Ars Technica: It's been almost two years now since the launch of Game Workers Unite (GWU), the most concerted effort yet to bring game developers to fight for better working conditions industry-wide. In the years since, we've seen a few stuttering steps toward collective action inside game studios, including an employee walkout at Blizzard to protest the company's controversial policy toward Hong Kong protesters and a walkout at Riot to protest proposed arbitration over sexual harassment allegations (that case was later settled without arbitration).
3 comments:
When it comes to game development and that specific job industry I know about as much as a peanut. Its a HUGE industry, and like any other, it has its problems. Workers fight for better working conditions and are trying to form unions (because no major game development company has announce union benefits). The formation of the GWU (the union for game developers) is in its early stages and this article goes over what they are doing and how the union is developing (again I am new to this game developer stuff so it is still a little unclear as to what exactly this union is fighting for). It's interesting to read that many view game developers as “dream jobs”, yes they are working on games but at the same time, they are a creative field and are producing profitable revenue like any other job market. I can see why it would be harder for this industry of workers to form a union because of the job scarcity or nature of the work. I really enjoyed reading about this and appreciated getting a new perspective on this industry. I think I would need to read a few more articles and maybe look more into the union process as a whole, but I feel like I learned some useful information from this article. I think that we can apply this article to the entertainment industry by appreciating the unions we have now and remind us to continuously work for better working conditions
I think this is a huge step in the right direction for game developers, and I am hopeful this attitude will extend into the entertainment industry. For all of us, theater is our passion, or we wouldn’t be doing it, and that causes us to accept some horrible conditions. Luckily, there are many unions, but I think when young people are starting out in the industry, they accept awful working conditions and relationships. In the past few years, there has been a rise in young theater professionals refusing to work for free, but there are still plenty of internships which take advantage of young people who hope to gain connections in the field. These “opportunities” shut out people who can’t afford to work for free, but many people accept it because they need to connections and they are getting the opportunity to do something they love, so its fine if they don’t get paid, right? I think that attitude which has halted unionization among game developers is still very present in entertainment despite our unionization.
Though I am not involved by any means in the game development industry, I am hopeful that the advances made in that field will carry over to other creative and entertainment industries. It’s pretty much known nowadays that if you want to make your way up in theatre, such a big part of that depends on who you know and unique experiences that you’ve had. Especially for getting into college, you try and take the best opportunities because it gives you an advantage in an extremely competitive environment, but at what cost? It’s the whole discussion about unpaid internships that I keep hearing. The interns will accept a position and find themselves overworked because it’s so hard to say no to extra hours because a tarnished reputation has the potential to ruin any professional progress made. Unfortunately, I’ve been in that situation before and It’s not fun. With the conversation coming up more and more, I hope the standards change.
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