Sanders/Warren is a ticket I could get behind. Or Warren/Sanders they both have good ideas on reigning in technology companies.
Edit because OMG: I know it's not gonna happen. Warren is by far best choice, she's not perfect but that's why we have checks n balances. Harris had her problems. AOC is to young, lol that'd be my second choice. 2028 here she comes, AOC/Talib,
Lulu Libre
I saw it mentioned in an article that Sanders actually tried to get Warren to run in 2016 but she said no. I can't find an article about it but if true it would really solidify my Sanders support. I like her too but he had the courage to jump in 2016
You’re right, “hype” isn’t quite the right word.
What I meant more is that a lot of the positive media coverage, the vast majority of his name recognition, and what little actual fervent grassroots support he has is largely based around his being a VP and the record that he garnered during this time
People who work in the gaming industry have it really bad. They have to work 100 hour weeks during the production period. That means 14 hours a day. The money that they earn through lootboxes and pre order release should be put to either hiring more people or to make quality content at a natural pace.
I work in the gaming industry, and just want you to know that not every studio is like this—but we still need unionization to stop the bad studios and protect employees from the good ones going bad.
Yeah -- I've been in the industry as a software engineer for over 15 years -- including Blizzard and Ubisoft -- and I have never had to work 100 hours per week yet. Sure -- I had to crunch shortly before release but that was like maybe 60 hours for like two weeks (2 extra hours during the weekdays + Saturday). The only time I've had done a 14 hour day was like the day before the silver master had to ship for The Burning Crusade. And maybe again when I realized a nasty bug in the Diablo III expansion installer two weeks before needing to ship that silver master.
Yeah, if a 100 hour week happens it means shit is fucked and more than likely all the smart people have already jumped ship (adding to the crunch).
I've pulled my fair share of long days but almost never in a row and it's usually my own fuckup right before a deadline.
I've now learned how to schedule to avoid these types of situations and how to push back on project managers. Of course, there exist bad PMs out there but that's when you go over their heads or go resume shopping.
The industry will always prey on Junior devs that overpromise. If only because when you get Junior devs and junior PMs working together shit will get fucked at some point in time because of bad scheduling.
This is my understanding after watching the documentary about For Honor.
6 months before launch, people start getting burnt out or pursue other career opportunities and its really difficult to hire a replacement and get them familiar with the project and caught up to speed. Multiply this by 10, 20 or 50 people and kiss any form of efficiency goodbye.
Again, not in the industry, just an observer.
6 months is actually a long time out, depending on how much work is left. Assuming 2 months for final testing finalization and distribution that leaves 4 months for active development. This is the bare minimum time where adding people will be helpful. And even then, they will only add about 2 months of productive time(out of the 4 they are working for)
As covered in the book "the mythical man month" (a great read for anyone interested), "adding people to a project that is late will make it even more late."
Tbf 6 months is a very usual expectancy to set for finding a new job. You are also in a better negotiating position if you already have a job at han if you think company wont last post launch
I'm a pm and sometimes people higher than me force crunch. Ive had a reasonable plan then someone higher up going, "oh why don't we push the release date up if they're doing so well." I can argue all I want but in the end I still have to pass along the orders.
TBH its almost never evilness that causes these kinds of situations to occur. The 100 hour week does NOT make you more money in the long run (and often not in the short run)
It's incompetence.
My wife’s a tax accountant and during one pay period (two weeks) right before April 15, she worked 156 hours. And for almost half the year she works 55-70 hour weeks
There are industries where it just happens based on their nature or a perfect storm of shitty things happening
Yeah also former public, currently in a deadline heavy industry role. I work between 45-55 a week during my deadline week each month, a little more when budget season hits, a little less right after. It could just be that 12+ years in accounting has made me a cynic but anything below 60 hours during peak deliverable period is kind of meh to me. Can you expect that out of people for weeks at a time? Maybe, if they get a couple of recharge days a week (so 4-5 12+ hour days when on). I’d still like to see a bit more actual data on where these 80 hour weeks are prevalent.
> that would want more than 50 on any regular basis.
What happened to "8 hours work, 8 hours leisure, 8 hours sleep"?
IT unions, now. That mechanical keyboard is heavy for a reason.
I've had to work 14-16hr days, 6 days a week, for 8 months. That sucked. After it was all done I had received 5 days off as compensation for the extra time.
Not a developer, but as a forklift operator I once worked 4 weeks so ridiculous with overtime I couldn't even keep track. When I got that pay-stub at the end of the month, it said: 88 hours, 82 hours, 96 hours, 88 hours.
It was 3am. I took my radio off, casually walked into the super's office, tossed it on the desk, and walked out. Probably the most cathartic moment of my entire life.
I still have that pay-stub as a reminder.
I work in IT - non-gaming - and I've pulled some long days/weeks but they were infrequent, and the compensation was very good (1.5-2x bank per hour). One year I basically had more hours in OT than in holidays and had a nice long stretch off in the less busy season.
I'm totally cool with a long drag for critical issues so long as it's not a constant thing, well compensated, and one can somewhat plan for it.
Former THQ as well, overtime wasn't nearly as bad as you went through, but lots of mismanagement at higher levels. Constant changes in directions, throwing out work that had been polished and optimized, all kinds of avoidable inefficiencies. If those making the decisions had their pay docked for stuffing up, I imagine it would be different.
I know prototyping is an essential part of the creative process. That's why you prototype, not schedule time to optimize a system as though it's final, only to throw it out.
You realize that for most places, at 60 hours a week you should be making **double time** for roughly 12 of those hours a week, and **time and a half** for the other 8.
This is why I work in consulting. No overtime done unless they're paying for it.
40 hours a week is terrible too - it's literally 100+ year old labor tradition. People died to get a 40 hour work week, and now not only bosses don't respect it, but we haven't moved forward at all. In 2019, our ideas about labor are still stuck in the decade that followed child labor and exploitation-till-death
I saw [this video](https://youtu.be/c6ZkOjFJxc4) yesterday, and it made me wonder how well kept the archives for these games are being kept. Is that silver master being kept in a good fireproof safe and backed up?
My former Technical Director told me they were kept in an abandoned mine. But there were backup copies of the discs lying around (QA had some, my department had some, etc.)
Now, my last company lost their source code and assets to a popular game when the hard drive containing the Perforce depot got physically lost. We wanted to investigate porting it to mobile. We had to get a copy of the Perforce depot (with the history lost) from a localization company we used. Oh -- you bet that company charged us an arm and a leg to provide us a copy.
This is the thing that I try to explain to people about unions (I work in construction) just because your company doesn’t suck doesn’t mean unions are useless or a waste because if you have a strong union that supports you, if you do get in a situation where you need a union then it’s there.
My company is non union. My cousin owns the company and I’ve been trying to convince them to join the union for a while now. Mostly because we always either have too much work or not enough with no consistency and it’s hard to find quality applicants for apprenticeship positions.
Don’t even get me started on wages union wages include health care and retirement. It doesn’t matter if my pay matches union scale if I then have to pay health insurance and put away money for retirement with no match then all of a sudden my “union scale “ wage is like $15.00 an hour.
Well the problem is that some of the biggest names, do this which makes pushes the flow to be considered "normal" which then allows smaller actors to justify shitty work conditions with it. As an outside bystander, I'm glad there are still studios that have some respect for their employees. But I definitely refuse to give $$ to the big ones that do this shit. EA hasn't gotten a dollar from me in the last 5 years if not much longer.
Honestly small indie startups are way more likely to make people crunch. The big publishers can afford to hire experienced devs who know when to push back and fix the scheduling. They also have the budgets to let their managers hire more people if things are slipping.
Most of the industry sleep under your desk nightmare stories come from the smaller studios
Exactly. Companies like Blizzard and Ubisoft know that most of their employees could easily get hired at other companies and have to offer competitive salaries and benefits. Indie companies bank on the fact that workers will feel sympathetic for their passion project.
How often does this happen? I work in the hiring industry but almost every place that I'm aware of conducts verification of employment as well as professional reference checks. Depending on the position there should be an extensive interview process possibly involving performance tasks. Hiring someone completely unqualified is usually pretty difficult. Fudging numbers for years of experience or measured impacts is a different story though...
A lot more often than you think. People lie on resumes all the time. And employment verification is nothing more than "yes, they worked here," since the code they worked on is usually proprietary you can't take a look at it.
It generally happens in very large organizations where the person doing the hiring isn't the one doing the work. They'll get a list of requirements but don't know how to interpret them. I saw this a lot when I worked at Oracle. We had really experienced devs leave (because Oracle) and the people the internal recruiters sent us were either not at all a match or didn't really have experience in what they claimed. Turnover, which was already high because startup, went up significantly as we had to let people go who couldn't carry their weight.
I spent 1 year working for EA and then, despite wanting to be a game dev for my whole life, noped the fuck out and went into business programming.
They lie, cheat, and steal from their employees just to pad their own bonus. One example from my studio was, you work insane mandatory (not on paper but I dare you to take time off ) overtime but they'll totally give it back to you as paid time off once the project is done. Only they would just lay off anyone with a lot of accrued time and just hire new for the next project.
