4 ms·

a union doesn't guarantee money, that's true. However, a union can guarantee acceptable hours worked - for example, limit overtime (without pay) to X hrs per we

by chii 2y ago

a union doesn't guarantee money, that's true. However, a union can guarantee acceptable hours worked - for example, limit overtime (without pay) to X hrs per week. Or, they ensures you're credited regardless if you left before the game shipped (because it is a form of portfolio for your career). And lastly, a union means you cannot be exploited hard, like a lot of wanabe game programmers and artists are wont to be.

tekla 2y ago
And cool, good for them. They can get laid off after Korean game devs working for 1/5 the pay make games that sell much better
- munk-a 2y ago
  You're focusing on a fact of the market which is not relevant to unionization discussions - what you're presenting is a risk for everyone in the industry. Instead unionization focuses on doing what we can to ensure we're treated with common decency and respect where we do work.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    > what you're presenting is a risk for everyone in the industry I don't think that's quite true. Unions can definitely make a company less competitive, in addition to the usual headwinds they face.
    - munk-a 2y ago
      Your statement isn't false but it isn't the norm. Unionized employees have much higher retention rates and that comes with better skill growth within an organization which generally leads to a more competitive entity. The modern market driven employment process causes massive long term inefficiencies while optimizing for short term valuation which can increase debt accessibility but generally lowers long term value. I think this is a wider discussion however and it'd be better to focus any examination of unions on the employee outcomes who are effectively the consumers of union. Whether a company prospers or fails the employees working for that company will, in nearly all circumstances, have much better quality of employment while that company lasts. I'd argue that long term company health is supported by unionization but I understand that there is a massive entrenched cultural rejection of that notion.
      - robertlagrant 2y ago
        > I'd argue that long term company health is supported by unionization This is too black and white. Unionization creates another power structure in a company, one that isn't particularly aligned with company health, but can be. It just depends on the people involved and how they use that power. > but I understand that there is a massive entrenched cultural rejection of that notion. I've no idea what you mean by a cultural rejection - which culture are you talking about?
        johnnyanmac 2y ago
        >It just depends on the people involved and how they use that power. this is basically a tautology so it's a useless statement. Water for a human can bring them back to life, drown them, or tear their body apart. of course context, intent, and factors matter. But in general, unions are good for a traditional company health: happy workers -> more productivity -> better products. Us being in this turmoil where we aren't fousing on better products doesn't change that.
        robertlagrant 2y ago
        You've dismissed what I said and then immediately fell victim to it. I don't think you can assume unions create happier workers, nor that happier workers create better products. Unions can also just make comfortable jobsworths. There is no guarantee of anything there. This is one of those things that's hard to spot from an un-unionised standpoint. You have hard-working, driven workers who sometimes suffer unfairnesses that a union would solve. So unions look good, because your workers are hard-working and driven, and it's all upside. A decade of unionisation might look very different. For example, the UK in the 1970s briefly moved to a 3 day working week[0] because of coal miner strikes that meant there wasn't enough power in the country. Not all examples are this extreme, partly because we learned from that experience, it's worth thinking of things more objectively, outside of the current context, and analysing the pros and cons of both positions. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Day_Week https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Day_Week
        munk-a 2y ago
    - soperj 2y ago
      Can also get you a loyal workforce like at Costco.
  - dangisautism 2y ago
    [dead]
qingcharles 2y ago
I quit gamedev because the hours were insane (often 80/wk) and the pay was ridiculously low. I would have loved a union to have tamped that down. But.. the core problem was the schedule for development was bunk. If the schedule was right you wouldn't need crazy long hours.
- FirmwareBurner 2y ago
  > If the schedule was right you wouldn't need crazy long hours. Unless you're making the next GTA6 for which the customer is willing to wait forever, if you increase the schedule so that everyone works fewer hours, then you'll get outcompeted in the free market by game devs from China, Korea and Japan where long hours are not an issue and can get games much quicker to market on lower budgets, putting you out of business.
  - hamandcheese 2y ago
    Why aren't China, Korea, and Japan outcompeting Hollywood?
    - FirmwareBurner 2y ago
      They are starting to outcompete Hollywood on quality (see Godzilla minus one, Squid Game, Parasite, etc), they just don't have the hundred millions of dollars of marketing budget that Hollywood has to push and advertise their movies in foreign cinemas across the world, nor do Americans have a huge appetite of watching movies with subtitles, nor could they read even if they wanted to ("54% of adults have a literacy below sixth-grade level"[1]). [1] https://www.crossrivertherapy.com/research/literacy-statistics#:~:text=Nationwide%2C%20on%20average%2C%2079%25,older%20are%20illiterate%20in%202022. https://www.crossrivertherapy.com/research/literacy-statisti...
  - qingcharles 2y ago
    Humans are humans. I'm betting the workers in Asia doing 80+ hours are equally as weary as the ones in the West. What's the burnout rate? It's expensive to replace a developer halfway through development as it takes forever to get up to speed on both the codebase and the game design.

