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A big part of the root cause of sucky gamedev working conditions (and I'm speaking mainly about developers here, as that is what I have first hand experience wi

A big part of the root cause of sucky gamedev working conditions (and I'm speaking mainly about developers here, as that is what I have first hand experience with) is the fact that a lot of people just really want to work on games and choose to put up with it. This is especially true for developers; there are plenty of developer jobs out there that are nothing like your typical game studio, and the skills that game developers have are not so unique to that industry that they couldn't find work elsewhere if they wanted to. So yes, unions are one way to try to solve that problem. But if you choose to advocate for that, just be aware that attempting to solve these problems via a union would result in trading one set of problems for another: you'd probably end up with better working conditions, at a cost of new, artificial barriers to entry for all those people who want to work in that industry. Maybe it would be worth it, I don't know, but given the root causes, it definitely seems like this tradeoff would exist.

moate 8y ago
Unions do not exist to protect potential members, they exist to protect actual members. Saying "it's harder to break into the industry" isn't going to discourage someone already in the industry. This actually does hit on the major difficulty in unionizing, which is that people want to make games. It seems fun. It feels rewarding to point to something bringing joy to your friends and family and go "I helped make that!" Because this feeling is so common, it's extremely easy to find someone to to do the job for less. If you're a cost minded manager (instead of a results minded manager) you might be willing to take on 3 dirt cheap juniors to do the work of one really expensive senior dev.
- usefulcat 8y ago
  > Unions do not exist to protect potential members, they exist to protect actual members. Yes. Often (though not always) by increasing barriers to entry. Either directly, for example by requiring union membership, or indirectly, by increasing the cost of labor, which could mean that companies in the industry will higher fewer people in aggregate.
deleted 8y ago
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moate 8y ago

Unions do not exist to protect potential members, they exist to protect actual members. Saying "it's harder to break into the industry" isn't going to discourage someone already in the industry. This actually does hit on the major difficulty in unionizing, which is that people want to make games. It seems fun. It feels rewarding to point to something bringing joy to your friends and family and go "I helped make that!" Because this feeling is so common, it's extremely easy to find someone to to do the job for less. If you're a cost minded manager (instead of a results minded manager) you might be willing to take on 3 dirt cheap juniors to do the work of one really expensive senior dev.

usefulcat 8y ago
> Unions do not exist to protect potential members, they exist to protect actual members. Yes. Often (though not always) by increasing barriers to entry. Either directly, for example by requiring union membership, or indirectly, by increasing the cost of labor, which could mean that companies in the industry will higher fewer people in aggregate.

deleted 8y ago

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