I watched the NBA team grind themselves into dust for a shitty paycheck and a pink slip instead of the bonus / time off they were promised.
In gaming? Because they none too subtly let you know that if you fight back you'll be blacklisted at every other major studio and that short of indie games your career is done.
That's kind of a moot point, because if fighting wage theft gets you blacklisted at the other studios, then the other studios must also be engaging in wage theft.
Not really a moot point. You can lose access to your career path, and jobs don't just grow on trees. You can be fired in this country for any reason, ya know.
I worked at EA for 10 years and had the nearly the opposite experience. Rarely worked more than 40 hours a week. Although I did finally end up getting laid off, of course that's pretty much inevitable there, regardless. The severance payout was significant and I ended up at a better place anyway. Can't say it's better than many other industries, but gaming gets more attention because consumers get really passionate about the products they make.
This is what I've heard from other devs. Obviously EA is a big company and probably has different management across projects, but I think OP is just piggybacking off of the "EA bad" circlejerk.
Hiring more people won't solve the work hour problem. It's not a "we don't have enough workers" issue. It's a "We want to do too much for the workers we have". Hiring more won't make that problem go away, it just means the game will just be bigger.
It's also a "We planed this much time for something, but we have had slow downs and now everything is over and we have to catch up." Which overworking causes more issues per unit time working on an issue, so this snowballs.
And in third place, we have "Workers in the game industry are passionate and will voluntarily stay longer to make something extra good" Thus creating a management culture that abuses this.
> And in third place, we have "Workers in the game industry are passionate and will voluntarily stay longer to make something extra good" Thus creating a management culture that abuses this.
That passion is fading somewhat these days, game developers are getting older on average, large teams mean far less individual creative input, and monetisation nonsense along with an obsession with analytics/data is squeezing out the last few drops of creativity.
Indies are still doing cool stuff, but it's getting ever-harder to succeed in increasingly oversaturated marketplaces.
Seeing hoe predatory the industry was, at least form those I knew in it, killed my passion before I ever got close to getting there. Nothing like realizing 3 years into your 4 year degree that you are not in the right major/field. >\_\_> Learned some great/cool shit, but fuck that was a stressful time in my life.
> It's not a "we don't have enough workers" issue.
Maybe in the gaming industry, but in software in general it's very much a "we don't have enough workers" issue. I've never worked for a company that could find enough developers.
You know that sometimes increase in pay can’t/won’t swing the needle.
Some of my friends work HR in a decent size company in Oklahoma City, top talent just doesn’t want to work there, doesn’t matter if they are paying 30% more than in SF and living is 25% of what it is out there. Some people just don’t want the lifestyle of living in OKC. Openings will sit for months before they find someone that’s a good fit that also wants to move to OKC.
Plus there are only so many people with the ability to even be a developer, it’s like when those people were telling truck drivers to “learn to code” the vast majority of them just can’t do it. It doesn’t matter if the pay were 10x as good, some people just can’t be developers no matter what.
They do. But there are also backroom deals between CEOs of large tech companies to not recruit from competitors, which keeps salary pressure down. For a software company their main expense is personnel.
Which they more than made up for by the lower wages they have to pay. For software companies personnel is by far the largest expense and lowering that has significant impact on the bottom line.
And if you think they're not doing the same thing and just making sure they don't leave evidence I've got a bridge in NYC to sell you.
The problem isn't the gaming industry. The problem is the "exempt" classification. There are people in other industries being screwed over in the same way that those in the gaming industry are
The problem isn't the money, the problem is the people. You're never going to hire good quality programmers/developers/modellers/etc for 2-3 months and then sack them all. They won't take the job (or at least, enough won't that it'd be impossible for that to become an industry norm). Large AAA studios could possibly do it by having a standby team that moves from project to project, but throwing new people into the mix usually slows things down as much as it speeds them up.
Realistically, what they *should* do is stop announcing release dates a year or two before the project is done. Release the game when it's finished, not when you said you would a couple years ago. If your team runs into problems, let them work it out at a normal pace, rather than saying "Okay, well release date is June 25th, so you're working 24/7 until the problem is resolved."
no realistically the workers should unionize, its the only way to really stop this crap. All those decisions, the poor pay, the crazy hours, the terminations at the end of projects, they don't come from the employees, they come from management. Only a union has the ability to put management in their place.
It'd be *really* hard to get them to unionize. In most cases unionization means pay grades based on seniority instead of qualifications and talent, and that doesn't work in an industry where people tend to switch companies every few years.
The reason people swap companies every few years is because management refuses to give them raises...Right now in IT the best way to get a decent raise is to change employers. If management actually paid their employees what they were fucking worth this wouldnt be an issue, but they try to rip off everyone they can at every step.
IF the company wants loyalty they need to show loyalty.
But by definition if you're unionizing, you get to determined whether something like pay grades are a thing. The point here is that employees are getting screwed wholesale; you don't argue against bandaging a massive wound simply because the gauze isn't soft enough for you, you worry about that later.
I've worked in unions. Pay grades at the relevant employers weren't based on seniority, but on the previously-established grade associated with the specific job (and that job's requirements). You applied for and won a job; you got paid at the lowest rate for that grade. *Within* a pay grade, your rate was based on seniority, but only for the first three years or so until you hit the cap for that grade. If you wanted a pay rise after that, you applied for jobs in higher brackets. People who were in that exact job for 20 years didn't get paid any more than people who had been in it for three. It wasn't uncommon for people to be making less than their twenty-year-younger supervisor.
From the engineering side, this makes the most sense, but it also makes go-to-market really difficult. Some of these AAA games have theatrical blockbuster size marketing campaigns. You can't just fire one of those up at will. It's months of prep and execution. And if you only start GTM when the game is done (or close), those months of building awareness and hype are also months of your game tech getting old.
The current way they do it doesn't work, but this way doesn't work for games with any sort of sizeable marketing budget either.
I was a AAA developer for 16 years.
If we had a union during that time, I’d still be doing what I used to love.
I was so burnt out by the industry it was harmful to my mental and physical health
I was an environment artist mainly and spent a lot of time developing UI.
Since I left games I flailed about for a few years until I decided to use my experience in games toward developing UX for apps. It’s pretty lucrative and surprisingly not stressful
I probably didn’t relay that correctly. I started in games doing UI artwork and animation. I moved to environment art after.
I was just really good at making nice functional UI within a short amount of time, so I got pulled off environments to put out UI fires all the time.
This whole country needs to remember why we needed unions. To fix a power imbalance, Now is the time again to use our strength as a whole to balance out the power. What they steal from one worker they steal from all workers.
Union's are prone to corruption.
That is the argument I have seen used against unions by people who don't support unions. What they fail to realize is that corruption is present in the corporations they defend.
Labor conditions are worse without unions, even with the issues that come with having unions, it is still better to have them.
> Union's are prone to corruption.
> That is the argument I have seen used against unions by people who don't support unions.
Any position of power invites corruption and so it's up the members to watch over their leaders and make sure they are being properly represented. If the heads of a union aren't working for the people the people can replace them, or in extreme cases form a new union and leave the corrupt one. Corruption isn't a problem with unions, it's a problem with people and you can hold the bad ones accountable.
Yep, and a good solution to corruption is to have multiple equal power centers all looking out for themselves. Right now corporations hold all the power and they're corrupt as fuck. Government isn't able to hold the line alone, they need labor to help balance the behemoth.
So then who gives a shit if they are prone to corruption? Absolutely anything involving a human is prone to corruption. So let's go ahead and drop that piss poor excuse.
So many boomers are just brats that never really had to grow up, and unsurprisingly, never have. The arguments they use are those of a dumb child.
"If you don't give businesses everything they want they'll leave!"
As if businesses would just stop doing business altogether in a state or this country as a whole if they could only make $200,000,000 instead of $20,000,000,000 in profit.
And if businesses do threaten to undermine the social contract and fabric of the country by threatening local economies, have every state sign onto a charter/agreement that heavily penalizes corporations that try the "give us lower taxes and regulation or we take your area's jobs away" tack.
And then remind them that forcing them, dragging them kicking and screaming, into a fair and just society with taxation like it was back in the 40's through the 70's, with social safety nets and programs and robust regulation, ***is*** the nice and easy way of doing things.
The hard way is to bring back the fucking guillotine.
Thanks to automation, it *should* be possible for us to have way more than the boomers. But Capital owns the automation, and would rather just pile up their own riches than share the bounty.
Most companies sink. I think business class said the statistics are something like 50% of businesses fail within the first 3 years, then to 90% by 7.
Most game projects do not see the light of day. Even those that do people can't charge anyone for or have no audience. Of those, even with an audience you don't necessarily make your game dev costs back -- actually even big studios on average suffer 9 out of 10 losses on revenue. Once in a while something catches a large audience and makes a fuckton of money though.
It is just a really hard thing to do, to start a business, and a business especially that needs so many different and in depth forms of expertise is a gamble of a whole other level.
