In this context, a bunch of spoiled computer jockeys squabbling over whether to unionize or not seems, well, rather silly--kind of like a man starving to death because there's no Wendy's in his neighborhood, and he refuses to eat at Burger King. (The whole map-is-not-the-territory thing.)
Well, first of all, the difference between Burger King and Wendy's is that Wendy's sells food and Burger King does not. You'll get sick if you eat at Burger King everyday. I know it's just a metaphor but it isn't very good. (Apples and pears would be better.)
Some people are "spoiled computer jockeys" and some work at Electronic Arts. Frankly, a union, at this point, would be a help to Electronic Arts, because eventually people are going to realize how stupid it is to work there when other jobs are available. Then, when they can't get decent programmers, they'll get eaten by their competition.
I consider it ironic that game programming, where you really do need the best of the best, people are treated more horribly than in the rest of the software industry. People in other parts of the software industry don't need nearly the skills with heavy math that game programmers need, and they get treated better as well.
I know that people are going to say, "Well, no one should work in the game industry then." This is different than a union action, how? If anything, it is much more long term damaging to the industry. People seem to think that a fresh supply of young fools will always be available or that they can just outsource to India. I don't believe that naive fresh out of college students will always make a beeline for the gaming industry. I also don't believe that outsourcing is really feasable in an industry where "good enough" won't cut it, since outsourcing is generally about competing on price while lowering quality. If every company making radiology software outsources to India while lowering quality, sure, people will still buy radiology software as long as it is good enough (i.e. it doesn't kill patients). If games are pretty mediocre, people will spend money on movies or take up rollerblading.
No one is discriminated against when it comes to real estate.
Well, that's a laugh. My parents deliberately drove a much harder bargain with a black family (that eventually bought their house) than they would have if that same family had been white. The only reason why they didn't refuse to sell altogether was because they would have been hit by a discrimination lawsuit. It was a textbook case of racist discrimination.
Er, I think the idea is, when you are looking at ridiculous companies like Electronic Arts, you want to nip the abuse in the bud before it gets to the eye removal stage.
What if the gaming industry started a trend that became the norm for the whole industry? Why do you think unions are inherently evil, but companies are not, especially given your family history?
Besides which, all those pathetic perks you are talking about are nothing compared to what the people who really robbed the economy blind during the.COM boom got. My previous job was for a.COM that was basically an exercise in fraud, the upper management... some of them, the ones who got out when the getting were good... will never have to work another day in their lives. That's worth a few free sodas.
As with any decision, I base this on a mercenary sense of self-interest. While I occaisionally think it might be fun to try to re-arrange the world according to my own sense of right and wrong, the reality is that I have a family to support and unfortunately they must come first in my calculus.
1. My number one concern is job security. If the company closes because the union makes unreasonable demands, I lose my job. If I lose my job because that's the way the company busts the union and the union is too weak to protect me, that's just as bad. On the other hand, if it seems like the union will actually improve my job security, that would be a plus in the union column.
2. My number two concern is compensation. I need to make a decent living, I have two dependants (one of whom is a grown woman) and would like to live comfortably. So, if the union will improve my compensation without impacting my job security, that's another plus.
3. My number three concern is reasonable hours. I don't want an unreasonable amount of time off, but I don't want to work crazy hours either. I'd prefer a 40 hour week, that was predictable all the time. If the union can help with this and not impact the other two concern, then that's a plus in the union column.
How will I know? I won't, I'll have to use my best judgement if it ever comes up. I think people who are talking principle, and especially people who think unions are bad, in principle, are probably College Republicans with no responsibilities. After all, if a union comes to your job, and you don't join, you're a scab. That can work against you just as badly as management displeasure. If the union comes because working conditions are atrocious, it means the "free market" (which is a mythical beast anyhow, especially in the United States) has failed. (Of course, unions have never arisen in a "true free market" economy. I'm pretty sure that all market economies are rigged in some way. Why should I settle for less protection than the catfish farmers, or the sugar farmers, or the softwood producers? Principle? Well, I'll still have to pay extra for sugar, wood and catfish. Hope I can eat my principles.)
