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Game Developers Unionize?
Gamasutra.com has a look at the reasons, both pro and con, for unionization of the folks behind the entertainment software industry. From the article: "Many industry observers see close parallels between the gripes of today's game developers and those of workers in the movie industry in the 1930s and '40s, particularly in the animation segment. The difference is that Hollywood unionized, and the game industry is still only talking about it."
The difference is outsourcing. The game industry can pretty much outsource everyone. Hollywood can't: if they outsourced everything, it would become Bollywood, and there is already a Bollywood.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
But the backlash is that although outsourcing can stem rising wage costs, you need to keep that group in jobs to buy the shit your company churns out. As a whole, the greed is simply going to voerpower the likes of EA, etc., .
Now, I'm not even in America so my knowledge of US workers is based solely on Slashdot and The Onion, but even I can see that perhaps nationally agreed minimum contracts negotitated by unions for various professions like games programmers, etc., would help.
They can outsource some of the people some of the time, but they can't outsource *all* the people *all* the time. WOuld they simply be prepared to shut up shop and move base to Mumbai? I don't think the corporate big wigs would appreciate that one bit.
Acting stupid isn't much fun when there's someone around who knows better
In real practice, however, unions reduce job security. When the company has to pay everyone more, they have to get rid of workers to make up for it (the money has to come from somewhere), and the company's workforce undergoes reduction.
A good example of this is the famous Teamster's strike at UPS just a few years ago. The Teamsters won their wage demands, and the size of the UPS workforce was reduced in order to pay it.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Unionizing might be jumping the gun. The video game industry is very young. It'll be better for management to be a little wiser than to have employees unionize. Bad working conditions and un-wise managment are the result of a industry that hasn't grown up yet and is expected to make titles that cost 25 million.
The level of graphical detail that is expected out of development studios has progressed far faster than the video game industry has matured. We can partially thank ATI and nVidia's competition for that (releasing significantly more advanced cards less than a year apart). All it takes is one studio to spend 10mil on a project and now that's what is expected out of everyone else. Yeah, people say graphics isn't everything but if your game doesn't look as good as the best, you've just lost sales.
It was said at GDC that the industry really needs to learn from other industries when it comes to management. This is a really good idea. Although all this talk about working conditions and unionizing is good and healthy, I don't think unionizing is going to happen any time soon. And if that does happen, labor costs for games will go up. Period. With all this talk about the increased cost for next-generation games, just think about who that is scaring.
Quite honestly, I think the managers will do a better job. Making video games is never going to be a comfortable job even if they do unionize. Better planning and organized production will go a long way in a large scale project, and a union won't help there.
I've spent a significant part of my career working in HR Policy, albeit outside the IT sector and in the UK. This has given me a lot of exposure to Trade Unions, from the "management" side. I must say I've got very mixed feelings about them.
There are undoubtedly some positives. Unions can be pretty tenacious in defending individuals who have been genuinely wronged by their employer or their immediate manager. In cases of disputes between individual employees (eg. grievance proceedings), the Union can provide a decent independent arbiter. Where Unions have good relationships with management, they can genuinely help improve an organisations effectiveness, by identifying and helping to resolve issues that are having a significant negative impact on morale.
However, these are matched by, and perhaps even outweighed by, a significant number of negatives. The biggest problem is that a lot of Unions tend to get hijacked very quickly by radical left-wingers of often uncertain sanity, whose goal often seems to be nothing more than to ruin generally benevolent employers. There are some Unions which understand the give and take of negotiations with management and there are others which see strike action as the first and only resort whenever management try to stake out some principles of their own. When this happens, it's not just management who lose out. Employees often suffer the most serious privitations. Business partners of the employer are also affected, as are their employees. Customers likewise suffer and if the employer is providing an essential service, the consequences can be very serious indeed. We've seen where this leads fairly recently in the UK, when the Fire Brigade union walked out on Strike. The general public support for the employees evaporated overnight once the strike started and the employees ended up significantly worse off then they would have been with sane representatives, who were more interested in employee wellbeing than advancing a political agenda.
Unions can also highly divisive and discriminatory among the workforce. Fortunately, the worst excesses of the Unions in this area were curbed during the 80s, so the situation is a lot better than it once was, but the most insular unions can really make life hell for their non-union co-workers.
Finally, there is the risk of out-sourcing. This isn't necessarily an inevitable consequence of Unionisation. However, it IS an inevitable consequence of combatative, militant, confrontational Unionisation in fields like IT. Most employers are actually more reasonable that slashdot readers are generally willing to give them credit for. I've only ever met one or two employers (out of dozens), who were not willing to entertain talks with Trade Union representatives and make reasonable adjustments to working practices where a business case could be demonstrated. However, if the Union plays it wrong and takes an overly aggressive line, Management are likely to panic and reach for the big Outsourcing Stick.
In short, Unionisation isn't necessarily the wrong decision here, but games developers need to be damned careful over who they let run their union if they decide to go for it.