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Would a union make life better for the starry-eyed people entering the industry. The only parallel I can really draw is the movie industry, which also has lots

Would a union make life better for the starry-eyed people entering the industry. The only parallel I can really draw is the movie industry, which also has lots of starry-eyed people entering it and has a union. I'm not sure it's better, I've talked to a number of people who had to work for years at very low rates just to get their SAG card, after they got it they had a lot more earning power. But you still get the same effect of low wages for entry level people. That seems tough to avoid when you always have a bunch of young talent flooding the market.

learc83 8y ago
The problem with game dev isn't the entry level jobs. Also a game dev union would probably work more like the film and TV trade/technical unions than SAG. I know people who work in film doing things from lighting to sound to driving. Their working conditions and pay are much better than they would be without the unions.
- jdoliner 8y ago
  I don't think lighting, sound and stunt people have the same influx of young starry eyed people coming into the profession though. That's what makes unions really difficult. Same thing applies to academia, which is arguably worse than both game-devs and actors.
  - vichu 8y ago
    From a friend, I've heard great things about the treatment they got as part of The Animation Guild, and I imagine that that demographic of artists and creators is quite similar to the "young starry eyed people" going into the game industry. In fact, there's likely a good amount of overlap of artists that have worked in both (supported slightly by anecdata of friends who are 3d artists).
  - trentlott 8y ago
    I'm not sure that's true Plenty of starry-eyed people enter academia. There isn't quite the same unionization gateway into academic jobs, but mostly just markers of effective work - papers, grants, etc
- manfredo 8y ago
  The game development industry would probably start outsourcing even more tasks if unionization takes hold. If relatively cheap roles like QA and art asset production suddenly get more expensive then setting up remote development offices abroad becomes much better from a cost benefit perspective. Unionizing would likely bring better pay to those jobs that still exist, but make it a lot harder to get one of those jobs to begin with.
  - Pfhreak 8y ago
    Most studios need leads/experienced developers/artists/audio folk in house. If they are unionized, wouldn't they have leverage over how and when outsourcing was used?
    - manfredo 8y ago
      Maybe. But they're competing against developers that aren't subject to these limitations. Art assets often make up the bulk (50-70%) of the development costs of modern games. If one studio has to pay 3D modelers $50,000 a year and another only has to pay $10,000 a year (not to mention no healthcare, retirement fund, etc) then the former is at a huge disadvantage. Outsourcing isn't a hypothetical. Naughty Dog started outsourcing art asset production to Asia with Uncharted 3. Music recording has been outsourced for at least a decade. Sure, the company hires experienced people (like art directors and composers) in house but the heavy lifting is done offshore.
      - Mirioron 8y ago
        The former Soviet countries probably have a bunch of low cost talent as well.
      - drawbars 8y ago
        The heavy lifting in game music is not outsourced. It’s really only the orchestra musicians that are outsourced. The music direction, supervision, engineering, orchestrating, score prep and copy services, editing, mixing,mastering, integration and testing is still done in-house or by a contracted music service, usually US based. The reason for outsourcing orchestras is ironically to avoid overly strict contracts with AFM, the musicians union. This is why Nashville is bursting with video game scoring sessions. Tennessee is a right-to-work state.
- trimbo 8y ago
  > Their working conditions and pay are much better than they would be without the unions. This is true, but those are gig jobs, not full-time jobs. A show might last 8-12 weeks. The crew need the union just to carry over health care and retirement benefits, and it's less about higher pay. In games, the art department might need these kinds of unions, since many of those people are hired on contracts for a game. (Though a lot of art creation has gone overseas already.) I don't really see a union being necessary for engineers or game designers for now, for the same reasons it's not needed at tech companies (engineers are hard to hire/retain).
  - CydeWeys 8y ago
    The working conditions are horrible. That's why unions are necessary, and it's been the main driver of unionization over the centuries. Ancillary benefits don't drive unionization nearly as much as core horrible working conditions and bad pay.
    - wutbrodo 8y ago
