What would this union do exactly? This is often just a case of publishers being as unregulated and unprofessional and unaccredited as the devs themselves.
All in all, I don’t have too much of a problem with the games industry being as unregulated as it is. But we cannot start introducing regulation in only one area. For example, the OP post, as it came across to me, implied that the main reason for games/studios failing (and the area in need of some kind of regulating body) is the game engine itself, which is, in my opinion, hugely mistaken. What about the quality of the games, or the preferences of customers?
There’s nothing wrong at all with devs making games at whatever level they are capable of doing it, and releasing them, but they cannot criticize the system that has made it so easy for them to do so, without doing a little introspection as well.
Sometimes the best thing to do is to make the assumption that the problem (and the solution) lies with you as the individual. Even if you’re wrong, your life will be much more satisfying and pleasant that way.
In a perfect world you wouldn’t need a union. In a perfect world each countries government would have perfectly functional and acceptable and enforced workers rights.
Ensure notice for termination due to downsizing or studio closures
Provide a system that allows workers to voice concerns without fear of retaliation
Sick leave
Vacation leave
The ability to renegotiate employment terms based on the needs of workers
Cost of living wage adjustments
Provide a higher standard of employment for everyone, including non-union members
I mean, this is just… standard union stuff.
edit: here’s some more relevant ones.
Prevent people from moving to one of the most expensive places to live in North America within two weeks of a studio closure that you just got hired to
Severance pay so people can survive transitioning to new jobs
Are you forgetting that they were drawing a paycheck along the way? That’s their reward for working on the game, not whatever happens afterward as a result of market or industry conditions.
If you do that, you will cut the games industry down to size real fast. There will be tens of thousands of highly skilled workers out of a job, and intense competition from all over the world. It will be far harder to start a small, ambitious company, and studios will start chasing the money and financial stability rather than risking new ideas - if you don’t like the AAA mentality, you really won’t like that.
Let’s say Telltale had to do all of that for their workers. What kind of games do you think they would have been making?
Besides, many of those points intrude very hard into individual freedom of choice, rather than simply enforcing contracts. In my opinion, that’s generally not acceptable.
It might make people who consider starting a games company to actually think about the gravity of what they’re doing. They may even start thinking like business people and build more successful sustainable projects as a result! I too can make completely speculative arguments.
Really? Because it sure didn’t for IATSE, the union I mentioned earlier.
Except there’s no evidence of this at all? A good union will make it so that if companies are going to super outsource work that they can’t even hire union members. This will result in nothing more than quality dropping which will affect bottom lines far more than unions ever could. Again, I have to go back to this:
Unions help everyone. Full stop. They are designed with failsafes in mind.
Well, for one, Telltale’s problems came from the fact that they were grossly mismanaged, not from the production costs of their games. They literally had no protections at all which is why somebody was hired, relocated, and then laid off within a two week period. Telltale failed because of management and Telltale failed its workers because they had no protections.
So take your chances with non-union workers and see how well that works out?
No doubt. But I really don’t think that’s what devs will want. And in my opinion, it will not just cut off the bottom, but also the top - low-funded startups based on risk and ambition and crazy 50 hour weeks that sometimes do something none of us have ever seen before.
Why do you think this would be the case? The best of the best do not want to know anything about working hour limitations and non-merit-based systems, because they have nothing to gain and a lot to lose.
Hindsight is 20/20 with managing a company. But what if they had to have all the money in the bank that they’d need to pay severance packages and the like. That’s a lot of money! I heard the performance of their niche games were part of the reason why they failed, do you really think they would develop these sorts of games with a union looking over their shoulder?
As long as I have protection for contract enforcement, yes, absolutely.
I agree entirely that employers should look after their employees, and that employees should see some benefit from the success that they help to achieve, and I agree that some parts of this industry don’t seem to give employment contracts the respect they should have.
Alas, to look after yourself properly you have to think in terms of what does happen, rather than what should happen. This stuff commonly goes bad in this industry, so as individuals we need to take that into account and plan accordingly.
As such, I was more coming from the perspective that we shouldn’t work now with some nebulous concept of future hopes and dreams as a reward. If you’re not happy with the remuneration you’re getting for your work today then you should deal with that now, because that is the only reward you can realistically bank on.
Except here’s the thing about overwork and crunch: it invariably leads to higher stress and lower productivity. It ruins lives. It has literal actual health risks associated with it. Those startups you talk about? Most of them already fail because they’re notoriously unstable.
Why do you think there’s no merit based systems that involve unions? Again, people in IATSE work at all sorts of pay scales in all sorts of productions. What there is is a reasonable minimum and worker protection.
This has literally nothing to do with hindsight. Again, a person was hired, relocated, and fired when the company was two weeks from bankruptcy. This is not poor planning, this is a complete lack of communication from higher up, which unions solve. If they accounted for the fact they were literally not making enough money to function then the only difference is that they would have closed sooner and people wouldn’t be royally fucked when it happened.
That’s highly debatable. I tend to go with the point of view that I read somewhere John Carmack saying, that long work hours, at a certain point, are a case of diminishing returns, but it’s certainly not a net negative until you really get extreme. So you might work less productively after a certain point, but you still get a certain amount done.
No doubt the union decides what the merit is, rather than the company itself. But what about:
The willingness to work unregulated working hours;
The willingness to take a chance at a very high profit for very low remuneration at the start (e.g. shares);
The willingness to work for a company that cannot afford the kind of benefits that, let’s say, a working parent might need for the sake of their family.
The willingness to put up with a lot of employment risk for some kind of reward.
There are a lot of gray areas, such as whether a small company should be able to hire someone without the possibility of them going on parental leave - which can potentially destroy them competitively and financially, and things like that.
‘A’ person? I though they fired 200 without benefits, or something like that? Seems like the problem went a bit deeper than that.
If your small ambitious company is created by exploiting workers, it shouldn’t exist. You are asking other people to sacrifice for your dream.
Encouraging businesses to chase financial stability isn’t a bad thing. Too often we fall into the trap of putting the rights of small business owners ahead of the rights of employees. If your small business isn’t viable, you shouldn’t expect other people to wear that cost.
Crunch is bad management. Period. And it’s not just game development that feels this issue. This is literally why we have the 40 hour work week. Unions fought long and hard to get that in to place because overwork is bad in any job and game development is already high stress enough that people are burning out of the industry left and right. This isn’t “highly debatable” as we’ve been seeing its effects for years.
These aren’t “grey areas,” they’re exploitative business models that drive the value of labour into the ground. If you can’t afford to pay your workers a living wage, you shouldn’t be in business.
Yes, and, AGAIN, one of those people was relocated literally two weeks before the entire company announced they were folding.
Well actually, it could be. If the state of the industry is so bad that people need to take on unpaid internships to even get considered for a job opening, that’s exploitation.
I never read about a successful silicon valley startup with that kind of perspective.
Not for you to choose.
I’m not about to start making analyses of a company based on tidbits of information. You could be right. It might have been an separate case of mismanagement, or a mistake of some kind. Who knows.
Anyway, I’ve said pretty much all I wanted to say. I think people should choose what they will accept, rather than trying to have others protect them from bad choices. And there should be regulation of contracts, and not much else. I think we’re in the realm of political discussion, so I’m out.