6 ms·

Former game developer here. Game studios don't need unions, they need better management. Basically, an 18-year-old QA tester gets promoted to lead QA then ass

by pkaler 7y ago

Former game developer here. Game studios don't need unions, they need better management. Basically, an 18-year-old QA tester gets promoted to lead QA then associate producer then assistant producer and then producer. The producer manages by industry lore. And industry lore is terrible. Unionization is not going to fix the management training problem.

Apocryphon 7y ago
But if management has no incentive to fix itself, what pressure is there to force them to? Negative press and bad reputation of industry conditions doesn't seem to be helping. The investors don't care. Customers don't care. So the workers themselves need to push back.
einpoklum 7y ago
> Game studios don't need unions, they need better management. If workers unionize [1], they can force bad management out, or curtail its badness, or in extreme cases - replace management with collective ownership. [1] - in an independent, non-corrupt union.
- manfredo 7y ago
  Or game developers can just hire non-union employees. The reality is that game development studios can get away with poor work life balance because there's people who are passionate about making games and are willing to accept poor working conditions to get a chance at their dream job. This Stage Actor's Guild exists, but aspiring actors still have to work second jobs to put a roof over their heads. When a job is a lot of people's dream job, conditions are going to be poor because the supply of potential labor is very large as compared to the demand. Also, I have no idea where you get the idea that unions can somehow force collective ownership. The company belongs to the shareholders, unions don't magically get to take other people's property.
  - Apocryphon 7y ago
    Employees usually receive shares as comp, don't they? I will say that the horror stories and bad press coming out of the video gaming industry will possibly have a chilling effect for new grads who would otherwise jump straight into it. Eventually management will run out of non-union workers to hire. Or the non-union workers themselves will demand better treatment.
    - monocasa 7y ago
      > Employees usually receive shares as comp, don't they? Very rarely do employees receive equity as compensation.
    - manfredo 7y ago
      > Employees usually receive shares as comp, don't they? Non-voting shares, yes. Voting shares are usually only given to very senior people, if ever, and not nearly enough to form anything close to a controlling ownership of the company. > I will say that the horror stories and bad press coming out of the video gaming industry will possibly have a chilling effect for new grads who would otherwise jump straight into it. Eventually management will run out of non-union workers to hire. Or the non-union workers themselves will demand better treatment. Decades of game development suggests otherwise. Like acting, it's people's dream job. And when the supply of labor exceeds the demand workers do not have leverage.
      - Apocryphon 7y ago
        For decades there was no interest nor action towards unionizing in game development. Greater scrutiny into the industry from modern game journalism, and perhaps worsening experiences as the industry heads towards Hollywood-like AAA titles produced by monolithic studios, is surely causing something to change.
        manfredo 7y ago
        Game developers' experiencing the misery of crunch time and layoffs is something I've heard about firsthand since the early 2000s at the latest. Reading accounts from earlier games' development cycles suggests that this has been common for even longer than that. Game development has always had cyclical labor demands and tight deadlines. I think you need to qualify the claim that these experiences are worsening. In fact, from most of the veteran developers I've talked to report the opposite: before the proliferation of the internet crunch time was way more serious since patching was not a viable option. Nowadays it's pretty much the norm that games have significant bugs for the first week or two and still need to mature after release. This creates greater room for error and less pressure to fix every bug before release.
m0zg 7y ago
Think of it in terms of something like the second amendment. Unions are similar to weapons in that they're the only real limit on the power your management has over you. The last line of defense, if you will. Without coordinated response provided by unions you _can't_ make your employer change their labor practices. If they want to make you work 16 hours a day for the same pay, there's nothing stopping them. In an industry known for abusing its employees (which, BTW, does not extend to software engineering in general, in my opinion - software engineers are treated well almost everywhere else), you _need_ pushback to end abuse. It's as simple as that. Even if unionizations fail, they still serve as a signaling mechanism - if things get bad enough, they'll start succeeding, and that's the outcome employers would like to avoid. The solution is simple: they should pull their heads out of their collective asses and start treating employee abuse as a real problem. If there's no downside for them to not doing this, they won't do it. It's as simple as that.
BrainInAJar 7y ago
Unionization literally is there to fix management problems. By giving workers a say as to what management is allowed to do

by pkaler 7y ago

Apocryphon 7y ago

But if management has no incentive to fix itself, what pressure is there to force them to? Negative press and bad reputation of industry conditions doesn't seem to be helping. The investors don't care. Customers don't care. So the workers themselves need to push back.