      The labor movement's utility in improving horrible working conditions was based on the fact that laborers were considered to be coerced into these conditions by the threat of starving to death (or the modern-developed-country equivalent of standard-of-living resource constraints). I don't know much about game development, but aren't the majority of the relevant skills for most roles quite transferable? If the working conditions are miserable enough that unions are necessary, what is keeping people from switching to a similar role in an industry without substandard conditions? Is it the broader problem that these roles aren't well-treated in any industry? (certainly not the case for developers, but that's just one role). These aren't rhetorical questions trying to make a point, I'm genuinely curious.
      - jplayer01 8y ago
        There is no "similar" role. There's no other industry that is involved in making games. That's why it's the video game industry. That's what they do. If you leave that industry, you're not making games anymore. And that's what people want to do. And before you or anybody else argues, that isn't reason enough for shitty work hours, ridiculous amounts of crunch, complete lack of life balance, etc. to be acceptable. The same way it's not okay to pay teachers or nurses or firefighters so much less just because they might be fulfilling a passion in helping other people. I'm not sure why one should need to leave the industry one wants to work in before one is afforded a job that doesn't guide one directly towards burnout within 5 years. And even if these people leave, there's plenty of young blood who'll gladly work in these conditions because they want to make video games, so nothing changes.
nathanvanfleet 8y ago
Sounds like the union works well for the people in it
- allannienhuis 8y ago
  isn't that the point?
  - wutbrodo 8y ago
    Ideally it should be working well for society, right? (by whatever metric you choose, not simply an easily measurable one like GDP). It could go either way, in theory, even if you narrow your optimization objective to the working class. If a union benefits its members and has second-order effects that benefit other workers, then great. OTOH, if its second-order effects on the economy or industry come in some way at the expense of other workers, then it seems fair to call this out.
    - boyband6666 8y ago
      See an example of transport unions in the UK. Tube drivers are in the top 5%/10% of income in the UK, for a 35 hour or so week, and a lot of other benefits. The union power has done amazing things for them... but at a huge cost (albeit dispersed) cost to the rest of society. Fully agree the ideal is where you have both. Germany seems to have good models where unions improve the efficiency of companies in giving a point of contact for negotiations, and helping the company succeed - winning together.
      - tialaramex 8y ago
        Yup. It's very much about putting their members first and too bad for everything else. Railway Signalers are unionised. After a series of incidents the recommendation was that all signaller's maximum shift length be restricted to 8 hours to avoid fatigue. Same as air traffic control. Unions should be on board with that right? Nope. Signallers liked 12 hour shifts. 3 working days is 36 hours and that's your whole week. Nobody was going to pay them the same wages for 24 hours work, so they'd be putting in an extra day and a half per week to make it up. So the UK rail unions fought this safety change. That's what to expect from unions. Good for individual employees, bad for society as a whole.
germinalphrase 8y ago
Can’t speak for SAG - but having worked non-union camera crew jobs and union jobs as a member of the Cinematographers Guild, my experience was day/night with regard to pay, safety, and limited (and compensated) hours. 100 percent would go back to union film jobs.
- yyyymmddhhmmss 8y ago
  Same. Absolute life changer.
egypturnash 8y ago
Another parallel: the animation industry. Life's a lot better after you get into a union shop, according to my friends who stuck it out longer than I did - the studios are constantly pushing to have one person's work duties expand to what several people used to do without paying them anything more, and the unions fight back against that and generally make sure that if you can keep picking up union jobs, you can afford to live in Los Angeles. Like games, animation is an industry full of eager kids with stars in their eyes.
HelloNurse 8y ago
While entry-level actors in Hollywood might struggle indefinitely to find enough very small jobs (maybe even a single day) to qualify for SAG membership, entry-level software developers easily get full-time positions, with a duration of at least a few weeks and more realistically a few months: they are immediately past the stage of "entering" anything and in need of unions.
7Z7 8y ago
The movie equivalent is VFX, which has no real unions.

