5 ms·
I understand why workers in the video game industry want to unionize. They like the industry but the standards are shit. I do not see how unions will catch on i
by nonethewiser 6mo ago
I understand why workers in the video game industry want to unionize. They like the industry but the standards are shit. I do not see how unions will catch on in the video game industry.
The ability to unionize has very little to do with the ideology of the workforce and everything to do with the structure of the industry.
Unions tend to catch on when labor is irreplacable, workplace is large and centralized, if they can halt critical operations beyond their industry (ie railroads, ports, etc), there is low exposure to competition/off shoring, etc. The video game industry itself is not very ripe for unionizatoin.
- rhcom2 6mo agoI'm not sure that's true. Surely doormen, janitors, and security guards are not "irreplaceable" and can't "halt critical operations beyond their industry".
- xienze 6mo agoThat's all labor that can only be done "here and now." Can't just have Indians do it over the internet. And replacing the workers at a moment's notice is usually complicated by the striking workers harassing and attacking the replacements. Again, hard to do that when your replacement is on the other side of the globe.
- qq66 6mo agoYou cannot simply transfer Magic the Gathering to overseas workers and expect any kind of usable result. It will be from an entirely different cultural framework.
- satvikpendem 6mo agoHard but not impossible, whereas with something like a longshoremen union, it is literally impossible to move the work elsewhere.
- xienze 6mo ago> You cannot simply transfer Magic the Gathering to overseas workers and expect any kind of usable result. If you fed all the lore into an LLM and trained diffusion models on all the artwork I bet you could keep the train running from India until the end of time. The only thing that would derail it is if customers _knew_ it wasn't "authentic."
- AngryData 6mo agoI don't think LLMs are anywhere near careful enough with their wording to not break the game. Non-native speakers will have a similiar problem if they are extremely proficient.
- bluefirebrand 6mo agoI think on the contrary somewhat If everyone at a game developer goes on strike, there is basically no amount of outsourcing or scab labour that can replace them. This is actually probably true of basically all software Just refusing to share passwords into key systems would be enough to significantly halt any attempt to bring on an entirely new development team
- nonethewiser 6mo agoYes but what happens? The video game is not maintained or released. Society doesnt care that much. It's not critical and there are millions of alternatives.
- darkwater 6mo agoWell, it happens that the company that has workers on strike at some point stops making money because of that.
- Lapra 6mo agoMost entertainment industries have very strong union presence.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- northern-lights 6mo agoWhat has unionizing and society caring have got to do with each other?
- cleversomething 6mo agoMagic: the Gathering is the only profitable arm of Hasbro. I don't have the specific revenue numbers, but Arena is a huge part of the ecosystem. Sure, society at large wouldn't care, but letting the Arena release schedule slip behind the "paper cards" product would be a huge embarrassment within the community of customers and content creators that fuel the MTG machine. I would be shocked if they let it happen lightly. I would be a lot less shocked if Hasbro sends in the Pinkertons to do some "persuasion" in the coming weeks and months: https://www.dicebreaker.com/categories/trading-card-game/news/magic-the-gathering-aftermath-youtube-prompts-pinkerton-investigation https://www.dicebreaker.com/categories/trading-card-game/new...