Game Developer Unions

For more than one definition of curious, most likely.

Here’s the thing, people are making games, not curing cancer. It’s entertainment.

Unionize away IMO. I actually doubt they’ll be able to do it, because there’s no lack of ways to work around it, you can always subcontract to some other country, and it’s not like in acting, where you can’t subcontract whatever Chris is your star, but good luck.

Salaried employees have little regulatory protection in the US, it seems to make sense that unionizing is probably the way they’re going to get a whole lot of say over the industry as a whole. Whether that’s likely, meh.

I don’t think salaried workers are gonna get OT pay any time soon from government regulation, so the only way that’s gonna work is by collective bargaining.

A service instead of just work… what do you mean? How are you defining service from work?

If someone is not wiling to walk away, if they really think I have to have this job or there is nothing else; I can’t train in another field. I can’t find work somewhere else. I am not wiling to start-over or jump ship, a union isn’t going to fix that.

Workers have choices. If the managers and owners know they have a bunch of scared employees who will work themselves to death and just cling onto to their existing lifeline and sit there praying not to get laid-off, well that’s not going to be fixed because there is a union in place. Getting a union in place has risks too. Sure there are laws against retaliation but you have to work through the system for that. Heck I’ve been a part of two groups that started union talks and then walked away because management got scared and basically fixed stuff.

Let’s not forget there are downsides to unionization. If there wasn’t, I think a lot more would be involved in unions in even more industries. That special thing everyone is talking about, whether it’s the site, a specific employee, or you know… you. You lose some power, sometimes a lot, by giving that power to someone else (gross oversimplification.) to bargain for you.

You can’t really have it both ways though. You can’t say we’re ultra special, no one compares, everyone is different and then dismiss this group as not really skilled compared to us, mark that group as too skilled, this group as a service, and this one well they’re just factory workers. You just slowly eliminate the rest of the working world and then ask these same groups to offer suggestions. You’ve already decided they’re too different to help… but that’s not really true. That line of thinking has to change. Once gaming accepts they’re like everyone else, then everyone else is in a better position to actually help.

I feel like every time this topic comes up we wind up with a bunch of posts trying to “prove” to gaming why our situation, our work, our positions, our companies, hell our industries “count.” And then you step back and realize, they’re asking for help, not the other way around but making everyone else prove they’re worthy. It’s so weird.

Doing service means to sacrifice something. I think that resident doctors, teachers, nurses, police, fire brigades, the military and many other other public servants fall into that category. Most of those jobs mean that you work long hours, in bad conditions, dealing with stuff that most citizens either actively avoid or wouldn’t touch with a barge pole.

Note that being a service doesn’t mean they don’t have the right to unionize, on the contrary.

I personally think those jobs are of an essentially different nature than being an academic, a web programmer or developing video games. I personally highly respect those individuals who choose a career of service to their community over their personal gain or comfort.

Its a good question., I have rather a lot of opinions about this , sadly some of it I cannot share right now but I am hoping the current studio (unannounced but i can talk about it in the abstract) I am setting up and running will be a model. It has some basic principles.

1.) Flat org with fair salary & compensation
2.) Only hire very senior people. Use external partners for everything outside of the core game.
3.) Bonus plan is a pool split among the studio
4.) Remove bureaucracy. Keep a high teeth to tail ratio.
5.) Be realistic

We designed it to overcome the following problems I see in games.
a.) game developers in most game studios spend the majority of time NOT working on games. Literally the majority of time is spent commuting or dealing with work nonsense or meetings. None of that has anything to do with game development. So one way to reduce crunch is to take back the majority of your work time for actual work.

b.) bigger teams go slower. fairly self evident. I have run studios of less than six people and studios of more then 350 people. The bigger ones move slower, always. More people working on a single project = more friction.

c.) financial interests are not aligned. If a game is a hit (lets say $100M+) then who gets rich? If a game is a dud then who loses money? In most large games companies the answer to both those questions is, the investors & senior management. I think the risk should be spread to the team and the reward. “aligning interests”: as VC’s put it.

d.) all estimates for construction are wrong. Games are no different. time & money should be realistic and come with pad. If you have secured funding and time then it makes life a LOT easier.

