EA Spouse Posts Plans for Watchdog Organ

Jaero writes "The Spouse has a followup post to her "EA: The Human Story" from over a month ago. Not only was it nominated for a Best Software Essay of 2004, but she has revealed plans to start an independent industry watchdog organization called GameWatch.org, meant to monitor the quality of life in the game development world. Anyone will be able to post their story, as well as design the logo (a contest which lasts until January 15th)."

Comments

Union Now

[fishdan]

As discussed elsewhere EA sports has an exclusive deal with the NFL and the NFLPA. I expect them to allow more reasonable hours for their developers, because they will be able to turn out an inferior product without competition. Gamewatch, when it comes to pass, is a charming idea, but unions are coming to the IT field. Regretably mean unscrupulous businessmen are taking advantage of nice developers with scruples. And most developers have listened to RMS at some point in time and have some of that altruism in them. Which means they need an organization to defend them. Union is the right thing to do. Can you imagine an organized strike of IT workers?

Re:Union Now

[Golias]

Calling the Screen Actor's Guild a union is like Theresa Heinz Kerry calling herself an "African American":

Technically correct, but laughable to put it that way.

Re:Union Now

[Planesdragon]

Unions have no place in the modern workplace and are a breeding ground for mediocrity.

Spoken like someone who never had to work without benefit of a union's success.

As you are randomly downsized and sold overseas, take comfort that you didn't give in and unionize when it could have saved your profession.

(and don't try telling me that there are no unions for white-collar workers: what do you think bar associations and medical boards are?)

Watchdog Organ?

[HTH NE1]

Headline writers should be careful about creating needless and misleading abbreviations. Especially a headline that uses both "spouse" and "organ".

Can you imagine an organized strike of IT workers?

[9mm Censor]

It certainly would be organized, but geeks on strike? I think not, stikes are outside and picket signs are heavy.

A problem is with unions in general

[brucmack]

This whole EA thing is really indicative of a larger problem... unions in North America.

I grew up in Canada, with a father in management at a public utility. I heard endless complaints about the union workers at said utility... how they were overpaid and underworked, but there wasn't anything management could do about it, or there would be a strike.

Then I went to work in Europe, and lo and behold, almost everyone is in a union. Furthermore, the union workers are not abusing their powers. Instead, the unions help their members get jobs and training, with contract negotiation basically a secondary function. It simply isn't needed, because companies tend to be fair in the first place. The unions publish wage statistics that companies are expected to follow, and they do.

It seems that in North America, unionized workers are the ones that need it the least, while companies like Wal*Mart and EA do whatever they want to their employees. There's this attitude of management to care only about the bottom line and not about the workers, while at the same time, unions are all about grabbing more and more for their members (see the current labour situation in the NHL).

I hope that at some point the system can change, but it's a long way off.

Re:A problem is with unions in general

[ahoehn]

Generally, unions only exist where they need to. For example; The other day I was getting gas at Costco, and the employee came over to help me fill my car. I thanked him, and he said, "Not at all; guess how much I'm getting paid to do this." Turns out he was making $19 an hour to pump gas, and that's a typical Costco employee wage.
I'm related to one of the vice-presidents of Costco and asked him about this. He told me that apparently there have been only two costco warehouses with unionized workers and recently, one of them disbanded because the workers realized that they were paying union dues for no reasons. Costco treats its employees very well. The upshot of this is that Wall Street doesn't like Costco very much, because they spend too much money on their employees; but they nevertheless continue to be a very sucessful company.
The moral is that while there are certainly bloated unions who only stifle industry; they're the exception. If businesses take good care of their workers, the workers won't feel the need to unionize. From the sound of things, parts of the game industry are in desperate need of unionization.

Unsure about the best possible solution here.

[LordZardoz]

And for what it is worth, Yes. I am a game programmer, so I have at the least, an informed opinion.

I am fortunate enough to work at a company that is exactly what EA is not. So I dont feel particularly persecuted or exploited at the moment. Hell, I can post to slashdot while at work, it appears.

There is something about Unions that are repulsive on some level to myself and the programmers I know. Mostly due to the negative connotations they have aquired.

First, myself and my coworkers basically agree one one element though. A crunch is acceptible when needed. A death march is not. The goal then, is to prevent a death march.

Second, the amount of hours that are needed for a project is directly dependant on how much time a project is given and how much money is offered for it. Both those variables are controlled by the publisher. The dev studios must work with what they can get in that regard.

A death march happens when either the time frame for a project cannot be met using sane hours from the available programmers. The way to avoid a death march is to ensure that there are enough programmers on a project to complete in in the allotted time frame.

Having a union for game programers at one developer studio means that a publisher will simply not give that studio any projects. To my thinking, there is just too much of a disconnect between the part of the industry that gets the lions share of the money and the part of the industry that creates the products.

EA did not turn into a shit hole to work at until after they started to focus hard on the bottom line. Being a publisher AND develper, they should know better. But I bet that the guys in Decision Making positions do nothing more then dictate how a game will be made. They do not have to actually work under the conditions they mandate.

My previous job, when we were in a crunch, I do not recall the decision makers actually being at the office. The lead programmers were the highest meatbags on the food chain, and they were just as slammed as anyone. But at my current job, I can honestly say that my boss puts in harder hours then anyone else, for the most part. The resulting difference in crunch policy is obvious to one who has seen both methods.

The I think that the real solution is to make sure that the people who dictate schedules are also working under those schedules. But I dont know how to make that happen. All a union does is add another layer of people who do not work under the conditions they create (though I concede that the union types are closer to those conditions then management types).

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