4 ms·

Sort of the same problem as game testers. If there are so many people willing to work for pennies _for the sake of working there_ that even a significant fract

Sort of the same problem as game testers. If there are so many people willing to work for pennies _for the sake of working there_ that even a significant fraction of you organizing a stop-work won't make a dent other than a one-off blip if you arrange so much disruption it hiccups production visibly, there's only so much leverage to exert, since you have nothing they can't just source elsewhere.

imtringued 2y ago
What I have noticed is that very often the problem with these "fun" jobs isn't that there is limited demand for them on the employer's side, rather the problem is that the profession of a game tester requires game developers. Some of the jobs are more popular than others. If you need two testers for every software developer working on a game and game testing is far more popular than game development, then game testing becomes a sweatshop activity because there aren't enough game developers to absorb all the people willing to become game testers.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> there's only so much leverage to exert, since you have nothing they can't just source elsewhere That they’re making peanuts is unsurprising. That someone else isn’t, is. My question is what value the executives provide. In gaming, it’s distribution expertise—a random band of artists probably can’t negotiate distribution on a major console.
- BowBun 2y ago
  Anime is much the same. Licensing into the west only started in earnest in the last 10-15 years, which late by a lot of standards. I'm sure there are still a small slice of folks who can ink these deals, therefore giving anyone a job at all. Also let's be real - most 'animators' are just tracing masters into different scenes. There's a small subset of them that are highly skilled, especially on non-original shows that use source material. I'd support paying true character artists and scene artists well, but not copy-pasters which seems like busy-work.
  - anigbrowl 2y ago
    Any kind of media production involves a lot of grunt work. In general, you don't get anywhere in the arts without putting in a lot of hours on that sort of thing, during which you still need to eat and pay rent. Critiquing the production process over which they have no control to justify paying subpar wages is pretty mean-spirited.
kjs3 2y ago
Oh, man...spot on. We have a friend who was a senior game tester on a Very Big Francise(tm). He regularly worked twice as long every week than I did, made a fraction of the scratch and always said he did it because he loved the gaming biz. OK...I'm down with that...but maybe all of those stress-related health issues might be telling you something. Then he packed up everything and moved north because some assclown ex-ball player conned a ton of people into letting him cosplay being a game studio owner and our friend was one of many who got left holding the bag when that inevitably took a dump. He's still trying to fully recover. Definitely put the industry on the Nope list for me.
- ChoGGi 2y ago
  Ah 38 Studios :) It's too bad about that one, fun game for what it was.

imtringued 2y ago

What I have noticed is that very often the problem with these "fun" jobs isn't that there is limited demand for them on the employer's side, rather the problem is that the profession of a game tester requires game developers. Some of the jobs are more popular than others. If you need two testers for every software developer working on a game and game testing is far more popular than game development, then game testing becomes a sweatshop activity because there aren't enough game developers to absorb all the people willing to become game testers.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> there's only so much leverage to exert, since you have nothing they can't just source elsewhere That they’re making peanuts is unsurprising. That someone else isn’t, is. My question is what value the executives provide. In gaming, it’s distribution expertise—a random band of artists probably can’t negotiate distribution on a major console.

BowBun 2y ago
Anime is much the same. Licensing into the west only started in earnest in the last 10-15 years, which late by a lot of standards. I'm sure there are still a small slice of folks who can ink these deals, therefore giving anyone a job at all. Also let's be real - most 'animators' are just tracing masters into different scenes. There's a small subset of them that are highly skilled, especially on non-original shows that use source material. I'd support paying true character artists and scene artists well, but not copy-pasters which seems like busy-work.
- anigbrowl 2y ago
  Any kind of media production involves a lot of grunt work. In general, you don't get anywhere in the arts without putting in a lot of hours on that sort of thing, during which you still need to eat and pay rent. Critiquing the production process over which they have no control to justify paying subpar wages is pretty mean-spirited.

kjs3 2y ago

Oh, man...spot on. We have a friend who was a senior game tester on a Very Big Francise(tm). He regularly worked twice as long every week than I did, made a fraction of the scratch and always said he did it because he loved the gaming biz. OK...I'm down with that...but maybe all of those stress-related health issues might be telling you something. Then he packed up everything and moved north because some assclown ex-ball player conned a ton of people into letting him cosplay being a game studio owner and our friend was one of many who got left holding the bag when that inevitably took a dump. He's still trying to fully recover. Definitely put the industry on the Nope list for me.

ChoGGi 2y ago
Ah 38 Studios :) It's too bad about that one, fun game for what it was.