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> The reason for this dangerous combo? You’re working your dream job. Doesn't that make it a fair trade? Musicians generally don't make a killing either.
by thunky 4y ago
> The reason for this dangerous combo? You’re working your dream job.
Doesn't that make it a fair trade? Musicians generally don't make a killing either.
- RupertWiser 4y agoI’m not sure it’s fair if the product ends up making a boat loads of money. Games are high risk but a very lucrative industry. Just look at how successful football players were in getting a slice of the pie. I’d still consider that a dream job.
- cool_dude85 4y agoNot that successful, assuming you're talking about American football. The players as a whole get a bit less than half of all revenue coming in despite being the ones to actually, you know, play the game.
- nordsieck 4y agoFrom what I can tell, that's fundamentally because of the limited number of franchises. The situation is a bit like cabs in NY city before Uber/Lyft - the medallion owners were the ones who were making the real money.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- giantg2 4y agoWell, they (and the others) should be getting even less. States or cities subsidizing stadiums isn't as beneficial as originally thought. Those making obscene amounts of money from a public resource should probably contribute more to the infrastructure required to make that money.
- nend 4y agoThat sounds a lot more successful than most other industries. I don't think software engineers, or retail employees are getting half of the business' revenue. That sounds like a pro union example.
- robertlagrant 4y ago> Just look at how successful football players were in getting a slice of the pie. I’d still consider that a dream job. In this case they are the product, and there are a lot of customers. Plenty of people working on the things that make those players valuable, building and staffing stadiums, and filming and broadcasting events worldwide, that don't get a share. Because they aren't the product.
- factsarelolz 4y ago> that don't get a share They wouldn't have those jobs if the players or the league did not exist. That's their share. They make a lively hood off the product's operations.
- robertlagrant 4y agoI agree. Check the comment I'm replying to for more.
- factsarelolz 4y agoCould you link? I reviewed you comment history and don't know which specific reply you're talking about in this thread. Thanks!
- Quarrelsome 4y agosure but the product is puppets and the devs are arguably the puppeteers.
- robertlagrant 4y agoWhat do you mean?
- nemo44x 4y agoFootball players aren’t replaceable. At least not at the level people are willing to pay too dollar to watch.
- aapl88889 4y agoYes they are. College football gets big ratings every year with replaced players.
- thunky 4y ago> College football gets big ratings every year with replaced players. We're talking about professionals. If the Chiefs could replace Patrick Mahomes and save themselves $450,000,000 without impacting their business, they would.
- adamsmith143 4y agoThe same people that think they're an irreplaceable 10x engineer think athletes are replaceable cogs... imagine that.
- Ekaros 4y agoAnd how many Patrick Mahomes is there in Chiefs? Dozen? Dunno amount of players per team in not-football.
- readams 4y agoWorth noting that Football is a legal cartel, explicitly excluded from antitrust law. You can't really extrapolate much from it as an example.
- pmyteh 4y agoIt's true of association football (soccer) as well, and that's much less cartel-ised. The players have successfully extracted such a high proportion of the surplus that the returns for the club owners as a group are negative.
- jkingsbery 4y ago(I'm assuming by football you mean American football) It's not really a fair comparison. The NFL is a monopoly, so there is no way for athletes to vote with their feet. At various times in the past, in order to negotiate the NFLPA has had to decertify in order to sue the league. The NFL is also not a good proxy, because the average career for an NFL player is 2-3 years, and it is a physically dangerous job.
- Quarrelsome 4y agoThe analogy works with European soccer as well though, which isn't as much of a monopoly (given that the European model isn't franchise based).
- 411111111111111 4y agoSoccer does have a pretty big difference though: it isn't particularly dangerous and there are players that participate for a decade and more. That's also why it's not as centralized... Players aren't quiet as endangered when entering, so they're likely more willing to participate in games with smaller payouts.
- Quarrelsome 4y agoI would argue that we're overvaluing the level of danger here. All athletes risk their entire career being cut short due to injury. What the European footballing system does (by not being franchised) is allow there to be multiple levels below the "top" level which then justifies the number of children trained in the game so there are careers (of varying degrees of profitability) for many of them. However what we are discussing is rather the levels of money at the top of such an industry and that concept applies to both sports. Where Ronaldo can earn £25m in a year at Manchester United while still having his "dream job". Football in Europe since the Bosman ruling has allowed its players to share in the wealth of the industry; one could argue that programmers in the gaming industry are not afforded that same. It remains an interesting discussion as to exactly why that is and I think the risks that workers take are not as relevant to the amount of money available in the game and scarcity of the best employees available; which results in such inflationary salaries for the very best employees.