We shall see how it goes but currently its working well for us. When you hire only seniors you remove at a stroke most production & people issues & project management , all of which is a waste of time in my experience.

Experienced game developers know how to make games. Let them. Also the bonus plan not only encourages everyone to be extremely picky about hires (“hey that person is taking from my bonus pool, do we really need to hire someone?”) and obviously encourages us to use professional external: audio, writing, art & animation departments instead of building internally.

The flat org removes lots of needless meetings. No need to meet on how to implement feature X because the designer programmer has done it before, if she needs help then she will ask , no need to waste her time scheduling her or having meetings about it. Oh its annual review time. Here is your pay rise same as everyone else’s. Lets get back to work. No wasting a week of everyone’s time doing reviews which nobody ever reads but everyone resents.

But its a VERY good question. Like i say I hope to help prove that the is a better way to make games. But I could fall flat on my face so we shall see.

So, does this mean most of their workers don’t care about their work and Rockstar is fine with that? I’m going out on a limb and say that’s not how it goes.
The fact that this is a common way in many fields to say there isn’t an issue is interesting, to say the least.

Yeah…I’m sure there’s no actual official rule, but if one guy works 10 more hours than everyone else, and is at least reasonably productive, who do you think is going to get bonuses, raises, etc first? And the more rewarded they get, the more incentive there is for everyone else to keep pace or exceed them. And then sooner or later people who aren’t putting in that time seem like they’re not team players, not invested, whatever. And it feeds on itself.

I’m seeing a fair amount of “oh, these aren’t unusual working conditions and they have more perks than this other job that has these conditions” in this thread and my reaction isn’t “gosh they should quit whining”, it’s “these conditions aren’t reasonable and probably should be a lot more unusual than they are”.

I dont know him, but what he may of been saying is that in games development sometimes you are so in love with a project you just work for hours and hours just because its fun to do so. Which is true. On the flip side I regard it as the leaderships job to actively stop people working that many hours and make them feel good about taking time off.

When you say something like someone is passionate and/or senior so they do these things, it implies that anyone not doing these things is not passionate. You can love your job and your life, as in valuing both and still showcase xyz feeling in a project. aka, I don’t buy those kind of phrases either. Whether it’s on the books or not. if it’s an expectation, it’s pretty much a rule.

Fair enough, he might. I’ve just seen it a bit too often to think that what is meant by passion in general is work hours, regardless of productivity (as pointed above).
I’m being a bit selfish about it, but with minor health issues I’d be both more productive and happier working and earning less, but I haven’t found it to be an option.

Union is almost by definition for the peons, i.e. people who have no bargaining power on their own. Senior people don’t need union.

I don’t know what union in US is about, but joining a union here means paying a reasonable monthly fee, and then if and when things go wrong in your job, you can go to the union and ask for help (e.g. harassment, bullying). Usually it means have access to a union lawyer as well. And when it comes to negotiate salary and hours, the union can negotiate on your behalf.

Right now, not just in gaming industry, employees have so very little bargaining power vs. employer, IMO exactly because the pendulum is swinging too far in favour of employers. Especially if there is foreign competition: if you don’t want to do the job, they can just go to India or China and find someone willing to do the same for a lot less. Or they ship those workers in on migrant visa, because they don’t know how valuable they really are, and will work for as little as possible. (But, e.g. you can’t exactly ship doctors from India or China and expect them to practice medicine up to standard, at least not immediately.) Founding and joining a union is one way to swing the pendulum back in favour of peons.