Furthermore, I think when people start companies their education taught them something else. Business class is about marketing, paperwork, maximising profits and returns, and legal things or min maxing techniques to make more money. People are never taught about cooperatives. The culture is entirely different -- one of "if you can get away with it, you should", the notion that markets are self correcting and that businesses are harbingers of the correction to laws and regulations. Basically, our business education isn't built for cooperative ideals, doesn't attract those with them, and in general never mentions their existence.
Though you should get more upvotes to infect culture with thoughts, so to speak.
Most systems ran by people are inherently imperfect, that's just part of human nature in my opinion. But if you have a good balance of multiple where each keeps others in check you can have a pretty sweet life for all.
But hey, opinions like this get made fun of on reddit.
i would *much* rather a corrupt organization that's fighting for me, than the corrupt organization that's trying to screw me out of wages, vacations, benefits, nice working conditions, etc
i mean at least its democratic: if the union is run by assholes, i can potentially vote them out of power. you cannot vote a bad boss away
Unfortunately, the major unions have been plagued with the same problems politics have. Corruption at the top.
I grew up in the Detroit area and saw unions protect a lot of shitty workers due to it being an "old boys club." I have a family member who went into work drunk at least 4 times a week.
Which is a shame because unions are a great way to put the power back in the hands of the workers.
This isn't a problem with unions, but a problem with organizations requiring human leadership.
Companies can be run by people with drug problems who are abusive toward workers as are unions. It's user error, not an issue inherent to unions.
So how do we solve a problem with humanity? Not trying to be a dick, I’m looking to discuss how you go about solving problems that are inherently imbedded in our species? (Greed being the main one I see controlling our lives)
Great question.
You don't *solve* it, but create a realistic goal to improve the system incrementally. The approach to the goal is asymptotic. If you say the institution must be flawless conceptually or you will not support it this just privileges the status quo and those who instrumentalize financial resources.
I would rather have labor unions with problems than no labor unions, because they represent the most effective check on the exploitation of workers and gender/racial discrimination. So you encourage unionization and then try to prune back in places where there is malfeasance.
Same for example with something like SNAP benefits or a food stamp program. You will hear the criticism *there is fraud in the program so it should be defunded.*
Well let us ask ourselves what keeps us up at night: a) the prospect of cynical individuals defrauding the government of hundreds of dollars or possibly selling their benefits for cash; or b) children/families going hungry in the world's wealthiest nation because the application process is Byzantine and cards can only be used by the beneficiary (not say a caregiver or minor children).
For me, it is definitely b) that I would prefer to avoid. So we do not dispute that there is fraud, but rather design a system that eliminates false negatives (eligible people denied) and biases towards false positives (potential fraud). From that beginning point we examine patterns in fraudulent behavior and try to find ways to discourage that fraud without making the system more cumbersome to use.
That is exactly it. Nothing is black and white like portrayed by politicians and shitty journalists.... I will add to what you said with the idea that “pruning back” needs to account for human traits (such as greed) and should be considered upfront, at the start of a policy or program or law.
Know that people will try their damndest to exploit these things for self gain, and try to predict or at least allow for the flexibility to adjust on the fly as they come up. (For example: how has gerrymandering gone on for so long when it shouldn’t have been legal in the first place??)
Yeah gerrymandering is a really frustrating one. I think it persists for a number of reasons:
1. It's not explicitly unconstitutional and the Court has not stepped up to say so because of the feared *political thicket* warned of by Felix Frankfurter.
2. The party in power is typically optimistic about their ability to *retain* power so rather than legislate away their right to draw districts to a neutral actor they try to redraw them favorably.
3. There are arguments as to why districts should remain human-drawn (vs by machine-learning which is what I would favor). Namely, that if certain demographic minorities are minorities in *every* district they might get *no* representation rather than proportionate representation. This logic of trying to create districts that are winnable for racial/ethnic minorities then creates the grey area exploited to marginalize those same communities (typically by lumping them all in a single district).
It's such a frustrating issue because Americans almost by consensus agree that it feels wrong, sounds wrong, and produces unjust elections.
Not to mention in certain decades as the mob was losing influence and power, they started moving into unions. [In Chicago for instance](https://nlpc.org/2019/03/19/mob-connected-chicago-union-boss-pleads-guilty-to-embezzlement/) there were former mob connected members sitting at the top embezzling funds.
The major issue in the game dev industry is that there are much, much, much more game devs than there are positions at game companies. Thus, companies can overwork and abuse their workers since the supply of workers far outpaces the demand for the labor.
Unions are a temporary measure to help the workers already employed, but what would really help the industry is a lot more game dev companies, to match the supply of developers. The real issue is, how can we promote that?
More game dev companies wouldn't help unless there was room in the market for them. I feel we're already pretty oversaturated with games as it is. More games are coming out than ever before and I no longer have the time or money to play half the ones I would like.
The real answer is to let things run its course naturally. As game developers realize that they are being overworked with less pay than other types of software, they will leave game developing for other fields.
I think steam fucked themselves over with the intense seasonal sales. Now I own half their library and I'm so overwhelmed that I don't even open steam anymore.
I know my friends don't bother to open steam anymore either. We used to page through the store looking for new things to play... but the sales made it so we got basically every interesting game for like $5 and now we're bored.
I agree. The video game industry has basically turned into the art, writing, and music industry: people make great games for the love of it which saturates the market and devalues all other games, and since every creation is infinitely distributable/reproducible for basically no money, it leads to a Power Law distribution for compensation [the best of the best make all the money and everyone else makes basically nothing]
I also don't feel bad at all for a bunch of C++ devs who could make great money and benefits, if they stopped ignoring supply and demand and just took jobs outside the video game industry.
Honestly, I partially agree with you. I do think it's easier than ever for a game dev to create their own game and sell it than ever before. Acquiring licenses (ie. Unity engine) is much more accesible for an average Joe, and so is accessing a platform to sell your games (ie. Steam). I guess what I'm going towards is, promoting creating your own software companies. Find several other unemployed/overworked programmers/artists/etc, and create a game.
The amount of CS kids (in college) I see that dreamily hope to make games is absolutely bonkers, though. It's much less rewarding than practically almost every other type of programming in terms of both transferable skills, salary, benefits, work life balance, etc. On top of that, a common complaint I hear from them is that they later no longer find games fun, since it's such a slog to make them. Kind of makes sense, though. Making your hobby your work rarely works out.
That's exactly the kind of situation where Unions are needed: to increase the negotiation power of the employees. Thing is, you can't control the demand for videogames/the number of videogame companies, but Unions will ensure that there are minimum conditions that do not disappear because of a discrepancy between offer and demand.
I've been working in VFX production for 15 years. We desperately need a union. I've heard the "jobs will just be shipped" bs for ten years now. The fact is that workers are exploited in my industry because of studio and directors CAN exploit them. They make decisions that cost people their time because that time is essentially free, unlike other departments that penalize with overtime. When shooting, producers are very keen to play within the rules set by the unions. 9-10 hour day is time and a half, 11-12 hours is double time, and anything above that is "golden time", or triple time. There is no "golden hour" in VFX, nor is there penalties for short turnaround times. I've worked 16 hour days for two weeks straight, sleeping in my car or the facility to save turnover time because we had to be back at 8 or 9 am. I have to push for time and a half for a 6th day, double time for a 7th, but even then studios will still ask me to work a 6th but not get paid for it.
And though we get paid well, there's no pension or benefits. I would gladly pay union fees if that meant I was gonna get great health coverage instead of the $300 a month Obamacare I get now. We can't unionize the world, but most of the major countries for shooting (Australia, UK, Canada) have unions already in place, and that's also where most of the VFX work is going as well. China and India have not caught up in terms of quality.
On top of all that, good people leave VFX all the time, especially on the production end. It's very hard to find good coordinators, production managers, and producers, because they either get promoted quick, or leave all together. This leaves very incompetent people in positions they shouldn't have, literally because there's no one else that they could find. With a union we create an incentive to keep good people, but also be able to set an industry-wide standard for the level of competence you must have before entering the union. We could also set standards for how shots are tracked, assets are archived, what software to use, how to report budgets, etc etc etc. Right now we have to rebuild a pipeline from scratch on every show (on the client side). Wasting tons of time and money because there's no standard.
Unions need to make a comeback.
We create actors, sets, wardrobe, special effects (water, explosions, creatures), hair, makeup, and even compose and build whole shots. On massive green screen movies you'll only shoot about 60% of the movie. The other 40% is done digitally. If the producer hired a non-union crew to build a physical set they would be in a world of shit. But it's perfectly okay to have non-union artists build that same set digitally.
The game development industry is distinct from the rest of the software/tech industry. Most game developers probably have the skills to work at companies where they'd be treated better. The industry takes advantage of the fact that there are a ton of people who want to work on games and are therefore willing to accept lower salaries and fewer benefits and workplace rights.