- charcircuit 4y agoIf a product makes a boatload of money how is it fair to the business to force them to pay more. What if the game instead went over budget and flopped? Should the workers now owe money to the company? Businesses that can figure out how to make the most money with the resources available to them deserve to make that money and it's unfair to take that money from them.
- lukas099 4y agoBeing an NFL football player means you are in like the top 0.0001% of players in a very popular sport, so it's natural that you'd have some leverage.
- mmcdermott 4y agoWith the added ingredient that fans follow players for a mixture of ability and personal brand. In that sense, it shares some similarities to acting. Names act as box office draws in ways that aren't purely about acting talent.
- Manuel_D 4y agoLucrative for a select portion of games. Like music or acting, video game is a winner-take-all marketplace (or rather, winner take most). The typical video game developer outside a well-known studio is working long hours for comparatively little pay because it's very likely the game is not going to make very many sales and there's plenty of passionate people willing to make sacrifices to work on video games. As other commenters pointed out, it's not like playing in the NFL. It's more like being a high school football player trying to get into the NFL. Or an actor trying to get a part in a Hollywood movie. The chances of a company becoming lucrative off games is slim.
- Ekaros 4y agoAren't the well-known studios also pretty big and the products they make absolutely humongous in simply the man hours? So even then there isn't that much to pay per employee. There is some outliers, but simply most games either are not popular or even if they are they also take huge amount of labour to develop.
- ausbah 4y agothat's not a fair trade off. plenty of other "dream jobs" like athlete, lawyer, doctor, etc. pay gangbusters if you "make it". I'd add the most musicians "don't make it" either it also goes beyond that, working conditions for game devs are truly abysmal. low wages are just the tip of the iceberg; add it abusive managers, long working hours, etc
- hiddencost 4y agoI think of it like this: It's the company's job to maximize shareholder value. It's the worker's job to maximize worker value. It's the market's job to push profit to zero. So the union is like a new force in the equation: they put pressure on the company to give the workers more value. Which could actually be good for business: if treating workers results in better work product, the shareholders might not push for that (typically markets optimize for quarterly earnings). But the union can secure better conditions for the workers, which might lead to moving to a better local maxima.
- rainsford 4y agoI always think of unions as less a new force in the equation you described and more of a labor side equivalent of the collective organizing and action that happens on the company/shareholder side to maximize value. Instead of individual workers all trying to maximize their value in isolation with the company trying to collectively maximize value for all shareholders, unions ideally make it more of a one-to-one balance of "workers" and "shareholders". I agree with your general thought that it could be good for business, but I'd take it a small step further and suggest a more comprehensive way to think about what's good for business as encompassing workers and shareholders equally. A situation that optimizes shareholder value at the expense of worker value is not really economically optimal even if that doesn't necessarily damage the business long term. If you can get much better conditions for workers with only a small drop in shareholder value, for example, that could be considered a net win.
- chii 4y ago> only a small drop in shareholder value, for example, that could be considered a net win. only the shareholders can decide if this is worth a drop. And i would imagine the majority of them would not accept a small drop like that.
- kelseyfrog 4y agoWhen shareholders reduce a company to a single metric[shareholder value] the metric becomes meaningless. At that point it doesn't matter.
- jmyeet 4y ago[flagged]
- rainsford 4y agoAnother way of looking at it is that unions are just as much a part of a capitalist free market as entities that organize capital. Since labor is a thing that has market value, a bunch of folks getting together to figure out how to maximize their valuable asset seems just as reasonable as folks with monetary or other assets doing the same. Unless anyone's idea of a libertarian free market is also anti-corporation, unions seem like they'd be an equal part of the picture.
- mypastself 4y agoThis is all true, provided that membership is voluntary and such organizations get no special legal privileges.
- sudosysgen 4y agoCorporations get special legal privileges, why not unions too?
- mypastself 4y agoIn a free market environment, neither would have them.
- sudosysgen 4y agoThere can be no such thing as a real free market. It's an inherently contradictory concept because it necessarily relies on a government strong enough to impose a private property rights regime but at the same time act against its own interests.
- mypastself 4y ago
- jraph 4y agoNope. If I cannot live comfortably with a dream job, I'll work on something else unfortunately. And work on whatever dream I have with whatever time and energy remains, if any. Otherwise, I'd already be working on the exact things I want to work on, and earn almost nothing (for maybe a long time).
