Games are risky. Only very few people are competent enough to create an entertaining game that is viable from a technical, creative and financial perspective in a sustainable manner.
Hundreds of quality games are released every day. You could be releasing your game, and simultaneously, a similar and superior game is released and claims all of the user base.
A studio can produce a hit game, have a large hiring push, then fail to follow up with another hit and go under.
How many new studios and jobs created? A Unity study from earlier this year looked at over a thousand studios and almost 50% of the studios were less than 2 years old. Sounds like an industry with high turnover and fluidity, which makes sense given the nature of games.
Honestly asking. Is 1,000 a large number when I read it takes 1,000 people 5 years to make a game like Red Dead Redemption?
Last few years have been incredibly rough for the industry, after the amazing growth with social games and mobile games. Will be interesting to see what the industry looks like 3-5 years from now...
And nothing of value was lost?
Not personal to the jobholders, but the market has clearly shown a healthy appetite for hastily thrown together games on every platform. There's no need for artistry or polish or craft.
In the digital age, there's just one big landfill and every eyeball and click is monetized equally.
Just wait until we can synthesize all music and video in a blink.
In the PC gaming world has also experienced a big drop in quality lately. A lot of games are released prematurely and feel like Betas, lacking polish and filled with bugs. Online delivery of Games made things worse, there's no reason to wait to make things right when the game can be patched easily. I believe this will have a big impact on game sales in the near future if it hasn't already with many consequences for the industry.