einpoklum 7y ago

> Game studios don't need unions, they need better management. If workers unionize [1], they can force bad management out, or curtail its badness, or in extreme cases - replace management with collective ownership. [1] - in an independent, non-corrupt union.

manfredo 7y ago
Or game developers can just hire non-union employees. The reality is that game development studios can get away with poor work life balance because there's people who are passionate about making games and are willing to accept poor working conditions to get a chance at their dream job. This Stage Actor's Guild exists, but aspiring actors still have to work second jobs to put a roof over their heads. When a job is a lot of people's dream job, conditions are going to be poor because the supply of potential labor is very large as compared to the demand. Also, I have no idea where you get the idea that unions can somehow force collective ownership. The company belongs to the shareholders, unions don't magically get to take other people's property.
- Apocryphon 7y ago
  Employees usually receive shares as comp, don't they? I will say that the horror stories and bad press coming out of the video gaming industry will possibly have a chilling effect for new grads who would otherwise jump straight into it. Eventually management will run out of non-union workers to hire. Or the non-union workers themselves will demand better treatment.
  - monocasa 7y ago
    > Employees usually receive shares as comp, don't they? Very rarely do employees receive equity as compensation.
  - manfredo 7y ago
    > Employees usually receive shares as comp, don't they? Non-voting shares, yes. Voting shares are usually only given to very senior people, if ever, and not nearly enough to form anything close to a controlling ownership of the company. > I will say that the horror stories and bad press coming out of the video gaming industry will possibly have a chilling effect for new grads who would otherwise jump straight into it. Eventually management will run out of non-union workers to hire. Or the non-union workers themselves will demand better treatment. Decades of game development suggests otherwise. Like acting, it's people's dream job. And when the supply of labor exceeds the demand workers do not have leverage.
    - Apocryphon 7y ago
      For decades there was no interest nor action towards unionizing in game development. Greater scrutiny into the industry from modern game journalism, and perhaps worsening experiences as the industry heads towards Hollywood-like AAA titles produced by monolithic studios, is surely causing something to change.
      - manfredo 7y ago
        Game developers' experiencing the misery of crunch time and layoffs is something I've heard about firsthand since the early 2000s at the latest. Reading accounts from earlier games' development cycles suggests that this has been common for even longer than that. Game development has always had cyclical labor demands and tight deadlines. I think you need to qualify the claim that these experiences are worsening. In fact, from most of the veteran developers I've talked to report the opposite: before the proliferation of the internet crunch time was way more serious since patching was not a viable option. Nowadays it's pretty much the norm that games have significant bugs for the first week or two and still need to mature after release. This creates greater room for error and less pressure to fix every bug before release.

m0zg 7y ago

Think of it in terms of something like the second amendment. Unions are similar to weapons in that they're the only real limit on the power your management has over you. The last line of defense, if you will. Without coordinated response provided by unions you _can't_ make your employer change their labor practices. If they want to make you work 16 hours a day for the same pay, there's nothing stopping them. In an industry known for abusing its employees (which, BTW, does not extend to software engineering in general, in my opinion - software engineers are treated well almost everywhere else), you _need_ pushback to end abuse. It's as simple as that. Even if unionizations fail, they still serve as a signaling mechanism - if things get bad enough, they'll start succeeding, and that's the outcome employers would like to avoid. The solution is simple: they should pull their heads out of their collective asses and start treating employee abuse as a real problem. If there's no downside for them to not doing this, they won't do it. It's as simple as that.

BrainInAJar 7y ago

Unionization literally is there to fix management problems. By giving workers a say as to what management is allowed to do