- IMTDb 4y agoIsn't that your decision ? Why are these two situation related so differently: I quit my boring job as a dev in the banking sector to work in agriculture, hours are longer and money is tighter but it's my dream job ! (Way to go ! Keep working your dream, money is not everything !!!) I quit my boring job as a dev in the banking sector to work in the gaming industry, hours are longer and money is tighter but it's my dream job ! (OMG you should unionise, it's so exploitative !!!)
- jraph 4y ago> Isn't that your decision ? Of course, but that's the whole point. You want to have me? Give me good working conditions! I'm probably not alone. I would not relate these two situations differently. Agriculture or gaming industry, working conditions need to allow comfortable living, dream job or not. I'm not saying anything about unions in my previous comment, but my position is that whether it's a dream job for you should not change anything on your decision to unionize. Not even mentioning unions, you are entitled to require good working conditions regardless. What's more, your employer has all the incentive to provide you with comfortable living if you could be employed elsewhere with better conditions because you could change your decision to work for them at any time (your situation could change: new child, new housing, medical expense, etc; or even your tastes). (I'm speaking about comfortable living, not the highest pay you could have somewhere else - even if still gives you some leverage) What's different in the two situations you expose is that someone working in agriculture has (unfortunately) likely less leverage on their pay negotiation because they would less likely be able to find a place where they would be paid more (if there's no other domain they could work in).
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- triceratops 4y agoWhy would you think that's fair? We don't choose our talents nor our passions. You should get a decent share of however much value you create. How much you like your job doesn't come into it because it's random.
- nonethewiser 4y agoBecause not only is it consensual, but developers are actively sacrificing things to be in the game industry. When you have alternatives you aren't being exploited.
- triceratops 4y agoShrug I would hate to work in the game industry. I've made games as hobby projects. In all honesty, they're the most boring kind of programming I've done. Game testing sounds even worse. My current work is pretty boring to other people, but I like it. Would it be right for someone in my role who hates the work to make more money?
- ctvo 4y ago> When you have alternatives you aren't being exploited. That's a narrow definition. Perhaps a better definition is when the other party knows you don't have leverage and takes advantage of it, you're being exploited. Paying you little, knowing you'd work for a low wage because this is your passion? Exploitation. Horrible working conditions, wages, and abuse knowing you're an illegal immigrant with no recourse? Exploitation. Knowing you need the job for visa purposes and asking you to come in for a 2am code review because a new CEO wants to feel like an engineer? Exploitation.
- somedude895 4y agoOne of these examples is so unlike the other two that it's outrageous.
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- kgwxd 4y agoNo one else generally makes a killing off musicians that aren't also making a killing.
- afavour 4y agoMusicians are generally exploited, too. I don't really see the argument against forming a union just because you enjoy your job. More worker power is a good thing.
- itworkslikethat 4y agoMaking music is usually not a job. You're making your own intellectual property and sometimes you're successful in selling it. Should we subsidize other kinds of unsuccessful businesses too?
- bantunes 4y agoMaking music is very much a job for studio and road crews, and those workers could benefit from a union. And how are unions subsidization?
- afavour 4y ago…you realise not everything is a business, right? That things like the arts deserve to exist irrespective of whether they make money?
- dismantlethesun 4y agoMusicians and people associated with film media also have collective bargaining via unions. For example the musicians have the AFM which helped force labels and radio stations to pay royalties to artists. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Federation_of_Musicians https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Federation_of_Music...
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago> Doesn't that make it a fair trade? Musicians generally don't make a killing either. What are giving me to make it fair? My feeling of internal satisfaction is genersted in my body, they are not supplying me drugs and cocaine. Some musicians make a killing and get royalties - who in gane industry gets millions in royalties?
- Tangurena2 4y agoMusicians are not the ones raking in all the money - the record companies are the ones doing that. There are plenty of articles about how artists would have made more money working at McDonalds while the record company brought in 8-9 digits of revenue. In TLC's case, their 2 albums sold over $100,000,000 yet the 3 artists each received less than $50k. The studio and management companies made bank. Samples: 0 - https://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/ https://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/ 1 - http://www.nytimes.com/1996/11/25/business/tlc-settles-suit-setting-aside-a-troubling-use-of-bankruptcy.html http://www.nytimes.com/1996/11/25/business/tlc-settles-suit-... > The group later revealed that the owner of Pebbitone made them pay $3 million to own the rights to their name. 2 - https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/tlcs-crazysexycool-25-years-later-how-the-group-sold-10-million-record-and-went-broke.html/ https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/tlcs-crazysexycool-...