No idea if unions are the solution, but this is definitely an issue specific to the game industry right now.
Also, it's easy to claim that one "wants" to unionize on a survey. But that's quite a bit different from actually doing it. So I would take this survey with a large grain of salt. It's not like most game developers couldn't get other sw dev jobs if they wanted to, after all.
If you want to know what people really value, ignore what they say and focus on what they actually do.
Disclaimer: have worked for game companies before
I think if most of them could 'tick a box and join the union' they would - whereas actually establishing a union would be hard, yes.
There could be some terrible fallout as well - companies shutting down studios and opening up another one elsewhere etc..
It's not as clear-cut as "unions are always good for all workers."
Game devs are hardest hit by bad conditions, but every worker in every company would benefit from collective negotiation -- use your imagination, you could have a much higher salary, more flexibility in your workplace, more autonomy, you name it. That's what unions do, they let you bargain for the things you can't as an individual.
Lamentably, there's still a lot of folks in the software field who see themselves as the rock star, rather than the rank and file.
Also lamentably, there's still a lot of perception that a union means: you can't fire dead weight (you can, you just have to follow a process), pay is based on seniority (doesn't have to be, but what's wrong with that anyway? we don't have a good way to measure productivity or value, so what other metric should we use?), that they're corrupt (they're democratic institutions, so they're as corrupt as the members make them), etc.
All of it anti-union propaganda that's been working pretty well for the last 40 years.
Of course unions can be corrupt, but the only thing more corrupt than a union is management.
People in most tech firms are not clamouring for a union.
When people are talking about it, it's for a reason.
If you make a movie, everyone involved is 'union'.
I don't see why gaming should be any different.
In that case you could view union membership as insurance, in case you ever lose that great job. Keep in mind that your local pipefitters union is not the only model out there - SAG-AFTRA seems to work for actors/actresses across a broad range of income, experience, and talent levels.
https://www.sagaftra.org/membership-benefits/steps-join
Worked over a decade in indie films, never heard of any producer having a problem getting SAG to recognize paperwork.
https://www.entertainmentcareers.net/acting/how-to-join-sag/
Games releases are seasonal so a common practice is to hire for an xmas release and gut the teams after that.
Shady bonus practices are common. You often have very little recourse into how yearly profit is calculated and paid out.
The separation of studio managing employees and publishers holding on to IP means that studios can close up shop without the rights holders being liable for any back pay or bonus.
Alternatively, if you dig in, and refuse to deal with that bullshit, quitting, or being dismissed for not being a team player, half-way through crunch on a shitty project is a great way to burn bridges in that industry.
I don't doubt it, and your comment supports my original point: that there is a surplus of devs willing to tolerate such conditions. If that were not so, quitting would not be near as much of a problem for one's future employment prospects, because employers would not have as many candidates to choose from in the first place.
This is exactly the reason why I don't want to pursue a career in game development. I find games exciting but that doesn't make it feel worth to me to make compromises in pay and working conditions. Instead it can just be a hobby.
There is no one EA or Activision experience, they are very heterogeneous entities.
The film industry figured out long ago that they need to treat their employees with respect by giving them predictable hours, fair compensation for overtime, and guarantees that they won't lose health/retirement benefits across projects and studio closures. I do believe the game industry will get there eventually, but it seems it will take a lot of kicking and screaming.
There's no slavery here. I've been there. Unlike the people making your shoes in Bangladesh, everyone making your games is there because they love it. These are talented individuals who could easily go work in other industries.
People in the industry want better conditions, and more power to them. But this is not slave labor and no one is stuck in the game industry.
What you're saying is tantamount to not buying a painter's painting because he worked too hard on it. Trust me... the people you think you care about want you to buy the games.
That's simply not true. I'm sure most of them entered the industry for the love of it, but that doesn't mean they love their current job or being expected to work long hours.
> These are talented individuals who could easily go work in other industries.
There's a lot of shovelware in the games industry and I doubt many people love working on it. Do you really think the people working at studios churning out hanah montana games love their jobs? At best their hoping to work on something better in future, at worst the probably can't move elsewhere.
It can be a lot harder to break out than you think, the type of skills a game developer would have aren't in high demand in a lot of places and they could be missing some important skills used in the the more general industry, like SQL. This is an industry that loves to type cast, even something like getting a c# job as a java developer can be tough.