I think it's something corporate types say when they mean, "Well, that's kind of icky but it's really ok. No problem as long as it doesn't generate bad press or depress the stock price."
It's true, there are degrees of evil. Evil is not a superlative though.
It's one of these words that people have become scared of using, like "lied." "He mislead the American people," no, he lied to the American people. "Jack Abramoff was unethical," no Jack Abramoff is evil. Sure, he wouldn't win any evil contests with Hitler, but then neither would Saddam Hussein.
I could say that Sony was double-plus ungood if you like, Big Brother.
Oh, and by the way, for the record to people who seem to think I was calling Microsoft evil in my post. In that particular post, I was calling Sony evil.
If I want a cheap console with lots of third-party support and no HD support, I can buy an old PS2.
Right, but that doesn't follow. People want new games. Why? I don't know, hype, marketing, the fact that you can find it still in shrink wrap rather than order some old copy that was stored in a pool of maple syrup for a year.
Seriously, I had a Lynx. It made no sense to me that people would buy Gameboy games over buying a true 16-bit, full color system with hardware scaling and rotation, but they did. Those were still new games, even if they were generations behind the Lynx games (talking graphics and sound here, not gameplay).
HD requires an HD-TV. Oh, and it requires an HD-TV that you are allowed to play games on, for those people who don't hook their game systems up to the main TV (kids, mostly... but by kids I mean anyone who still lives at home with Mom and Dad, up to and including college kids.). That's a gamble, which may or may not pay off, it mostly depends on HD-TV adoption rates.
I don't agree, btw, that hardcore gamers is a 1:1 ratio with videophiles or that it is even a subset of videophiles. I'm the only person I know who bothered to hook his DC up to a VGA monitor.
In a way, this works in the 360 and PS3 favor, because it means that most people won't wait until they get a HD-TV before they buy them. Imagine a videophile thinking about how to spend money, "Do I buy a game system or and HD-TV first? I'm a videophile! I better save up for the TV first."
I don't think HD is going to be the deciding factor, I think 3rd party support is, as it always is and always will be (this may still favor Sony). Price is also going to matter, and may work in either the XBox 360s favor or the Wii's favor, but it works against Sony.
because up until two days ago this franchise was basically dead and they are your only hope for getting things like movies
Why the Hell would we want that?
First of all, it's been done. It was called The Matrix. (I know, it wasn't 100% close to the game.. well that's what we are talking about, right? A version of Shadowrun that doesn't resemble the game.)
Honestly, I was perfectly willing to keep an open mind. But rewriting the entire universe? That just doesn't make any sense. That's like taking a Zelda game, saying it's now a football game, and then announcing that Link has always been a black American football player who grew up in the Bronx and then expecting people to be okay with it. The only thing that was left in the Shadowrun license was the Shadowrun universe, therefore it logically follows that the Shadowrun license is the Shadowrun universe. So why even fucking bother to use that license if you don't want it? What the fuck? Just make an original game.
This sounds more like the Shadowrun movie, as directed by that delightful Uwe Boll.
Or... is this what we can expect from big budget, HD blockbusters now. "We can't risk alienating the stupid people if we want to have the broadest audience possible for our game..." "We need a paradigm shift?" "I know how about making one of the Shadowrunners an anthropormorphic dog, say a Hip-Hop Surfer who's totally 'In Your Face' named Poochie!"
There's a mod for Dawn of War that's just supposed to improve the AI. It's called Dawn of Skirmish (skirmish versus the computer is a single player mode in Dawn of War.
Currently, Dawn of War has some single player problems, I'll admit. Which is a pity, because graphically and thematically it is a great game. I haven't had a chance to play with the AI mod lately so I'm not sure how much improved it is from a previous build I played.
Well, yeah, but that's only because Thompson has no chance of being elected dictator. Imagine if Hitler had remained an artist and someone had compared him to Stalin, "You comparing some two-bit painter with the worst mass murderer in history, are you on crack?"
