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Comment by touchpadder | Hacker News Reader

Game developers are like actors in Hollywood. Massive supply of candidates so the pay is not that great. It's a cool and challenging work but everyone would prefer it than "boring" programming jobs which actually pay much better and don't require crunching.

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actors have a long standing, powerful and successful union.

Yeah I don't get why people bring up Hollywood in union discussions. Virtually every position in the film industry is unionized, even the semi-obscure ones like storyboard artists.

The film unions are the perfect thing to bring up because they are the most like video games. Thus both the good and bad from those unions are likely to apply. Apply the rules for a coal miners to video game workers and the union will die quickly as workers realize the rules coal miners need are not helpful for their situation. Apply the rules for the actors union to video game workers and you have a chance of success.

I meant in reference to the argument that “so many people want to do the job, ergo companies have little incentive to treat employees well.” The point being: the film industry has a huge potential workforce yet still manages to have functional unions.

For some definition of functional. In hollywood actors commonly should really be called waiters with an acting hobby. The union is not able to get their members a living wage.

The Film Actors Guild?

I have witnessed more and more people from the gaming industry switching back to the boring programming jobs. Why? Because they get to have a life and play video games too.

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