learc83 8y ago

The problem with game dev isn't the entry level jobs. Also a game dev union would probably work more like the film and TV trade/technical unions than SAG. I know people who work in film doing things from lighting to sound to driving. Their working conditions and pay are much better than they would be without the unions.

jdoliner 8y ago
I don't think lighting, sound and stunt people have the same influx of young starry eyed people coming into the profession though. That's what makes unions really difficult. Same thing applies to academia, which is arguably worse than both game-devs and actors.
- vichu 8y ago
  From a friend, I've heard great things about the treatment they got as part of The Animation Guild, and I imagine that that demographic of artists and creators is quite similar to the "young starry eyed people" going into the game industry. In fact, there's likely a good amount of overlap of artists that have worked in both (supported slightly by anecdata of friends who are 3d artists).
- trentlott 8y ago
  I'm not sure that's true Plenty of starry-eyed people enter academia. There isn't quite the same unionization gateway into academic jobs, but mostly just markers of effective work - papers, grants, etc
manfredo 8y ago
The game development industry would probably start outsourcing even more tasks if unionization takes hold. If relatively cheap roles like QA and art asset production suddenly get more expensive then setting up remote development offices abroad becomes much better from a cost benefit perspective. Unionizing would likely bring better pay to those jobs that still exist, but make it a lot harder to get one of those jobs to begin with.
- Pfhreak 8y ago
  Most studios need leads/experienced developers/artists/audio folk in house. If they are unionized, wouldn't they have leverage over how and when outsourcing was used?
  - manfredo 8y ago
    Maybe. But they're competing against developers that aren't subject to these limitations. Art assets often make up the bulk (50-70%) of the development costs of modern games. If one studio has to pay 3D modelers $50,000 a year and another only has to pay $10,000 a year (not to mention no healthcare, retirement fund, etc) then the former is at a huge disadvantage. Outsourcing isn't a hypothetical. Naughty Dog started outsourcing art asset production to Asia with Uncharted 3. Music recording has been outsourced for at least a decade. Sure, the company hires experienced people (like art directors and composers) in house but the heavy lifting is done offshore.
    - Mirioron 8y ago
      The former Soviet countries probably have a bunch of low cost talent as well.
    - drawbars 8y ago
      The heavy lifting in game music is not outsourced. It’s really only the orchestra musicians that are outsourced. The music direction, supervision, engineering, orchestrating, score prep and copy services, editing, mixing,mastering, integration and testing is still done in-house or by a contracted music service, usually US based. The reason for outsourcing orchestras is ironically to avoid overly strict contracts with AFM, the musicians union. This is why Nashville is bursting with video game scoring sessions. Tennessee is a right-to-work state.
trimbo 8y ago
> Their working conditions and pay are much better than they would be without the unions. This is true, but those are gig jobs, not full-time jobs. A show might last 8-12 weeks. The crew need the union just to carry over health care and retirement benefits, and it's less about higher pay. In games, the art department might need these kinds of unions, since many of those people are hired on contracts for a game. (Though a lot of art creation has gone overseas already.) I don't really see a union being necessary for engineers or game designers for now, for the same reasons it's not needed at tech companies (engineers are hard to hire/retain).
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  The working conditions are horrible. That's why unions are necessary, and it's been the main driver of unionization over the centuries. Ancillary benefits don't drive unionization nearly as much as core horrible working conditions and bad pay.
  - wutbrodo 8y ago
    The labor movement's utility in improving horrible working conditions was based on the fact that laborers were considered to be coerced into these conditions by the threat of starving to death (or the modern-developed-country equivalent of standard-of-living resource constraints). I don't know much about game development, but aren't the majority of the relevant skills for most roles quite transferable? If the working conditions are miserable enough that unions are necessary, what is keeping people from switching to a similar role in an industry without substandard conditions? Is it the broader problem that these roles aren't well-treated in any industry? (certainly not the case for developers, but that's just one role). These aren't rhetorical questions trying to make a point, I'm genuinely curious.
    - jplayer01 8y ago
      There is no "similar" role. There's no other industry that is involved in making games. That's why it's the video game industry. That's what they do. If you leave that industry, you're not making games anymore. And that's what people want to do. And before you or anybody else argues, that isn't reason enough for shitty work hours, ridiculous amounts of crunch, complete lack of life balance, etc. to be acceptable. The same way it's not okay to pay teachers or nurses or firefighters so much less just because they might be fulfilling a passion in helping other people. I'm not sure why one should need to leave the industry one wants to work in before one is afforded a job that doesn't guide one directly towards burnout within 5 years. And even if these people leave, there's plenty of young blood who'll gladly work in these conditions because they want to make video games, so nothing changes.

nathanvanfleet 8y ago

Sounds like the union works well for the people in it

allannienhuis 8y ago
isn't that the point?
- wutbrodo 8y ago
  Ideally it should be working well for society, right? (by whatever metric you choose, not simply an easily measurable one like GDP). It could go either way, in theory, even if you narrow your optimization objective to the working class. If a union benefits its members and has second-order effects that benefit other workers, then great. OTOH, if its second-order effects on the economy or industry come in some way at the expense of other workers, then it seems fair to call this out.
  - boyband6666 8y ago
    See an example of transport unions in the UK. Tube drivers are in the top 5%/10% of income in the UK, for a 35 hour or so week, and a lot of other benefits. The union power has done amazing things for them... but at a huge cost (albeit dispersed) cost to the rest of society. Fully agree the ideal is where you have both. Germany seems to have good models where unions improve the efficiency of companies in giving a point of contact for negotiations, and helping the company succeed - winning together.
    - tialaramex 8y ago
      Yup. It's very much about putting their members first and too bad for everything else. Railway Signalers are unionised. After a series of incidents the recommendation was that all signaller's maximum shift length be restricted to 8 hours to avoid fatigue. Same as air traffic control. Unions should be on board with that right? Nope. Signallers liked 12 hour shifts. 3 working days is 36 hours and that's your whole week. Nobody was going to pay them the same wages for 24 hours work, so they'd be putting in an extra day and a half per week to make it up. So the UK rail unions fought this safety change. That's what to expect from unions. Good for individual employees, bad for society as a whole.

germinalphrase 8y ago

Can’t speak for SAG - but having worked non-union camera crew jobs and union jobs as a member of the Cinematographers Guild, my experience was day/night with regard to pay, safety, and limited (and compensated) hours. 100 percent would go back to union film jobs.

yyyymmddhhmmss 8y ago
Same. Absolute life changer.

egypturnash 8y ago

Another parallel: the animation industry. Life's a lot better after you get into a union shop, according to my friends who stuck it out longer than I did - the studios are constantly pushing to have one person's work duties expand to what several people used to do without paying them anything more, and the unions fight back against that and generally make sure that if you can keep picking up union jobs, you can afford to live in Los Angeles. Like games, animation is an industry full of eager kids with stars in their eyes.

HelloNurse 8y ago

While entry-level actors in Hollywood might struggle indefinitely to find enough very small jobs (maybe even a single day) to qualify for SAG membership, entry-level software developers easily get full-time positions, with a duration of at least a few weeks and more realistically a few months: they are immediately past the stage of "entering" anything and in need of unions.

7Z7 8y ago

The movie equivalent is VFX, which has no real unions.