And then you've got the non-developer jobs. Graphic artists, writers and music composers don't have nearly as many options available.
The reason there is so much shovel-ware is because there are so many people interested in making games. So many individuals involved in shovel-ware are talented. Perhaps not the best artists, or game designers, but certainly have enough technical chops to do other work.
That's a capitalistic outlook though. I don't particularly subscribe to "choice" or "free will" in general though to be honest..
If anything, it's harder to get into the games industry than to get out because there is relatively more competition for gamedev jobs than for other sw dev jobs. So I would argue that if you can get in, you can get out, and when getting out you have the added advantage of being more experienced than when you got in.
Maybe people are working themselves super-hard to make indie games, but it's self-directed and totally by individual choice. Tons of great indie games out there.
E.g. want to hire a union programmer for your 3-person team? Whole studio has to now follow union rules and bring all other developers into the union as well. Forever.
So are people working for regular employers making video games. There's just more people who want to make games than work on insurance calculation (etc) software. That's why wages are lower.
The gaming industry notoriously wildly swings from boom to bust.
And it's not a case where you have the ability to strike, because if you did, someone will just come along and take your job.
The market is trying to tell you something, you just need to listen to it.
The C++ guys working on the engine, sure. But they are a minority and the rest don’t have easily transferable skills.
While I hope that the issues you mention above plus the cycle of game launching after a massive deadline crunch leading to development teams searching for new jobs (ie less stability), I don't know that it will happen. Why? People buying games.
Personally, I tend to buy the top tier of a game if for no other reason than they typically include the game/season pass (or whatever branding they go with) so that I don't have to manage it after the fact, of the games or expansions I bought recently, they've been the highest tier available: Assassin's Creed Odyssey, State of Decay 2, World of Warcraft Battle for Azeroth, Tekken 7, Destiny 2 Forsaken (which I really haven't played. Still in the Osiris area. Eh, oh well), Ghost Recon Wildlands, The Division. To me, the fidelity of the graphics and scope of the games (in that most everyone is chasing epic stories now and if it isn't 30+ hours, it is too short) means the price should bump up beyond $60 so while the tiers of games seems like a dirty move, it seems to me that it is so they can sell you $60 worth* of a $100 game instead of you looking at a $100 game and scoffing entirely.
So basically, until people purchasing games are willing to accept that a AAA game in 2019 takes more resources to create than a AAA game in 2009, I don't see this ever getting better.
* the $60 version is a full game and not 60% of one though so in reality at that price point you're getting way more value.
Diablo 3 base game - if you beat that, have you not beat the game? The DLC adds a new act to it, but for all intents and purposes it is an add on to a game.
I've never seen content held back or cut out of a main release explicitly for the purpose of including in DLC. What sometimes happens is that features or half-finished content that the team decided to cut from the game is revisited for DLC. From my perspective as a game developer, modern games are never finished but at some point you have to start shipping things. DLC is an opportunity to explore ideas that would have otherwise been left on the cutting room floor, and provide some stability for large teams as they ramp down from full production.
This has become a meme at this point [1], but has anyone actually studied this in any type of academic or scientific manner? There are plenty of the games that have DLC, after release support, or any number of other revenue streams that would 100% be considered "complete games" by any reasonable standard. I know it is anecdotal, but compare Zelda: Breath of the Wild to Zelda: Ocarina of Time or FIFA 19 to FIFA 08. The release versions of the two newer games were probably more complete than the older versions even though they have DLC and micro-transactions respectively while the older were "done on release". In those two cases the extra revenue streams are helping to justify and pay for the continued support of the newer games.
[1] - https://www.ranker.com/list/dlc-memes-gaming/robert-carneval...
But, the crunch does not happen because it would be effective. It is not effective way to create something. It happen because of mismanagement and culture that glorifies it - both among managers and workers. Crunch is more related to desorganization and lack of trust then something that would be smart to do.
Games made in 2019 have a larger audience than games made in 2009. I don't pay 600 dollars for a ticket to see a movie with a 300 million dollar budget. I pay the same as a movie with a 10 million dollar budget. Memento had a 9m dollar budget; I have not been 30x more entertained with a movie than Memento.
once we end up with an equal number of
over supplied software engineers.