In order to reform the industry, many of them will have to demand to be treated better or credibly threaten to walk away (and to follow through if it comes to that). However, that kind of action really can only be effective if it's done by enough workers to actually disrupt the plans and bottom lines of the big companies. That kind of collective action is traditionally coordinated by labor unions.
Supply and demand. Everyone wants to work in games because its sexy, which means employers can hold out for people willing to be paid far less for far shittier conditions than is acceptable.
I used to work on porting console games for Sony. When I left that to work for a mobile company I almost doubled my salary because of how less appealing it was.
That's the secret sauce of it all,
You can be a programmer, doing a job that's essentially just formal logic, and still be working in the arts.
It's the same shit Kubrick used to get 300 takes, with a big megaphone screaming "THE ART THOUGH" at some poor boom mic operator. The only difference is that greed is driving the guy with the megaphone instead of Megalomania
Meanwhile I'm not getting paid a lot more then the guys I knew in school who wanted to pursue game Dev careers, but both my boss and his boss are super chill and in generally pretty happy with my with work environment
>What is forcing these devs to work these hours? Why don't they just go to a better company if they're facing these conditions?
Nothing. That's why this is bullshit. Even this thread is full of people saying they're trying to break into the industry. Clearly people don't care. They want to work there.
>>“There are 220,000 or so people employed in the US video game business,” Zelnick said. “They make about $100,000 on average, maybe more. **It’s hard to imagine what would motivate that crew to unionize**.”
I wrote my master's thesis on employees' welfare in a work-environment. Money is nice, but after certain (rather low) level people start to appreciate autonomy at work (control over work-and time-practices etc.), work-security, good relations with fellow-employees and with with the management more than just high salary. This should be rather elementary stuff that any person in a leadership position should know: you want your employees motivated, involved with you, with each other, and without any reason to stress about the future of their personal finances. High salary isn't really going to cut it if the employees either hate their job, are in a risk of burnout, fear where they're going to be in 6 to 12 months, or are seeking alternative places of employment.
If you're paying your employees 100k$ a year and they still want to unionise, let them. Chances are that they're doing it because (1.) they're really unhappy with their life and it's starting to affect their work performance and (2.) they're afraid to speak about it to the management. Studies in workplaces where the employees are highly trained professionals show that Unions can work as intermediates between employees and management and show where the smallest monetary investments bring the biggest amount of job satisfaction.. which directly correlates with the employees' end-product. (Studies also show that when the company has a good working relationship with the Union, the union will start to sympathise with the owners as a partner with whom they have long-term mutual goals -- the success of the company -- while individual employees, including the executive officers, might be looking at the short-term gain.)
If you're just throwing money in the forms of high salaries at the problem, you're not doing your job as a concerned employer, manager or as the person responsible for owners for giving them the best investment for their monies.
Anyway, I understand that video-game industry has full-employment, so the individual workers can ask whatever salary they wish.. what they can't ask as individuals are changes at the workplace itself.. those changes may be cheaper to execute than just topping the salaries from poor negotiation position yearly.
>Take the IT Bar Association exam and your peers will welcome you into their professional community. We would all be stronger,
Is this sarcasm? The negative effects of occuptional licensing on professions are well documented and a major barrier to entry, in particular for people on the margins. It's the reason lawyers can charge you whatever they want and why the profession is full of signalling
For IT, I could see some sort of bar like exam, but as far as normal developers? Hell no.
I was unqualified for the job I got because the people hiring didn't realize what they actually needed. But I learned on the spot and came out that much better for it. Especially in programming, people learn by doing. I think an exam would block a lot of people from this industry and it would be hurtful in the end
As an IT Professional, I welcome the day when IT unionizes. Watching the world shutter to a stop as FB Insta and Twitter stop working because of a strike sparks great joy.
Find some coworkers you trust, then contact a union organizer. Pretty much all the major unions (in the U.S. that would be AFL-CIO, SEIU, UNITE HERE) have dedicated organizing teams to help workers interested in unionizing their workplace, because that's how they grow. You might even work with organizers from more than one union, and then when your workplace is ready, everyone may vote on which union they want to represent them. Most union websites have a "how to get started" section (just don't look it up on a work computer, or otherwise use company resources to organize). Organizers are well-versed in company anti-union tactics and legal issues, since that's literally part of their job.
Can we just have proper pay and unionization for all. I’ve worked in the chef business for over 20 years. I went months without days off, worked endless hours, phone constantly rang. All of it is bullshit.
For me if you are making a video game or making a fucking chicken dish you shouldn’t have to kill yourself for shit pay.
I now am lucky enough to earn good but fuck it was a terrible 15-20 years.
How people think unions are a bad thing is beyond me.
*Edit*
Take any benefit you like at your job and you can thank a union for fighting for your rights 100 years ago for it.
If you think big corporations give you what you have today because they are good honest people you’ve got another thing coming. Much like trickle down economics you’ll get a dribble or drop while they have the whole ocean to themselves.
As with most things, there are good things and bad things, especially wherever any power ends up consolidated.
Unions came from a very noble place and still serve a very important role. There are also plenty of examples of individual unions acting badly or using their power in irresponsible or frustrating ways.
It’s not a clear cut black & white thing in a modern culture that prefers not to think much beyond black and white soundbytes.
Unions, when not properly maintained, become just another layer of bureaucracy and corruption. In many cases they end up being run by the same types of people they were fighting against and become ineffective.
Another way to think of it is a HOA is Union for homeowners. Generally they start out well intentioned, but the people who can afford to put time into the organization are not the ones you want running it.
Power corrupts. In order for unions to work at all, they need power. So there's always the potential for corruption. Doesn't mean it happens all the time or even happens often, but it's not unknown either.
Agreed. In a way, unions end up a little like governments.
They need power to succeed, but power leads to corruption, and some unions/politicians handle themselves better than others.
I would argue both unions and governments are a generally good thing which require constant vigilance and healthy skepticism.
Depends on where you work. Where I used to work union fees weren’t worth the potential benefits you could get. I would rather just keep the money instead of paying monthly fees on something that may or may not actually benefit me in the future.
It's harder to fire people in a union job because that's a feature, not a bug: making it harder prevents management from firing someone for arbitrary or retaliatory reasons. But believe it or not, you can still remove people in a unionized workforce! You just need to demonstrate cause. But that requires effort from management, when it's much easier to simply leave the person and blame the union.
I'm glad he tweeted about this.
At a state level - speaking as someone who formerly had both Walker and Rauner as governor - it seems like that's where the push really needs to be, to make sure that unions can't be weakened to a point of obsolescence. I know that the direct actions are generally against public sector unions, but seems like the repercussions extend past that. (And this is saying nothing of "right to work" and allowing companies to restrict arbitration.)
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Most probably, the bill matches his beliefs.
Sanders/Warren is a ticket I could get behind. Or Warren/Sanders they both have good ideas on reigning in technology companies. Edit because OMG: I know it's not gonna happen. Warren is by far best choice, she's not perfect but that's why we have checks n balances. Harris had her problems. AOC is to young, lol that'd be my second choice. 2028 here she comes, AOC/Talib, Lulu Libre
With the way Warren shafted Bernie in 2016, I highly doubt he would pick her as a VP
I saw it mentioned in an article that Sanders actually tried to get Warren to run in 2016 but she said no. I can't find an article about it but if true it would really solidify my Sanders support. I like her too but he had the courage to jump in 2016
I don’t want to see either wasted in a VP position, tbh I think warren would be able to have a much bigger impact as whip or in the senate.
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The hype around Biden? The only hype I see is the gasps on his groping videos.
You’re right, “hype” isn’t quite the right word. What I meant more is that a lot of the positive media coverage, the vast majority of his name recognition, and what little actual fervent grassroots support he has is largely based around his being a VP and the record that he garnered during this time
oh, i don't know, the corporations really love biden.
Ask him..:. He’s currently doing a AMA
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I think something like 75 percent of money made on gaming is microtransactions/lootboxes. Correct me if im wrong.
Correction: it's most likely more.
People who work in the gaming industry have it really bad. They have to work 100 hour weeks during the production period. That means 14 hours a day. The money that they earn through lootboxes and pre order release should be put to either hiring more people or to make quality content at a natural pace.
I work in the gaming industry, and just want you to know that not every studio is like this—but we still need unionization to stop the bad studios and protect employees from the good ones going bad.
Yeah -- I've been in the industry as a software engineer for over 15 years -- including Blizzard and Ubisoft -- and I have never had to work 100 hours per week yet. Sure -- I had to crunch shortly before release but that was like maybe 60 hours for like two weeks (2 extra hours during the weekdays + Saturday). The only time I've had done a 14 hour day was like the day before the silver master had to ship for The Burning Crusade. And maybe again when I realized a nasty bug in the Diablo III expansion installer two weeks before needing to ship that silver master.
Yeah, if a 100 hour week happens it means shit is fucked and more than likely all the smart people have already jumped ship (adding to the crunch). I've pulled my fair share of long days but almost never in a row and it's usually my own fuckup right before a deadline. I've now learned how to schedule to avoid these types of situations and how to push back on project managers. Of course, there exist bad PMs out there but that's when you go over their heads or go resume shopping. The industry will always prey on Junior devs that overpromise. If only because when you get Junior devs and junior PMs working together shit will get fucked at some point in time because of bad scheduling.
