Re: Only some are going bust...
It is a two-faced business. While western studios crash or complain about being able to profit, they simultaneously will offshore as much as they can destroying local talent and industries. Where this thing, the Guangdong Animation Village (http://www.tqglobal.com/?p=506) gets off the ground, it for example will be a city itself of 55,000 people outside of the mega city of Guangzhao. So there is a tonne of talent in countries like China and India and perhaps going are the days where it was one legal license of Maya for 150 operators sleeping in dorms.
Thing is cities like Sydney love running festivals like Vivid and other design related events and claiming rightfully so to be globally creative. At the same time the government removes all subsidies so the games industry, if you can still call it that, is now almost on life support and local firms offshore as much as they can. If the industry was smart it would stop trying to undercut and destroy itself and each other and form a cartel like tradies, lawyers and doctors have done to hold up prices against greedy corporates.
At the same time colleges compete to churn out vocational 3 year degrees at $60k a pop that often barely leave enough skill to get a foot in the door except for the naturals who number about 1 in 12. I focus hard on cultivating the left and right brains of my students. They have to be uber-geek of Reg standards who are prepared to eat sleep and breathe it and be highly skilled at very complex and constantly evolving tools, while at the same time being creative and not losing that under a lot of ego and financial pressure. They also these days need to be diversified and cross-disciplinary and may work in design, broadcast, prototyping, arch vis, interactive etc. That's the glam biz of the vfx industry.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
