This, based on hearing you guys, and in my time in Board Game stuff and old school Wargame stuff, seems to be the case. Even when there are no investors to answer to. Like on a pure hobbyists’ creation. And I never get it. So unprofessional.
You kind of circle back to game company versus game company comparisons. Honestly, I see noting different from other software/systems ventures I have been around to make me say, “Hey the computer games industry are really unique in how they operate”. They are just software companies that either use private corporate capital or Venture capital. Period.
Both. This topic of the gaming industry and the working conditions and conversations like it comes up year after year.
Why do you think it’s necessary to even say you’re a creative industry with a fan culture? What is it about those two things that you think makes all the difference in the world with how you approach the idea of unions and how unions work?
Following yesterday’s casual (I guess boastful) 100-hour work week remark, Rockstar have released a statement to Kotaku:
There seems to be some confusion arising from my interview with Harold Goldberg. The point I was trying to make in the article was related to how the narrative and dialogue in the game was crafted, which was mostly what we talked about, not about the different processes of the wider team. After working on the game for seven years, the senior writing team, which consists of four people, Mike Unsworth, Rupert Humphries, Lazlow and myself, had, as we always do, three weeks of intense work when we wrapped everything up. Three weeks, not years. We have all worked together for at least 12 years now, and feel we need this to get everything finished. After so many years of getting things organized and ready on this project, we needed this to check and finalize everything.
More importantly, we obviously don’t expect anyone else to work this way. Across the whole company, we have some senior people who work very hard purely because they’re passionate about a project, or their particular work, and we believe that passion shows in the games we release. But that additional effort is a choice, and we don’t ask or expect anyone to work anything like this. Lots of other senior people work in an entirely different way and are just as productive – I’m just not one of them! No one, senior or junior, is ever forced to work hard. I believe we go to great lengths to run a business that cares about its people, and to make the company a great place for them to work.
Heh, the other alternative is just that every project has a problem because you’ve got guys who are interested in games and have less interest in good software engineering practices.
Jinx Mando will definitely be in Star Wars IX.
500 quatloos for a photo still of this Jinx Mando!
A couple things:
- I follow a few people on twitter who are unionized actors. They’re not popular people but it’s a job that makes them a living. They’re all heavily pushing game developers to unionize specifically because of their positive experiences with their own unions - primarily the fact that they work from contract to contract and many off months in between. The union helps cover their medical expenses and provides other benefits in those off months.
Game developers are effectively contract employees in a similar way but without the same protections because of how studios are mis managed to death. Layoffs after almost every project. Game developers would probably be more effective in incompetent management situations if they were unionized to protect themselves.
- imagine how much less necessary excessive hours would be if the top talent wasn’t constantly burning out because of mismanagement. So much institutional knowledge and insanely talented people leave the industry for good every year because of endless crunch. Whether programmers, artists, or even the good project managers. If upper management keeps working their employees to death they’re continuing to ruin their workforce for the long run. Unionization wouldn’t just protect the workers, it would also preserve talent for the long run thereby reducing costs for that management anyway.
That’s not to say unions can’t also have their problems. My family has firsthand experience with unions who grew too powerful and genuinely lazy leading to the car industry self destructing. But right now the balance of power is entirely on shitty employees and it’s time to try tilting that balance again.
With crunch and burnout, I always feel especially bad for designers. It’s such a specialized skillset, and unlike programmers or artists who have more choices to move in and out of game development, a designer’s kind of married to the medium.
I worked more 100-hour weeks in residency than I care to remember. Sometimes for months in a row.
How would that be the case? To make the discussion concrete, how would unionization deal wuth or improve situations like the one recounted by Chris Avellone at Obsidian ?
This is a genuine question.
My standard workweek when overseas was 84 hours. That included the whole sleeping in a tent with a generator that worked sporadically for power, non-existent internet and bad food.
Also how do you unionize, for example, 3D game graphics developer types but not ones working on third party software not in the game industry?
You’re a doctor, aren’t you? That’s a different kind of job. I would call it service rather than just work.
I’ve always wondered about the purpose of this, and the few doctors I know very well tend to just shrug and say that’s just how it’s done. Would you say it’s an effective crucible for identifying who could handle the stress? Do you think it made you a better doctor?
It certainly is in the Military.
We should talk about this in another thread not to derail this one. There are upsides and downsides but from the perspective of training (especially in surgery) I would say the upsides far outweigh the downsides.
I’m always derailing threads. But ok, I’ll try to find a more appropriate one.
You are merely a curious person. And open-minded.