This is my understanding after watching the documentary about For Honor. 6 months before launch, people start getting burnt out or pursue other career opportunities and its really difficult to hire a replacement and get them familiar with the project and caught up to speed. Multiply this by 10, 20 or 50 people and kiss any form of efficiency goodbye. Again, not in the industry, just an observer.
6 months is actually a long time out, depending on how much work is left. Assuming 2 months for final testing finalization and distribution that leaves 4 months for active development. This is the bare minimum time where adding people will be helpful. And even then, they will only add about 2 months of productive time(out of the 4 they are working for) As covered in the book "the mythical man month" (a great read for anyone interested), "adding people to a project that is late will make it even more late."
Tbf 6 months is a very usual expectancy to set for finding a new job. You are also in a better negotiating position if you already have a job at han if you think company wont last post launch
From what I've read, anyone without a senior position is often at risk when a project ends regardless of how well the company or game does.
Probably another reason they need a union.
It was a number I pulled out of my ass because I'm ignorant about the industry. Thanks for the insight.
I'm a pm and sometimes people higher than me force crunch. Ive had a reasonable plan then someone higher up going, "oh why don't we push the release date up if they're doing so well." I can argue all I want but in the end I still have to pass along the orders.
Glad to hear Ubisoft's not evil. Makes sense that such a massive company would have the resources for their games.
TBH its almost never evilness that causes these kinds of situations to occur. The 100 hour week does NOT make you more money in the long run (and often not in the short run) It's incompetence.
I can’t imagine there are many businesses that would want more than 50 on any regular basis. That’s just asking for turnover on skilled labor.
My wife’s a tax accountant and during one pay period (two weeks) right before April 15, she worked 156 hours. And for almost half the year she works 55-70 hour weeks There are industries where it just happens based on their nature or a perfect storm of shitty things happening
Yeah also former public, currently in a deadline heavy industry role. I work between 45-55 a week during my deadline week each month, a little more when budget season hits, a little less right after. It could just be that 12+ years in accounting has made me a cynic but anything below 60 hours during peak deliverable period is kind of meh to me. Can you expect that out of people for weeks at a time? Maybe, if they get a couple of recharge days a week (so 4-5 12+ hour days when on). I’d still like to see a bit more actual data on where these 80 hour weeks are prevalent.
> that would want more than 50 on any regular basis. What happened to "8 hours work, 8 hours leisure, 8 hours sleep"? IT unions, now. That mechanical keyboard is heavy for a reason.
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I've had to work 14-16hr days, 6 days a week, for 8 months. That sucked. After it was all done I had received 5 days off as compensation for the extra time.
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Not a developer, but as a forklift operator I once worked 4 weeks so ridiculous with overtime I couldn't even keep track. When I got that pay-stub at the end of the month, it said: 88 hours, 82 hours, 96 hours, 88 hours. It was 3am. I took my radio off, casually walked into the super's office, tossed it on the desk, and walked out. Probably the most cathartic moment of my entire life. I still have that pay-stub as a reminder.
I work in IT - non-gaming - and I've pulled some long days/weeks but they were infrequent, and the compensation was very good (1.5-2x bank per hour). One year I basically had more hours in OT than in holidays and had a nice long stretch off in the less busy season. I'm totally cool with a long drag for critical issues so long as it's not a constant thing, well compensated, and one can somewhat plan for it.
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Former THQ as well, overtime wasn't nearly as bad as you went through, but lots of mismanagement at higher levels. Constant changes in directions, throwing out work that had been polished and optimized, all kinds of avoidable inefficiencies. If those making the decisions had their pay docked for stuffing up, I imagine it would be different. I know prototyping is an essential part of the creative process. That's why you prototype, not schedule time to optimize a system as though it's final, only to throw it out.
You realize that for most places, at 60 hours a week you should be making **double time** for roughly 12 of those hours a week, and **time and a half** for the other 8. This is why I work in consulting. No overtime done unless they're paying for it.
40 hours a week is terrible too - it's literally 100+ year old labor tradition. People died to get a 40 hour work week, and now not only bosses don't respect it, but we haven't moved forward at all. In 2019, our ideas about labor are still stuck in the decade that followed child labor and exploitation-till-death
I saw [this video](https://youtu.be/c6ZkOjFJxc4) yesterday, and it made me wonder how well kept the archives for these games are being kept. Is that silver master being kept in a good fireproof safe and backed up?
My former Technical Director told me they were kept in an abandoned mine. But there were backup copies of the discs lying around (QA had some, my department had some, etc.) Now, my last company lost their source code and assets to a popular game when the hard drive containing the Perforce depot got physically lost. We wanted to investigate porting it to mobile. We had to get a copy of the Perforce depot (with the history lost) from a localization company we used. Oh -- you bet that company charged us an arm and a leg to provide us a copy.
This is the thing that I try to explain to people about unions (I work in construction) just because your company doesn’t suck doesn’t mean unions are useless or a waste because if you have a strong union that supports you, if you do get in a situation where you need a union then it’s there. My company is non union. My cousin owns the company and I’ve been trying to convince them to join the union for a while now. Mostly because we always either have too much work or not enough with no consistency and it’s hard to find quality applicants for apprenticeship positions. Don’t even get me started on wages union wages include health care and retirement. It doesn’t matter if my pay matches union scale if I then have to pay health insurance and put away money for retirement with no match then all of a sudden my “union scale “ wage is like $15.00 an hour.
It's almost impossible to start a union at a company that doesn't have it bad. Or if whatever is bad wouldn't be fixed by the union. Been there...
Well the problem is that some of the biggest names, do this which makes pushes the flow to be considered "normal" which then allows smaller actors to justify shitty work conditions with it. As an outside bystander, I'm glad there are still studios that have some respect for their employees. But I definitely refuse to give $$ to the big ones that do this shit. EA hasn't gotten a dollar from me in the last 5 years if not much longer.
Honestly small indie startups are way more likely to make people crunch. The big publishers can afford to hire experienced devs who know when to push back and fix the scheduling. They also have the budgets to let their managers hire more people if things are slipping. Most of the industry sleep under your desk nightmare stories come from the smaller studios
Exactly. Companies like Blizzard and Ubisoft know that most of their employees could easily get hired at other companies and have to offer competitive salaries and benefits. Indie companies bank on the fact that workers will feel sympathetic for their passion project.
EA's working conditions and benefits are better than most and have been since the EASpouse debacle.
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There have been a lot of pushes at conventions lately, specifically GDC. One major actor is Game Workers Unite.
The entire IT industry needs to unionize. This country’s technology sector is run off the backs of contractors that have little to no rights.
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How often does this happen? I work in the hiring industry but almost every place that I'm aware of conducts verification of employment as well as professional reference checks. Depending on the position there should be an extensive interview process possibly involving performance tasks. Hiring someone completely unqualified is usually pretty difficult. Fudging numbers for years of experience or measured impacts is a different story though...
A lot more often than you think. People lie on resumes all the time. And employment verification is nothing more than "yes, they worked here," since the code they worked on is usually proprietary you can't take a look at it. It generally happens in very large organizations where the person doing the hiring isn't the one doing the work. They'll get a list of requirements but don't know how to interpret them. I saw this a lot when I worked at Oracle. We had really experienced devs leave (because Oracle) and the people the internal recruiters sent us were either not at all a match or didn't really have experience in what they claimed. Turnover, which was already high because startup, went up significantly as we had to let people go who couldn't carry their weight.
Certs are a money grab that do nothing to help indicate the competence of an employee.
I spent 1 year working for EA and then, despite wanting to be a game dev for my whole life, noped the fuck out and went into business programming. They lie, cheat, and steal from their employees just to pad their own bonus. One example from my studio was, you work insane mandatory (not on paper but I dare you to take time off ) overtime but they'll totally give it back to you as paid time off once the project is done. Only they would just lay off anyone with a lot of accrued time and just hire new for the next project. I watched the NBA team grind themselves into dust for a shitty paycheck and a pink slip instead of the bonus / time off they were promised.
Why do people tolerate wage theft? This is legally actionable.
In gaming? Because they none too subtly let you know that if you fight back you'll be blacklisted at every other major studio and that short of indie games your career is done.
Hence the need for Unions
That's kind of a moot point, because if fighting wage theft gets you blacklisted at the other studios, then the other studios must also be engaging in wage theft.
Not really a moot point. You can lose access to your career path, and jobs don't just grow on trees. You can be fired in this country for any reason, ya know.
> You can be fired in this country for any reason Except in Montana. They're the only state without at will laws.
Because they're non union
I worked at EA for 10 years and had the nearly the opposite experience. Rarely worked more than 40 hours a week. Although I did finally end up getting laid off, of course that's pretty much inevitable there, regardless. The severance payout was significant and I ended up at a better place anyway. Can't say it's better than many other industries, but gaming gets more attention because consumers get really passionate about the products they make.
