Unlike my typical lengthy discourses on the joys of niche games, this week’s blog is a brief one. I couldn’t let a week go by without commenting on a couple of recent industry headlines.
The first stunner was word that Microsoft recognized a union formed by the staff at several Bethesda studios. The second, following just a few days later, was similar news from Activision Blizzard, where the World of Warcraft team voted overwhelmingly to unionize.
These aren’t the first game developers to unionize. QA departments have led the charge over the last year. It should come as no surprise that QA workers – who are often hourly, pressured to work insane hours, and are regarded by many triple-A studios as somehow lesser than other developers – were among the first to collectively organize.
What makes the two new unions groundbreaking is that they’re wall-to-wall, with fully salaried employees from top to bottom signing on. It signals a shift in the discussion between capital and labor in the game industry, one which has been brewing for a while.
for this topic, but my son is
making me mine for his base in
Space Engineers. Union now!
In the week that followed the announcements, my LinkedIn feed was abuzz with commentary. Most praised the moves as long overdue, but I also noticed a surprising amount of blowback and negativity.
Some claimed that unionization would immediately lead to the studios getting shut down by their publishers. Others talked about how game jobs would migrate overseas, to countries with less stringent labor laws. Still others claimed those who unionized didn’t know how good they had it, and that making games was a privilege – even under abysmal or abusive working conditions.
Most of the negative comments misunderstood the purpose of unions (at best) or were agenda-driven and outright disingenuous (at worst). The biggest and most vocal anti-union advocates are often those in positions of power – or, in some cases, human resource managers firmly in the pocket of corporate boards.
Forming a union doesn’t immediately mean a team’s headed out to the picket line to strike. It might not even mean any demands are forthcoming. Forming a union simply puts workers in a position to collectively and fairly bargain, with properly vigorous representation.
Let’s be realistic: it’s not small five-person innovative startups that are unionizing. It’s studios that operate under the umbrella of large, financially successful corporations (Microsoft in the case of both the World of Warcraft team and the Bethesda studios).
Employees of large and mid-sized studios have been rocked after several brutal years in the game industry – cut loose on the whims of a budget spreadsheet, their projects canceled, facing upheaval and possible family relocation, faced with an unforgiving job market. Is it any wonder that rank-and-file employees want a seat at the table when a company’s future plans are discussed?
For those who hopped on the anti-union bandwagon on LinkedIn and other sites, I’d ask where they’ve been for the last few years while the scythes of corporate whims sliced through productive teams across the globe. Were they equally passionate in advocating for the value of remote work, better profit sharing, and a more compassionate and equitable relationship between employers and employees?
Some execs have read the writing on the wall, and are trumpeting new ways to build games. There’s been a lot of discussion about models similar to those adopted by the movie industry – parent studios that spin up secondary companies to produce individual projects with armies of contractors, retaining a core group of creatives who shift from game to game.
This is an interesting model. It’s one I think has a lot of promise for the future and is probably better than the traditional publisher/developer relationship. However, the movie industry’s paradigm works for individual creatives only because of the strong protections and benefits like health insurance offered by the Screen Actor’s Guild and other secondary movie industry unions. Before the protections those unions fought for and achieved, the movie industry was dangerously exploitative.
asteroid mines are unacceptable.
We demand more O2 bottles!
I’d acknowledge that the history of labor unions in the country is complex and not always positive. Yet unions also deserve a lot of credit for improving labor conditions in a wide variety of industries over the last century, creating a more equitable playing field and better standards of living for many.
A good union is what a team makes it. It doesn’t have to be some faceless organization, bent on the destruction of a company’s value. Good unions are the voice of a company’s employees, an advocate for what will benefit the collective organization in the long run, rather than purely pandering to the short-term interests of a handful of shareholders. What a union does, and what it asks for in negotiations, are entirely up to its members.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous quote sums it up perfectly:
“If capitalism is fair then unionism must be. If men and women have a right to capitalize their ideas and the resources of the country, then that implies the right of men and women to capitalize their labor.”
Back next week with a lighter topic.
New content appears on the Scree Games blog every Tuesday. Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Medium.