Rolling Stone: The people who create video games may not have a union yet, but at least one international union representative tells Glixel, following a round-table meeting on the topic at GDC on Thursday, that the industry could be heading toward change.
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Video games are such an important industry in modern American society that produce products that are enjoyed by millions of people for large amounts of time. Compared to movies and TV shows which are usually only interacted with for the length of the show, games are products that people interact with for dozens of hours at a time, especially if they are good. This is all the more reason why the developers building these games should have their interests protected. I have read many horror stories about game developers working insane hours in order to meet the deadlines for publishers. Oftentime developer compensation can be tied to the profits of the game, which unfortunately leaves many developers in a risky situation, since not all games are really success. Unionizing is a great way to ensure that developers are protected. Game developers have to wear many hats: artist, writer, coder, marketer, and beyond. Ensuring that these developers are taken advantage of and not compensated fairly is an important part of protecting worker rights.
I was a little surprised to read that video game creators don’t have a union and after hearing that I wonder if there is/what is the union for animators. After some research, I found out that animations could belong to I.A.TS.E. Local 839 or the Screen Cartoonist’s Guild. Since video game developers aren’t in a union, I wonder if they work on contracts similar to this union where these rules are ignored, allowing for huge exploitation or if the huge exploitation is because there aren’t fair contracts or even contracts at all. Hearing all the grievances of working in game development is horrific. I hope this roundtable makes waves in the game development industry. It seems that this would add a lot more to the well-being of game development. The sad thing about the path to unionization that “Steve Kaplan, an international representative for the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Craft” talks about might seem tricky. He says that one company could unionize, leading to a chain of companies unionizing. The problem I see here is that it could slow video game development down or change it, which upsets consumers. Hopefully, workers are valued more than consumers but I see that a lot of game developers being reluctant to unionize because of the changes it could bring to the quality and process of building games.
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