by chii 2y ago

tekla 2y ago

And cool, good for them. They can get laid off after Korean game devs working for 1/5 the pay make games that sell much better

munk-a 2y ago
You're focusing on a fact of the market which is not relevant to unionization discussions - what you're presenting is a risk for everyone in the industry. Instead unionization focuses on doing what we can to ensure we're treated with common decency and respect where we do work.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  > what you're presenting is a risk for everyone in the industry I don't think that's quite true. Unions can definitely make a company less competitive, in addition to the usual headwinds they face.
  - munk-a 2y ago
    Your statement isn't false but it isn't the norm. Unionized employees have much higher retention rates and that comes with better skill growth within an organization which generally leads to a more competitive entity. The modern market driven employment process causes massive long term inefficiencies while optimizing for short term valuation which can increase debt accessibility but generally lowers long term value. I think this is a wider discussion however and it'd be better to focus any examination of unions on the employee outcomes who are effectively the consumers of union. Whether a company prospers or fails the employees working for that company will, in nearly all circumstances, have much better quality of employment while that company lasts. I'd argue that long term company health is supported by unionization but I understand that there is a massive entrenched cultural rejection of that notion.
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      > I'd argue that long term company health is supported by unionization This is too black and white. Unionization creates another power structure in a company, one that isn't particularly aligned with company health, but can be. It just depends on the people involved and how they use that power. > but I understand that there is a massive entrenched cultural rejection of that notion. I've no idea what you mean by a cultural rejection - which culture are you talking about?
      - johnnyanmac 2y ago
        >It just depends on the people involved and how they use that power. this is basically a tautology so it's a useless statement. Water for a human can bring them back to life, drown them, or tear their body apart. of course context, intent, and factors matter. But in general, unions are good for a traditional company health: happy workers -> more productivity -> better products. Us being in this turmoil where we aren't fousing on better products doesn't change that.
        robertlagrant 2y ago
        You've dismissed what I said and then immediately fell victim to it. I don't think you can assume unions create happier workers, nor that happier workers create better products. Unions can also just make comfortable jobsworths. There is no guarantee of anything there. This is one of those things that's hard to spot from an un-unionised standpoint. You have hard-working, driven workers who sometimes suffer unfairnesses that a union would solve. So unions look good, because your workers are hard-working and driven, and it's all upside. A decade of unionisation might look very different. For example, the UK in the 1970s briefly moved to a 3 day working week[0] because of coal miner strikes that meant there wasn't enough power in the country. Not all examples are this extreme, partly because we learned from that experience, it's worth thinking of things more objectively, outside of the current context, and analysing the pros and cons of both positions. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Day_Week https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Day_Week
      - munk-a 2y ago
  - soperj 2y ago
    Can also get you a loyal workforce like at Costco.
- dangisautism 2y ago
  [dead]

qingcharles 2y ago

I quit gamedev because the hours were insane (often 80/wk) and the pay was ridiculously low. I would have loved a union to have tamped that down. But.. the core problem was the schedule for development was bunk. If the schedule was right you wouldn't need crazy long hours.

FirmwareBurner 2y ago
> If the schedule was right you wouldn't need crazy long hours. Unless you're making the next GTA6 for which the customer is willing to wait forever, if you increase the schedule so that everyone works fewer hours, then you'll get outcompeted in the free market by game devs from China, Korea and Japan where long hours are not an issue and can get games much quicker to market on lower budgets, putting you out of business.
- hamandcheese 2y ago
  Why aren't China, Korea, and Japan outcompeting Hollywood?
  - FirmwareBurner 2y ago
    They are starting to outcompete Hollywood on quality (see Godzilla minus one, Squid Game, Parasite, etc), they just don't have the hundred millions of dollars of marketing budget that Hollywood has to push and advertise their movies in foreign cinemas across the world, nor do Americans have a huge appetite of watching movies with subtitles, nor could they read even if they wanted to ("54% of adults have a literacy below sixth-grade level"[1]). [1] https://www.crossrivertherapy.com/research/literacy-statistics#:~:text=Nationwide%2C%20on%20average%2C%2079%25,older%20are%20illiterate%20in%202022. https://www.crossrivertherapy.com/research/literacy-statisti...
- qingcharles 2y ago
  Humans are humans. I'm betting the workers in Asia doing 80+ hours are equally as weary as the ones in the West. What's the burnout rate? It's expensive to replace a developer halfway through development as it takes forever to get up to speed on both the codebase and the game design.