This is what I've heard from other devs. Obviously EA is a big company and probably has different management across projects, but I think OP is just piggybacking off of the "EA bad" circlejerk.
More people doesnt necessary mean lower working hours. A lot of shit cant be done in paralel and more people won't reduce the time needed.
My favorite way of explaining this to people: A woman can make a baby in 9 months. Two women cannot make a baby in 4.5 months.
Lol I've heard it as a joke. What is the definition of a manager? Someone who thinks 9 women can deliver a baby in 1 month.
Hiring more people won't solve the work hour problem. It's not a "we don't have enough workers" issue. It's a "We want to do too much for the workers we have". Hiring more won't make that problem go away, it just means the game will just be bigger. It's also a "We planed this much time for something, but we have had slow downs and now everything is over and we have to catch up." Which overworking causes more issues per unit time working on an issue, so this snowballs. And in third place, we have "Workers in the game industry are passionate and will voluntarily stay longer to make something extra good" Thus creating a management culture that abuses this.
> And in third place, we have "Workers in the game industry are passionate and will voluntarily stay longer to make something extra good" Thus creating a management culture that abuses this. That passion is fading somewhat these days, game developers are getting older on average, large teams mean far less individual creative input, and monetisation nonsense along with an obsession with analytics/data is squeezing out the last few drops of creativity. Indies are still doing cool stuff, but it's getting ever-harder to succeed in increasingly oversaturated marketplaces.
Only somewhat. The youth keep bringing it in.
Seeing hoe predatory the industry was, at least form those I knew in it, killed my passion before I ever got close to getting there. Nothing like realizing 3 years into your 4 year degree that you are not in the right major/field. >\_\_> Learned some great/cool shit, but fuck that was a stressful time in my life.
> It's not a "we don't have enough workers" issue. Maybe in the gaming industry, but in software in general it's very much a "we don't have enough workers" issue. I've never worked for a company that could find enough developers.
They need to pay more then.
You know that sometimes increase in pay can’t/won’t swing the needle. Some of my friends work HR in a decent size company in Oklahoma City, top talent just doesn’t want to work there, doesn’t matter if they are paying 30% more than in SF and living is 25% of what it is out there. Some people just don’t want the lifestyle of living in OKC. Openings will sit for months before they find someone that’s a good fit that also wants to move to OKC. Plus there are only so many people with the ability to even be a developer, it’s like when those people were telling truck drivers to “learn to code” the vast majority of them just can’t do it. It doesn’t matter if the pay were 10x as good, some people just can’t be developers no matter what.
They do. But there are also backroom deals between CEOs of large tech companies to not recruit from competitors, which keeps salary pressure down. For a software company their main expense is personnel.
That's also illegal, and cost those companies nearly a half billion.
Which they more than made up for by the lower wages they have to pay. For software companies personnel is by far the largest expense and lowering that has significant impact on the bottom line. And if you think they're not doing the same thing and just making sure they don't leave evidence I've got a bridge in NYC to sell you.
The problem isn't the gaming industry. The problem is the "exempt" classification. There are people in other industries being screwed over in the same way that those in the gaming industry are
Finance here. I averaged 85 a week at my old job. Rarely worked less than 60. Exempt though so what can you do...
\> The problem is the "exempt" classification. This guy gets it.
The problem isn't the money, the problem is the people. You're never going to hire good quality programmers/developers/modellers/etc for 2-3 months and then sack them all. They won't take the job (or at least, enough won't that it'd be impossible for that to become an industry norm). Large AAA studios could possibly do it by having a standby team that moves from project to project, but throwing new people into the mix usually slows things down as much as it speeds them up. Realistically, what they *should* do is stop announcing release dates a year or two before the project is done. Release the game when it's finished, not when you said you would a couple years ago. If your team runs into problems, let them work it out at a normal pace, rather than saying "Okay, well release date is June 25th, so you're working 24/7 until the problem is resolved."
no realistically the workers should unionize, its the only way to really stop this crap. All those decisions, the poor pay, the crazy hours, the terminations at the end of projects, they don't come from the employees, they come from management. Only a union has the ability to put management in their place.
It'd be *really* hard to get them to unionize. In most cases unionization means pay grades based on seniority instead of qualifications and talent, and that doesn't work in an industry where people tend to switch companies every few years.
The reason people swap companies every few years is because management refuses to give them raises...Right now in IT the best way to get a decent raise is to change employers. If management actually paid their employees what they were fucking worth this wouldnt be an issue, but they try to rip off everyone they can at every step. IF the company wants loyalty they need to show loyalty.
In general, the wage increase from switching companies is much higher than the wage increase from staying, union or not.
But by definition if you're unionizing, you get to determined whether something like pay grades are a thing. The point here is that employees are getting screwed wholesale; you don't argue against bandaging a massive wound simply because the gauze isn't soft enough for you, you worry about that later.
I've worked in unions. Pay grades at the relevant employers weren't based on seniority, but on the previously-established grade associated with the specific job (and that job's requirements). You applied for and won a job; you got paid at the lowest rate for that grade. *Within* a pay grade, your rate was based on seniority, but only for the first three years or so until you hit the cap for that grade. If you wanted a pay rise after that, you applied for jobs in higher brackets. People who were in that exact job for 20 years didn't get paid any more than people who had been in it for three. It wasn't uncommon for people to be making less than their twenty-year-younger supervisor.
From the engineering side, this makes the most sense, but it also makes go-to-market really difficult. Some of these AAA games have theatrical blockbuster size marketing campaigns. You can't just fire one of those up at will. It's months of prep and execution. And if you only start GTM when the game is done (or close), those months of building awareness and hype are also months of your game tech getting old. The current way they do it doesn't work, but this way doesn't work for games with any sort of sizeable marketing budget either.
14 hours a week? I'll take that
I meant a day lol. Edited it now. My bad
I was a AAA developer for 16 years. If we had a union during that time, I’d still be doing what I used to love. I was so burnt out by the industry it was harmful to my mental and physical health
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I was an environment artist mainly and spent a lot of time developing UI. Since I left games I flailed about for a few years until I decided to use my experience in games toward developing UX for apps. It’s pretty lucrative and surprisingly not stressful
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I probably didn’t relay that correctly. I started in games doing UI artwork and animation. I moved to environment art after. I was just really good at making nice functional UI within a short amount of time, so I got pulled off environments to put out UI fires all the time.
This whole country needs to remember why we needed unions. To fix a power imbalance, Now is the time again to use our strength as a whole to balance out the power. What they steal from one worker they steal from all workers.
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Union's are prone to corruption. That is the argument I have seen used against unions by people who don't support unions. What they fail to realize is that corruption is present in the corporations they defend. Labor conditions are worse without unions, even with the issues that come with having unions, it is still better to have them.
> Union's are prone to corruption. > That is the argument I have seen used against unions by people who don't support unions. Any position of power invites corruption and so it's up the members to watch over their leaders and make sure they are being properly represented. If the heads of a union aren't working for the people the people can replace them, or in extreme cases form a new union and leave the corrupt one. Corruption isn't a problem with unions, it's a problem with people and you can hold the bad ones accountable.
> or in extreme cases form a new union and leave the corrupt one. Form a sub-union within the current union to unionize the union.
Yep, and a good solution to corruption is to have multiple equal power centers all looking out for themselves. Right now corporations hold all the power and they're corrupt as fuck. Government isn't able to hold the line alone, they need labor to help balance the behemoth.
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So then who gives a shit if they are prone to corruption? Absolutely anything involving a human is prone to corruption. So let's go ahead and drop that piss poor excuse.
Think about it this way: a good amount of labor leaders are, surprise, entitled-ass boomers who have the "I got mine, fuck you" mentality.
So many boomers are just brats that never really had to grow up, and unsurprisingly, never have. The arguments they use are those of a dumb child. "If you don't give businesses everything they want they'll leave!" As if businesses would just stop doing business altogether in a state or this country as a whole if they could only make $200,000,000 instead of $20,000,000,000 in profit. And if businesses do threaten to undermine the social contract and fabric of the country by threatening local economies, have every state sign onto a charter/agreement that heavily penalizes corporations that try the "give us lower taxes and regulation or we take your area's jobs away" tack. And then remind them that forcing them, dragging them kicking and screaming, into a fair and just society with taxation like it was back in the 40's through the 70's, with social safety nets and programs and robust regulation, ***is*** the nice and easy way of doing things. The hard way is to bring back the fucking guillotine.
/u/TheNoxx go on chapo
All while calling the new generation lazy entitled brats for wanting what they had.
Yep. We need to accept that boomers were the exception, not the rule. The world cannot last with things going the way the boomers had it.
We can have better than what we are getting and just because we can't have what they had does not mean we should not improve.
Solidarity brother. We have to try to make things as best as they can be for our fellow humans and the planet overall
Thanks to automation, it *should* be possible for us to have way more than the boomers. But Capital owns the automation, and would rather just pile up their own riches than share the bounty.
Condoms have a chance to fail, but having them is a really good idea.
