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Striking Writers May Work on Games
The ongoing Writer's Guild strike may soon impact even the games industry. While most of the copy writers working on games are not a part of the guild, via Eurogamer comes a Variety article about a possible Hollywood writer's migration to other media. "While the WGA has made no secret that it would like to eventually cover vidgame writing, it hasn't pushed the issue yet and is allowing members to work on games during the strike. 'It has been an interesting shift," says one tenpercenter who focuses on vidgames. "The literary agents are now saying, 'Why don't we get our clients over there during the strike?' even though in the past they thought the money wasn't good enough or the work is too demanding.'"
Worse than sitcoms.
There are soap opera writers in that crowd, aren't there?
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I am not making this up, there really seems to a The Sims movie in the works... If hollywood can screw up game movies with single paragraph plots, what the hell will they do with a game that HAS NO PLOT?
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Or consider games such as halo 3, crysis or the grand theft auto series where the storyline is important. But it is the design of the game that is ultimately more important and provides a framework within which the writers work. In other words, the value-added of a hollywood writer in this case seems limited.
In each of the above examples, I see the involvement of sit-com and action-movie writers as a big negative. The story line in games can be silly at times ... but never as stupid or lame as in the vast majority of tv shows and movies out of hollywood.
I'd rather have authors write the storylines to video games. Screenwriters specialize in storylines that are constrained by time, authors specialize in storylines that are, well, good.
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*cough* Resident Evil Outbreak *cough*
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The reason I have no sympathy for striking writers (aside from the fact that I don't think BOOK authors have unions and I don't want to hear a bunch of starving artists cry about being starving artists while the rest of us have REAL jobs for a living) is that there are very few writers who deserve to have their jobs. Much less negotiate stronger contracts.
Line them all up Pink Floyd style and let's have all of them shot.
I for one welcome the writers for "The Office" to come help write the storyline for a game. That show is great and that kind of humor could transfer well into a game with a little work.
There can't really be an effective strike because so many games are created overseas, where writers aren't likely to be a part of WGA.
This one's easy. Either you have above average resources (money, etc) or below average resources. If you have below average, you benefit from socialism (including unions), whereas if you have above average, socialism tends to hurt you. It turns out that a majority of people in any group tends to have below average resources. This majority is easily able to use their votes to make their desired socialism legal. These businesses you mention don't have enough votes to make price fixing legal.
This has nothing to do with what is morally "right" or "wrong", nor is there a double standard. This is an inevitable result of people making rational decisions in order to benefit from the laws. Anything that benefits a majority of the people will be voted into law, even if it hurts the minority.
It already works that way. If you write bad shows/movies that don't get watched, the show gets canceled and you're out of a job. Shows that don't get watched don't get rerun and don't sell DVDs, so no residuals either. And as reputation-based as the entertainment industry is, if you have a habit writing flops, you'll soon be both out of a job and unable to get hired on a new one.
I fail to see how the guild promotes a large population of deadbeat writers. They work very hard, have next to no job security, and have to continuously apply for new work by submitting outlines and scripts which they may never get paid for having written at all except in the relatively rare case they're hired to write a specific pilot treatment or something.
I know several reasonably successful screenwriters and while each of them consider it their passion and a very fulfilling career, not one of them would call it a cush job. Add that a screenwriter is practically required to live in L.A. (not cheap!) and you'll understand why they all have to keep pretty hefty "rainy day" funds just to keep a roof over their heads.
Please elaborate on this. I'd like to know how you feel the unions see that their members get an unfair shake.
However, when labor suppliers (unions) are able to collude on wages and labor demanders (employers) are not, that creates a situation that disproportionately favors the suppliers, artificially driving up costs (wages).
Thats an interesting viewpoint, but I disagree with your description of the situation. Indeed, there are few examples remaining outside of education where the people looking for labor are obligated to work with the unions. And even in that example, I've seen districts that hire substitutes from outside the unions, sometimes to longer than usual time frames.
Furthermore, your statement that it artificially drives up costs is opinionated at best. Union members are often better qualified for their work than those who would do the work for much less, which results in a better value for the money when compared to paying less up front and then having to have the shoddy work of the underqualified fixed later.
They have a government-protected right to not only set minimum wages for their members, but also to create an effective labor monopoly.
I'm not sure where you think that is in effect. The department of labor has a reputation over at least the past 7 years of continually working against the unions. And as I already mentioned, only around 12% of the US labor force is in a union, so I'm not sure how that constitutes a "labor monopoly". Even many of the manufacturing jobs in this country - where unions were previously quite strong - have gone to non-union shops. If you look at http://www.uaw.com/uawmade/auto/2007/index.cfm/ a list of union made cars from the US and Canada, you'll see that even a many vehicles that claim "made in the USA" are not made by unions. So their labor monopoly really doesn't exist, and doesn't have government protection.
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price is still decided by the market, the employees vote on the employers proposal and decide to accept the offer if is is sufficient. the purpose of unions is to balance out the fact that the employer ALWAYS wins a war of attrition. the plant can shut down or run at reduced capacity with scabs and still make money, since the employees who are missing aren't getting paid. the employees OTOH don't have their bills go down since they aren't working, it's also much easier to select a temporary replacement employee than it is to find a company willing to hire you "just long enough for to negotiate with my real job for a raise"
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