Me, as a minimum wage employee in a store, I was taken a few times as part of a confidence game. Usually nothing as complex as the scenario described above. "Quickchange artists" attempt to confuse you about how much change you've given them. The way they do this is they come in late when everyone is tired from a long day, and they are very agressive with you and make you doubt yourself. There are other scams involving claiming that something they are holding was something they brought into the store to check the battery size. The way these work are not by fooling you, but by being agressive and insulting. It's basically the hard sell, which you may have run into in other aspects of your life.
I remember working in a store that was victimized by a "smash and grab" in New Jersey. I almost got in trouble for it and the manager did get in trouble for it. Basically, she had tied a bunch of Street Fighter II games for the Super Nintendo onto a rack (as a display), she thought securely. Well, someone figured it out and grabbed them all while we were all distracted.
Of course, most of the people applauding this stupid prank were probably in diapers when that happened.
Well, not me. I don't work 80 hour weeks. In fact, I mostly work 40 hour weeks. Yes, there are occasionally, rarely, situations where I have to put in a lot of hours. (These situations usually occur because of something customer facing that means a lot of money for the company. They are not regular events.) I have weekends off. I get to use my vacation time. I take my lunch hour. It's been that way for 6 years.
I make a good living for the area I live. I'm comfortable.
It would suck if this wasn't true. I'm 36, and my body has started to feel the effects of aging. I realize that not only am I not going to live forever, but I'm going to spend the remainder of my life trying to recapture the vigor I had at 25 (with limited success). However, at least I can look back on my youth and say, "I had fun then at least. I had a lot of fun with girls while I was still young enough to enjoy it. I didn't spend my life on grim, meaningless deathmarches for low wages."
The gaming industry sucks. So does your job, apparently. I guess there is no need to pity you, because you like it, but I really don't understand your motivation.
I think you are wrong though, there are plenty of people out there who have jobs and also have lives. I'm not especially lucky (everyone at my company works similar hours except for a few workaholics who choose to put in manic hours.). Many people in "IT" stupidly think it is macho to give up your life for no reason. I really can't understand this mentality, you aren't going to live forever, and you aren't going to be young and healthy forever. Unless you are making enough to retire early, where's your self interest? Self interest is what motivates me to work. If someone told me to sacrifice for the company, and I wasn't going to get anything out of it, I'd laugh at them. Heck, I laughed during the.COM boom when my former employer tried to get me to work for stock options (and no money, they had run out). However, at least in that case they were trying to get me to buy into the idea that I could retire at 30, a millionaire (kind of tough when they never went public...) Nowadays, people are putting in stupid hours for no reason I can see. I guess they'll work that way until retirement (or more likely "rightsizing"), and if they are typical they'll have to get a retirement job to pay off their credit card debts.
Seriously, I'm really curious, what's the self-interest angle for giving up your life for the company? You aren't a monk trying to get into Heaven or Nirvana, you are supposed to be working for money. If you don't put in stupid hours, you can play the markets, or start a side business, or do something to make money on the side. Or at least save money by taking the time to shop carefully, cooking your own meals, and doing your own laundry.
Slashdot Mirror
Some people are "spoiled computer jockeys" and some work at Electronic Arts. Frankly, a union, at this point, would be a help to Electronic Arts, because eventually people are going to realize how stupid it is to work there when other jobs are available. Then, when they can't get decent programmers, they'll get eaten by their competition.
I consider it ironic that game programming, where you really do need the best of the best, people are treated more horribly than in the rest of the software industry. People in other parts of the software industry don't need nearly the skills with heavy math that game programmers need, and they get treated better as well.
I know that people are going to say, "Well, no one should work in the game industry then." This is different than a union action, how? If anything, it is much more long term damaging to the industry. People seem to think that a fresh supply of young fools will always be available or that they can just outsource to India. I don't believe that naive fresh out of college students will always make a beeline for the gaming industry. I also don't believe that outsourcing is really feasable in an industry where "good enough" won't cut it, since outsourcing is generally about competing on price while lowering quality. If every company making radiology software outsources to India while lowering quality, sure, people will still buy radiology software as long as it is good enough (i.e. it doesn't kill patients). If games are pretty mediocre, people will spend money on movies or take up rollerblading.