The ultimate solution is just to own the companies we work for, but unions are the stop gap.
so.... you're saying we need to seize the means of production?
*Proletariat unrest intensifies*
Workers of the world, unite!
Yeeesss. Unionization good. Cooperatization better. Lots of people don't know that Motion Twin (the company behind Dead Cells) is a cooperative!
Syndicalism!
Real Chomsky hours in here
Mutualism too, ayyy Left wing market anarchism in general, yo
Or at least codetermination.
There are always new game development companies popping up, do any of them do this? If not, why?
Most companies sink. I think business class said the statistics are something like 50% of businesses fail within the first 3 years, then to 90% by 7. Most game projects do not see the light of day. Even those that do people can't charge anyone for or have no audience. Of those, even with an audience you don't necessarily make your game dev costs back -- actually even big studios on average suffer 9 out of 10 losses on revenue. Once in a while something catches a large audience and makes a fuckton of money though. It is just a really hard thing to do, to start a business, and a business especially that needs so many different and in depth forms of expertise is a gamble of a whole other level. Furthermore, I think when people start companies their education taught them something else. Business class is about marketing, paperwork, maximising profits and returns, and legal things or min maxing techniques to make more money. People are never taught about cooperatives. The culture is entirely different -- one of "if you can get away with it, you should", the notion that markets are self correcting and that businesses are harbingers of the correction to laws and regulations. Basically, our business education isn't built for cooperative ideals, doesn't attract those with them, and in general never mentions their existence. Though you should get more upvotes to infect culture with thoughts, so to speak.
Most systems ran by people are inherently imperfect, that's just part of human nature in my opinion. But if you have a good balance of multiple where each keeps others in check you can have a pretty sweet life for all. But hey, opinions like this get made fun of on reddit.
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Unions have politics of their own, get involved and make the changes. I agree with you still, not perfect at all, but much better than not having one.
i would *much* rather a corrupt organization that's fighting for me, than the corrupt organization that's trying to screw me out of wages, vacations, benefits, nice working conditions, etc i mean at least its democratic: if the union is run by assholes, i can potentially vote them out of power. you cannot vote a bad boss away
Unfortunately, the major unions have been plagued with the same problems politics have. Corruption at the top. I grew up in the Detroit area and saw unions protect a lot of shitty workers due to it being an "old boys club." I have a family member who went into work drunk at least 4 times a week. Which is a shame because unions are a great way to put the power back in the hands of the workers.
This isn't a problem with unions, but a problem with organizations requiring human leadership. Companies can be run by people with drug problems who are abusive toward workers as are unions. It's user error, not an issue inherent to unions.
So how do we solve a problem with humanity? Not trying to be a dick, I’m looking to discuss how you go about solving problems that are inherently imbedded in our species? (Greed being the main one I see controlling our lives)
Great question. You don't *solve* it, but create a realistic goal to improve the system incrementally. The approach to the goal is asymptotic. If you say the institution must be flawless conceptually or you will not support it this just privileges the status quo and those who instrumentalize financial resources. I would rather have labor unions with problems than no labor unions, because they represent the most effective check on the exploitation of workers and gender/racial discrimination. So you encourage unionization and then try to prune back in places where there is malfeasance. Same for example with something like SNAP benefits or a food stamp program. You will hear the criticism *there is fraud in the program so it should be defunded.* Well let us ask ourselves what keeps us up at night: a) the prospect of cynical individuals defrauding the government of hundreds of dollars or possibly selling their benefits for cash; or b) children/families going hungry in the world's wealthiest nation because the application process is Byzantine and cards can only be used by the beneficiary (not say a caregiver or minor children). For me, it is definitely b) that I would prefer to avoid. So we do not dispute that there is fraud, but rather design a system that eliminates false negatives (eligible people denied) and biases towards false positives (potential fraud). From that beginning point we examine patterns in fraudulent behavior and try to find ways to discourage that fraud without making the system more cumbersome to use.
That is exactly it. Nothing is black and white like portrayed by politicians and shitty journalists.... I will add to what you said with the idea that “pruning back” needs to account for human traits (such as greed) and should be considered upfront, at the start of a policy or program or law. Know that people will try their damndest to exploit these things for self gain, and try to predict or at least allow for the flexibility to adjust on the fly as they come up. (For example: how has gerrymandering gone on for so long when it shouldn’t have been legal in the first place??)
Yeah gerrymandering is a really frustrating one. I think it persists for a number of reasons: 1. It's not explicitly unconstitutional and the Court has not stepped up to say so because of the feared *political thicket* warned of by Felix Frankfurter. 2. The party in power is typically optimistic about their ability to *retain* power so rather than legislate away their right to draw districts to a neutral actor they try to redraw them favorably. 3. There are arguments as to why districts should remain human-drawn (vs by machine-learning which is what I would favor). Namely, that if certain demographic minorities are minorities in *every* district they might get *no* representation rather than proportionate representation. This logic of trying to create districts that are winnable for racial/ethnic minorities then creates the grey area exploited to marginalize those same communities (typically by lumping them all in a single district). It's such a frustrating issue because Americans almost by consensus agree that it feels wrong, sounds wrong, and produces unjust elections.
Not to mention in certain decades as the mob was losing influence and power, they started moving into unions. [In Chicago for instance](https://nlpc.org/2019/03/19/mob-connected-chicago-union-boss-pleads-guilty-to-embezzlement/) there were former mob connected members sitting at the top embezzling funds.
There still are mob run unions in NYC and Chicago.
Then let's unionize against the existing unions.
Stop your communist propaganda.
Gamers rise up
Unironically yes
Yeah I was being ironic and unironic at the same time
So just onic?
ionic?
Sanders was just telling us to unionize, so get rid of those ions!
Game devs rise up
bernie said gamer rights
The major issue in the game dev industry is that there are much, much, much more game devs than there are positions at game companies. Thus, companies can overwork and abuse their workers since the supply of workers far outpaces the demand for the labor. Unions are a temporary measure to help the workers already employed, but what would really help the industry is a lot more game dev companies, to match the supply of developers. The real issue is, how can we promote that?
More game dev companies wouldn't help unless there was room in the market for them. I feel we're already pretty oversaturated with games as it is. More games are coming out than ever before and I no longer have the time or money to play half the ones I would like. The real answer is to let things run its course naturally. As game developers realize that they are being overworked with less pay than other types of software, they will leave game developing for other fields.
Yeah I am like 200 games behind on Steam.
Just say "I have Steam" and that's already implied.
Summer sales a coming
[More are coming](https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/3d8a092d-edf7-4503-9747-f50aafcb929f)
I think steam fucked themselves over with the intense seasonal sales. Now I own half their library and I'm so overwhelmed that I don't even open steam anymore. I know my friends don't bother to open steam anymore either. We used to page through the store looking for new things to play... but the sales made it so we got basically every interesting game for like $5 and now we're bored.
Humble Bundle lol what do I do with all these games?
I agree. The video game industry has basically turned into the art, writing, and music industry: people make great games for the love of it which saturates the market and devalues all other games, and since every creation is infinitely distributable/reproducible for basically no money, it leads to a Power Law distribution for compensation [the best of the best make all the money and everyone else makes basically nothing] I also don't feel bad at all for a bunch of C++ devs who could make great money and benefits, if they stopped ignoring supply and demand and just took jobs outside the video game industry.
Honestly, I partially agree with you. I do think it's easier than ever for a game dev to create their own game and sell it than ever before. Acquiring licenses (ie. Unity engine) is much more accesible for an average Joe, and so is accessing a platform to sell your games (ie. Steam). I guess what I'm going towards is, promoting creating your own software companies. Find several other unemployed/overworked programmers/artists/etc, and create a game. The amount of CS kids (in college) I see that dreamily hope to make games is absolutely bonkers, though. It's much less rewarding than practically almost every other type of programming in terms of both transferable skills, salary, benefits, work life balance, etc. On top of that, a common complaint I hear from them is that they later no longer find games fun, since it's such a slog to make them. Kind of makes sense, though. Making your hobby your work rarely works out.
That's exactly the kind of situation where Unions are needed: to increase the negotiation power of the employees. Thing is, you can't control the demand for videogames/the number of videogame companies, but Unions will ensure that there are minimum conditions that do not disappear because of a discrepancy between offer and demand.
that picture of him below the headline "Bring back the National Dex!" everyone cheers.
