Escapist Calls For Industry Unionization

amitlu writes "In the Friday edition of the Escapist, Joe Blancato challenges the industry to compare itself to skilled labor of the past, and says it's time to organize. From the article: 'If we continue at the rate we're going, we're either going to be worrying about a bunch of college-aged kids with computer science degrees working at McDonald's, too disillusioned to continue in their chosen field or worse, the position they previously held was moved overseas to a more bottom line-friendly locale. For the sake of trying to save money on production costs, why not ship off art production to Romania? Or customer service to India? But to paraphrase the old cliché: First they came for the artists, and I said nothing...'"

Comments

Yea

[ClownsScareMe]

To curb outsourcing?

Right, because union workers are much more attractive hires.

What about the political donations

[heinousjay]

Joining a union is pretty much pledging a portion of your salary to the DNC. I don't need that mess.

Worst possible idea

[xenocide2]

Assume that the workers should own the means of production. Unions promote the status quo, without actually reaching that ideal. The good news is that the cost of starting up your own company and making games can be incredibly low. Every year several people leave EA and all the other big players to start their own company. This form of socialization I think works much better in the end than a union, who's interests are promoting their own existance and resisting changes to industry practices. What the industry needs more of is cheaper, faster and more equal access to consumers. Coming from a fairly socialist/communistic viewpoint, capitalism and entrepeneurship appear to maximize the social value.

Companies like EA have become large through vertical integration; they have developed retail channels to sell their products in, and it's not easy to get shelf space without EA or someone like EA. The internet helps solve the problem, as Valve is discovering. Whether we end up with a surplus of internet distribution methods for games or whether we get one or two is up to Valve, gamers, and the employees out there with the motivation to do what they want to do for THEMSELVES.