I think this is going to be THE issue in the game development community for the next year or five. Let’s count a few of the controversies over the last year:
(And no doubt Rockstar is not the only perpetrator in extended-crunch culture.)
It’s been talked about for literally years, and while there’s maybe more serious movement on it now than ever, that’s not saying much.
I’m curious what the devs and the gamers on this forum think about the prospect of unions in game development.
How the heck do unions actually practically get started? There seems to be a lot of strong talk and then totally nebulous action toward making it happen. It’s hard for devs like me to know how we can actually help. Anyone been part of that process?
Do you work in an industry with unions? What’s it like? Are they valued or resented? Have they accomplished anything significant for their members?
What are the alternatives? If not a union, is there a better way for game devs to ensure they aren’t exploited?
Anyway, starting a union is simple. In theory. People who work at one of the major development studios need to found one, and basically (almost) everyone would have to be on board for that, or else management is just going to get rid of the rabble rousers. I think that’s where the major problem is: developers to scared to make themselves unemployed (and, quite likely, unemployable for the foreseeable future) by spearheading the creation of a union.
Once one big game studio (with 200+ employees) has a union, I imagine others might be emboldened enough by that to join forces. A union, after all, derives strength from numbers. But I think people are hesitant to be the first to lay the groundwork. They need to eat and pay their rent, after all.
It seems really weird to me for a job with such highly skilled labor to become unionized, as there’s normally going to be a significant difference in productivity from one engineer to another. You don’t want to negotiate as a group, because (if you are good) you want to be judged on your individual performance and merit. You’re not really just a commodity, like manual labor working on a factory floor.
Now, that being said, I have heard horror stories about the game development community that I don’t encounter in the broader modeling and simulation industry… mainly, since there are so many young engineers willing to work in the game development community, that companies really can just treat them like slave labor. But ultimately, those engineers can fairly easily just go to other jobs… just maybe not other jobs where they are making games.
I suspect maybe there are positions in game development which are much more akin to manual labor… QA testing, stuff like that. Those positions could potentially be unionized I guess, since it’s less about individual performance.
Ultimately though, I’m skeptical that unions really have a role in any highly skilled job like software engineering.
Actors Equity is not an effective union. Ask any member that is not a “star”. I believe average yearly pay for actors is sub 10K. It is a dinosaur ponzi-scheme organization. I cannot speak about Writers. Canada is a much better protector of Actors than Equity or SAG/AFTRA.
To be effective as a union It is not the requirement for manual labor, nor a requirement for skill. It is about leverage . You have to hold something over on the company in order to negotiate and protect.
I do not see Game Developers, QA testers, even programmers as a group being able to hold such leverage.
Doctors and lawyers are unionized (or guilded, or whatever you want to call people banding together to increase their share). They’re also basically the most highly paid workers. So there’s no inherent reason why highly skilled people shouldn’t unionize or want to unionize.
I think Mok has it though. The main barriers to developer unionization are that A) we’re competing in a global digital market and B) the barriers to entry are relatively low and C) there’s not much of a “super-star” effect. (e.g. if your 3D modeler isn’t quite as good as your competitor’s 3D modeller, it doesn’t mean you lose a multi-billion dollar court case. When it comes to these crucial decisions, you are willing to pay a premium for the absolute best doctor or lawyer you can get rather than just making do with 1-3 mediocre versions)
I’d look at Engineers and Systems Analysts in other industries, as well as non-Game Computer Software/Hardware folks…and…yeah…everyone in any industry like that does 100 hour week type stuff as White Collar employees.
So do Doctors and Lawyers. Guilds have nothing to do with it. They move to different institutions, practices to find work/life balances.
They have a trade union? There are complexities, but the basic mechanism is straightforward: They limit the supply of doctors, which causes the price for doctors to go up. For game devs, the problem is that the supply isn’t limited and is in fact growing exponentially. If current trends continue, by the year 2040 every man, woman, and child on the planet will be an indie game dev. If instead of that situation there was a global licensing body, which only allowed 3000 new game devs each year, then the game devs would have a much better bargaining position.
Far more limited by education costs, licensing requirements, internships and residences (talk about HOURS…). Same goes for Attorneys pre-partnership or Private practice.
Apples and Oranges. I’d look elsewhere there, Cesar Chavez. :)
EDIT: Where are my props for finding a HILARIOUS Weird Al video?
And let’s not forget that a really comparable group in film routinely get fucked over by the studios: 3D artists. I seem to recall a few horror stories about 3D art studios shutting down when they can’t leap directly from one major project to the next.
I’m not judging anyone, I’m just explaining the basic mechanisms at work. Did you read any of the links from the Quora article, or have you done any searches on the limits to new doctors?
And you are are right about the education costs, that also does play a role in the cost for doctors and lawyers. That was “B) the barriers to entry are relatively low” from the first comment.
Yes, but the cart is before the horse there. The professional organizations are writing regs based on how the world already works, not writing the regs and dictating standards.
Less so on the lawyers, however (education inflation occurred in Law in the 50s in direct response to Bar Associations attempting to limit the number of practitioners). They created a higher “bar” for entry. Tee-Hee.
Eh, the American Medical Association isn’t really a union in the sense of a worker’s union. They are more of a professional organization. It’s similar in some ways, in that they lobby on behalf of doctors, but they don’t really participate in any kind of compensation negotiation on behalf of doctors, as far as I’m aware.
The reality is, there’s no shortage of work for software engineers. You don’t need to work for a game developer if they treat you shitty.
Again, the reason they are able to treat developers shitty, is that a bunch of those folks have dreams of making games. That’s on them.
