industry is driven by discretionary income, so it really won't pickup until the economy rebounds and people spend again. The thing is people in the industry are cross trained, they can migrate to and from pretty easily to other industries (web, movies, etc..).

During cycles of contraction, it's usually the strong companies which survive (ones with good franchise and consistent performer) and since the causative factor for the contraction is the recession itself, its nothing the developers can do really. They just need to make a consistent high quality product or cut cost to weather the storm. Which given the current economic outlook, will last about 6-8 more months before major job growth occurs.

Good Luck!

-ddn