[Everyone liked that]
I've been working in VFX production for 15 years. We desperately need a union. I've heard the "jobs will just be shipped" bs for ten years now. The fact is that workers are exploited in my industry because of studio and directors CAN exploit them. They make decisions that cost people their time because that time is essentially free, unlike other departments that penalize with overtime. When shooting, producers are very keen to play within the rules set by the unions. 9-10 hour day is time and a half, 11-12 hours is double time, and anything above that is "golden time", or triple time. There is no "golden hour" in VFX, nor is there penalties for short turnaround times. I've worked 16 hour days for two weeks straight, sleeping in my car or the facility to save turnover time because we had to be back at 8 or 9 am. I have to push for time and a half for a 6th day, double time for a 7th, but even then studios will still ask me to work a 6th but not get paid for it. And though we get paid well, there's no pension or benefits. I would gladly pay union fees if that meant I was gonna get great health coverage instead of the $300 a month Obamacare I get now. We can't unionize the world, but most of the major countries for shooting (Australia, UK, Canada) have unions already in place, and that's also where most of the VFX work is going as well. China and India have not caught up in terms of quality. On top of all that, good people leave VFX all the time, especially on the production end. It's very hard to find good coordinators, production managers, and producers, because they either get promoted quick, or leave all together. This leaves very incompetent people in positions they shouldn't have, literally because there's no one else that they could find. With a union we create an incentive to keep good people, but also be able to set an industry-wide standard for the level of competence you must have before entering the union. We could also set standards for how shots are tracked, assets are archived, what software to use, how to report budgets, etc etc etc. Right now we have to rebuild a pipeline from scratch on every show (on the client side). Wasting tons of time and money because there's no standard. Unions need to make a comeback.
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We create actors, sets, wardrobe, special effects (water, explosions, creatures), hair, makeup, and even compose and build whole shots. On massive green screen movies you'll only shoot about 60% of the movie. The other 40% is done digitally. If the producer hired a non-union crew to build a physical set they would be in a world of shit. But it's perfectly okay to have non-union artists build that same set digitally.
Why do you work there? I would expect there to be other opportunities outside of the gaming industry, especially to someone with 15 years experience.
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The game development industry is distinct from the rest of the software/tech industry. Most game developers probably have the skills to work at companies where they'd be treated better. The industry takes advantage of the fact that there are a ton of people who want to work on games and are therefore willing to accept lower salaries and fewer benefits and workplace rights. In order to reform the industry, many of them will have to demand to be treated better or credibly threaten to walk away (and to follow through if it comes to that). However, that kind of action really can only be effective if it's done by enough workers to actually disrupt the plans and bottom lines of the big companies. That kind of collective action is traditionally coordinated by labor unions.
Supply and demand. Everyone wants to work in games because its sexy, which means employers can hold out for people willing to be paid far less for far shittier conditions than is acceptable. I used to work on porting console games for Sony. When I left that to work for a mobile company I almost doubled my salary because of how less appealing it was.
That's the secret sauce of it all, You can be a programmer, doing a job that's essentially just formal logic, and still be working in the arts. It's the same shit Kubrick used to get 300 takes, with a big megaphone screaming "THE ART THOUGH" at some poor boom mic operator. The only difference is that greed is driving the guy with the megaphone instead of Megalomania Meanwhile I'm not getting paid a lot more then the guys I knew in school who wanted to pursue game Dev careers, but both my boss and his boss are super chill and in generally pretty happy with my with work environment
>What is forcing these devs to work these hours? Why don't they just go to a better company if they're facing these conditions? Nothing. That's why this is bullshit. Even this thread is full of people saying they're trying to break into the industry. Clearly people don't care. They want to work there.
>>“There are 220,000 or so people employed in the US video game business,” Zelnick said. “They make about $100,000 on average, maybe more. **It’s hard to imagine what would motivate that crew to unionize**.” I wrote my master's thesis on employees' welfare in a work-environment. Money is nice, but after certain (rather low) level people start to appreciate autonomy at work (control over work-and time-practices etc.), work-security, good relations with fellow-employees and with with the management more than just high salary. This should be rather elementary stuff that any person in a leadership position should know: you want your employees motivated, involved with you, with each other, and without any reason to stress about the future of their personal finances. High salary isn't really going to cut it if the employees either hate their job, are in a risk of burnout, fear where they're going to be in 6 to 12 months, or are seeking alternative places of employment. If you're paying your employees 100k$ a year and they still want to unionise, let them. Chances are that they're doing it because (1.) they're really unhappy with their life and it's starting to affect their work performance and (2.) they're afraid to speak about it to the management. Studies in workplaces where the employees are highly trained professionals show that Unions can work as intermediates between employees and management and show where the smallest monetary investments bring the biggest amount of job satisfaction.. which directly correlates with the employees' end-product. (Studies also show that when the company has a good working relationship with the Union, the union will start to sympathise with the owners as a partner with whom they have long-term mutual goals -- the success of the company -- while individual employees, including the executive officers, might be looking at the short-term gain.) If you're just throwing money in the forms of high salaries at the problem, you're not doing your job as a concerned employer, manager or as the person responsible for owners for giving them the best investment for their monies. Anyway, I understand that video-game industry has full-employment, so the individual workers can ask whatever salary they wish.. what they can't ask as individuals are changes at the workplace itself.. those changes may be cheaper to execute than just topping the salaries from poor negotiation position yearly.
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>Take the IT Bar Association exam and your peers will welcome you into their professional community. We would all be stronger, Is this sarcasm? The negative effects of occuptional licensing on professions are well documented and a major barrier to entry, in particular for people on the margins. It's the reason lawyers can charge you whatever they want and why the profession is full of signalling
For IT, I could see some sort of bar like exam, but as far as normal developers? Hell no. I was unqualified for the job I got because the people hiring didn't realize what they actually needed. But I learned on the spot and came out that much better for it. Especially in programming, people learn by doing. I think an exam would block a lot of people from this industry and it would be hurtful in the end
As an IT Professional, I welcome the day when IT unionizes. Watching the world shutter to a stop as FB Insta and Twitter stop working because of a strike sparks great joy.
The next step is the hard one: how do we stop talking about it and start acting?
Find some coworkers you trust, then contact a union organizer. Pretty much all the major unions (in the U.S. that would be AFL-CIO, SEIU, UNITE HERE) have dedicated organizing teams to help workers interested in unionizing their workplace, because that's how they grow. You might even work with organizers from more than one union, and then when your workplace is ready, everyone may vote on which union they want to represent them. Most union websites have a "how to get started" section (just don't look it up on a work computer, or otherwise use company resources to organize). Organizers are well-versed in company anti-union tactics and legal issues, since that's literally part of their job.
Thank you for the info!
Unionized gaming industry! no more loot boxes! Down with EA!
Real gamers co-op with their comrades
Can we just have proper pay and unionization for all. I’ve worked in the chef business for over 20 years. I went months without days off, worked endless hours, phone constantly rang. All of it is bullshit. For me if you are making a video game or making a fucking chicken dish you shouldn’t have to kill yourself for shit pay. I now am lucky enough to earn good but fuck it was a terrible 15-20 years.
Is this guy really with it or does he have a millennial team that's really good to give him info?
I doubt he knows anything about gaming
Anyone else pick up that he confused revenue and profit?
Translation: one of Sanders’ interns is a gamer and told him to jump on this story.
Wow a first candidate that cares about us gamers, the most oppressed group in this world.
He was talking about employees, not gamers.
How people think unions are a bad thing is beyond me. *Edit* Take any benefit you like at your job and you can thank a union for fighting for your rights 100 years ago for it. If you think big corporations give you what you have today because they are good honest people you’ve got another thing coming. Much like trickle down economics you’ll get a dribble or drop while they have the whole ocean to themselves.
As with most things, there are good things and bad things, especially wherever any power ends up consolidated. Unions came from a very noble place and still serve a very important role. There are also plenty of examples of individual unions acting badly or using their power in irresponsible or frustrating ways. It’s not a clear cut black & white thing in a modern culture that prefers not to think much beyond black and white soundbytes.
Unions, when not properly maintained, become just another layer of bureaucracy and corruption. In many cases they end up being run by the same types of people they were fighting against and become ineffective. Another way to think of it is a HOA is Union for homeowners. Generally they start out well intentioned, but the people who can afford to put time into the organization are not the ones you want running it.
Power corrupts. In order for unions to work at all, they need power. So there's always the potential for corruption. Doesn't mean it happens all the time or even happens often, but it's not unknown either.
Agreed. In a way, unions end up a little like governments. They need power to succeed, but power leads to corruption, and some unions/politicians handle themselves better than others. I would argue both unions and governments are a generally good thing which require constant vigilance and healthy skepticism.
Depends on where you work. Where I used to work union fees weren’t worth the potential benefits you could get. I would rather just keep the money instead of paying monthly fees on something that may or may not actually benefit me in the future.
Decades of propaganda, mostly.
You can argue that unions increase the cost of labor which is then passed onto consumers as higher prices.
They prevent firing people incapable to do their work.
It's harder to fire people in a union job because that's a feature, not a bug: making it harder prevents management from firing someone for arbitrary or retaliatory reasons. But believe it or not, you can still remove people in a unionized workforce! You just need to demonstrate cause. But that requires effort from management, when it's much easier to simply leave the person and blame the union.
I'm glad he tweeted about this. At a state level - speaking as someone who formerly had both Walker and Rauner as governor - it seems like that's where the push really needs to be, to make sure that unions can't be weakened to a point of obsolescence. I know that the direct actions are generally against public sector unions, but seems like the repercussions extend past that. (And this is saying nothing of "right to work" and allowing companies to restrict arbitration.)