I only know it via mass media, but US unions tend to have more of the negative issues (though the problems exist in many other places), mainly: catering only to those who are currently employed, sometimes protecting incompetence (as opposed to human mistakes); having a class system within the union where entry is mandatory; or being caught by the status quo and demanding an excessive amount or workers per job because they accept that the system fails at providing them an alternative for their career. I don’t know how common it is for them to have company unions who just say yes to the employer all the time, but I’ve seen a reference the other day.
There are many potential issues with unions, and I’ve read examples from a few places. If the workers are not engaged, it’s another political tool that goes corrupt - which may still be better in some cases, but worse in others. And things still have to get a bit worse for workers to engage, I’m afraid.

Unions are designed to protect your job and giving you more bargaining power than you would alone.

Is there a rule that says your manager has to give your schedule at least a week in advance and they try and change it the night before or else your fired, well… that’s not going to happen. Are you over 60 and feel they’re trying to replace you with younger and cheaper workers by forcing you out… harder to do with a union. Are you watching the top pocket a bunch of bonuses and benefits while they tell everyone else they don’t have money to give raises this year, well they can still do that and they might have a fight on their hand when everyone walks out the next year . I mean it’s the power of one vs the power of many. All the negative stuff can happen but… if programmers, designers, artists in gaming are in such a power disadvantage that they’re turning themselves into under compensated gig employees without the benefit of being an actual gig employee, what are you losing by looking at a union. It sounds like, based on what the people in the industry keep saying. work life balance, sucks, pay, terrible, very little if any job security, people are burning out after a few years… like all of that is worth experiencing over an over again just because one day you might wind up with an employee that is hard to get rid off? Unions don’t force you to hire bad employees.

Yes, but it wouldn’t revolve around games. It couldn’t. It would have to be much bigger.

I know, but I was just relating to the experiences of my designer friend that’s approaching 50, has a family, and works in the AAA space, which we all know isn’t very secure. He has decades of experience, but would find it tricky to just jump into a new field at his age.

I liked the idea of a tech based worker union, instead of a narrower industry one, after all tech employees exist, in large numbers, in several companies and industry outside of say Google and Intel but this… this article makes it sound like they’re not really addressing the complaints. The be no evil, Muslim database, and strengthening positions against Trump don’t really seem to address the complaints the gaming employees have.

I totally get that someone fresh out of college probably doesn’t want to go work for a company that’s going to create the next Jewish hit-list and mimic the Nazis 21st century style, but this doesn’t really address the issues of working 100 hour weeks like it’s normal, like hard crunch just happens, all the time, by design. That’s just shit project managing. Sure things happen and we all get there once in awhile, but not as many other industries have spouses writing letters about it. This whole work yourself as quickly as you can to the next lay-off seems piss poor too.

But yeah a wider net would certainly help.

Well this could be tricky for anyone. You could be able to go anywhere this year and five -ten years from now not as hot.

But here’s the thing. We’re experiencing record low unemployment. There are more jobs open than bodies to fill them. There is a ton of skills out there, lots of experience and fresh and energetic eyes coming of educational programs. This should be one of the best time for a lot of employees to really have a position of power, have the stronger position with their employer. If they don’t have that, like most of gaming employees don’t have that… I don’t see it improving when we hit our downturn. I mean… if not now, when?

He probably just had a bad run experiencing multiple project cancellations and layoffs in a row.

That said, I thought one big issue associated with crunch was experienced or senior people leaving the industry due to burn out, so are those people filling the many studio vacancies mostly new to the industry?

Yes, forget all the other stuff in the link. The point I was sharing is that Unions usually work around industries much larger than the Game industry. It’s a function of skillsets on a very large scale. That is how they work, historically. Telecommunications Workers, for instance.

When I say effective in this context - where management is incompetent - I mean purely in mental health and personal productivity terms. Each individual will undoubtedly be able to do a better job if they have a modicum of job security and decent working conditions, and if management is so terrible that those employees still can’t accomplish anything collectively, at least their lives won’t be wrecked along the way.