I do agree broadly, but the amount of overtime spent on games development is crazy. Better project management isn't going to fix that. Reduced scope of games will. To be fair the games 'arms race' is getting out of hand anyway.
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Polygon: Game developers need to unionize
- Thread starter Scottt
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Yeah true, it will be a mix.
And yeah I agree it's completely out of hand. It's incredible when you think of the amount of man hours go into modelling and implementing things that are so inconsequential. Rockstar is a great example of this.
FFVII was supposed to be released on Playstation 3. I dont think this is comparable at all.
The rest of your post is something that I dont think you can factually substantiate in anyway so im just skipping it. Are games made by unionized workforce uglier and buggier than games made by non-unionized workforce?
I'm from Norway and this does not make sense to me either.
If 80% of the employees want to unionise, what is preventing them?
Not to be rude, but who fucking cares what a crybaby on a niche enthusiast website thinks about it? The game industry should not be basing anything, let alone labor policy, on "what ResetEra thinks."
In the case of QA (who need unionization probably the most in the entire industry), everyone who publically supported a union would just be put on call and then never called in for project work ever again. Some third-party outsourcing companies have become so huge as well that they'd have no problems closing their North American branches or trimming them down to a skeleton staff and bolstering their overseas staff (like India) instead.
The entire industry needs to unionize at once in order for things like this not to happen. This is not just a developer problem either, it needs to cover every person that works on video games. Because if it doesn't, the work will just be passed down to a non-unionized part of the chain. For instance, if developers were unionized and QA still was not, I'd expect those 70-80 hour work weeks that I sometimes did to become much more of a norm.
Ah I see, this sort of behaviour from the employer is actually illegal here and has been the subject of quite a few court cases that result in re-hires, backpay and compensation for "tort".
And yes they all need to join not just spesific groups within the company. But I still fail to see why, when 80% want to unionise, what is preventing them. But maybe it's the NA culture?
It's fear. It's hard to get someone to pick up that flag and carry it, especially in an industry that underpays people to begin with. In the case of QA, you are asking someone who has pretty much been told they are a minimum wage making replaceable part to risk everything to try and champion a union, it's a lot to ask. In addition to that, the video game industry tends not to be all that big, reputation can mean a lot when applying to other places.
Almost all the QA houses, whether internal or external here in the Montreal region utilize the on-call system, so you are always at risk to be put on call simply because a manager doesn't like you. Hell, I've seen clients ask for people to get booted off projects simply for crossing unspoken rules and the external QA company will say yes no questions asked. These are the same type of companies that buy competitors, put all the new employees on daily schedules (so people don't know if they are working the next day) and then strip them of their health insurance because they don't want their old employees "to get upset".
The system is broken, and if it wasn't so broken it might not need unions to fix it. Unfortunately, there is basically no way out except unions at this point.
It sounds very broken and like you need new laws too not just unions.
But I can see the problem of fear. It should not be that way though especially if all the other employees of the company jointly support them.
In the system here, even if you are "on-call" the ongoing supply of work is counted as a work contract and deviations from the "regular" schedule has to be explained. Most of the times it's just a regular shift in workload, but if someone is not called suddenly after joining a union or if a manager gets mad at them all hell breaks loose both legally and in the media.
It isn't as straightforward as "they work fewer hours per week so less time gets spent on the game".
For one thing, it assumes that worker productivity scales directly with hours worked, which is not the case. In fact, regularly working long hours actually has been seen to decrease worker productivity. Tired and burned out workers spend less of their "on-the-clock" time every hour actually working, and they are more prone to error when actually performing job functions. A group of people each working 80 hours per week are not doing double the work of the same team working 40 hours per week, and in fact may well actually be LESS productive in totality.
It also ignores the long-term benefits of avoiding worker burnout, both to the individual company and the industry as a whole, in the form of artists and workers sticking around and increasing the overall experience level of the work force. Right now, many development staff drop out of the industry as a whole after only a couple of projects IIRC, with the relative low pay and extreme hours being the primary cause. Keeping people at your company or even just in the industry longer means you have a more experienced work force all around, which is capable of being more productive even at their higher pay. That means more programmers who know both how to fix mistakes and avoid making them in the first place, more people gaining the long-term experience necessary for lead positions and management, etc.
Looking at this in terms of "well if they work less hours per week then less man hours get put into the game every week" ignores the factors that affect worker productivity, which is significantly more important.
Industry wide to me means that every single country has to agree to the same rules?
I think last year, at least in europe, we had protests against Amazon which were organized partly "internationally".
Apparently this organization is helping them to do this. I put it as example of a "Global Union network": https://www.uniglobalunion.org/
Apparently this organization is helping them to do this. I put it as example of a "Global Union network": https://www.uniglobalunion.org/
Car companies have massive unions and yet somehow launch dozen cars a year where every single one of them is immensely more difficult to create then a video game. Unions are not the problem, poor management / greed is.
What did not make sense to me was that there was no union when so many of the workers want one, but I got some input from others and it makes sense in that respect.
I'm more used to a system where unionisation is a right not something you need to fight for!
But industry-wide for one union might be a bit broad yeah.. I guess there needs to be unions in each country and they could cooperate internationally.
Take for example Unionen, in which most white collar jobs in Sweden fall under. This is a Swedish union which can act only in Swedish territories and has no power outside of Sweden. Sure, it can stand as an example to others, but the influence of an union is only relevant to the country it operates in, and only in respect to the labour laws of that country. That's why I find the "industry-wide" union thing weird. :)
Not saying don't do it or whatever, as obviously in developed countries with good labour laws this shouldn't even be a question, but still how it's being put forth is a bit weird.
It's the way Sag/Aftra works. And a few other 'unions' in the entertainment industry.
My experience is mostly in the US so I'm not sure how it works in the rest of the world besides Asia, which is like the wild west for the most part.
You've obviously never worked in film, or for SAG which is the only reason you wold reply so ignorantly. It is exactly how I explained it works, and it's how they want it. And SAG/AFTRA is far from the only culprits.
Like I said, there are pros and cons. But most of you posting have no idea about the cons it seems.