It's Republican. "Laws to protect business profits are AOK, laws to protect working peoples' incomes are disgusting."
It hasn't always been this way, but I've noticed as the number of users increased this has happened.
I didn't say one word about regulation. I'm an anarchist.
Sigh... I get tired of all these Okie moderators....
What if the gaming industry started a trend that became the norm for the whole industry? Why do you think unions are inherently evil, but companies are not, especially given your family history?
Besides which, all those pathetic perks you are talking about are nothing compared to what the people who really robbed the economy blind during the .COM boom got. My previous job was for a .COM that was basically an exercise in fraud, the upper management... some of them, the ones who got out when the getting were good... will never have to work another day in their lives. That's worth a few free sodas.
Why has the past of working for one company for your entire career been over for several decades?
1. My number one concern is job security. If the company closes because the union makes unreasonable demands, I lose my job. If I lose my job because that's the way the company busts the union and the union is too weak to protect me, that's just as bad. On the other hand, if it seems like the union will actually improve my job security, that would be a plus in the union column.
2. My number two concern is compensation. I need to make a decent living, I have two dependants (one of whom is a grown woman) and would like to live comfortably. So, if the union will improve my compensation without impacting my job security, that's another plus.
3. My number three concern is reasonable hours. I don't want an unreasonable amount of time off, but I don't want to work crazy hours either. I'd prefer a 40 hour week, that was predictable all the time. If the union can help with this and not impact the other two concern, then that's a plus in the union column.
How will I know? I won't, I'll have to use my best judgement if it ever comes up. I think people who are talking principle, and especially people who think unions are bad, in principle, are probably College Republicans with no responsibilities. After all, if a union comes to your job, and you don't join, you're a scab. That can work against you just as badly as management displeasure. If the union comes because working conditions are atrocious, it means the "free market" (which is a mythical beast anyhow, especially in the United States) has failed. (Of course, unions have never arisen in a "true free market" economy. I'm pretty sure that all market economies are rigged in some way. Why should I settle for less protection than the catfish farmers, or the sugar farmers, or the softwood producers? Principle? Well, I'll still have to pay extra for sugar, wood and catfish. Hope I can eat my principles.)
I think it's something corporate types say when they mean, "Well, that's kind of icky but it's really ok. No problem as long as it doesn't generate bad press or depress the stock price."
It's true, there are degrees of evil. Evil is not a superlative though.
It's one of these words that people have become scared of using, like "lied." "He mislead the American people," no, he lied to the American people. "Jack Abramoff was unethical," no Jack Abramoff is evil. Sure, he wouldn't win any evil contests with Hitler, but then neither would Saddam Hussein.
I could say that Sony was double-plus ungood if you like, Big Brother.
Oh, and by the way, for the record to people who seem to think I was calling Microsoft evil in my post. In that particular post, I was calling Sony evil.
Sony is evil.
Still, it's not a financial or software alliance, it's really just talk. Otherwise I'd be worried about Nintendo.
Seriously, I had a Lynx. It made no sense to me that people would buy Gameboy games over buying a true 16-bit, full color system with hardware scaling and rotation, but they did. Those were still new games, even if they were generations behind the Lynx games (talking graphics and sound here, not gameplay).
HD requires an HD-TV. Oh, and it requires an HD-TV that you are allowed to play games on, for those people who don't hook their game systems up to the main TV (kids, mostly... but by kids I mean anyone who still lives at home with Mom and Dad, up to and including college kids.). That's a gamble, which may or may not pay off, it mostly depends on HD-TV adoption rates.
I don't agree, btw, that hardcore gamers is a 1:1 ratio with videophiles or that it is even a subset of videophiles. I'm the only person I know who bothered to hook his DC up to a VGA monitor.
In a way, this works in the 360 and PS3 favor, because it means that most people won't wait until they get a HD-TV before they buy them. Imagine a videophile thinking about how to spend money, "Do I buy a game system or and HD-TV first? I'm a videophile! I better save up for the TV first."
I don't think HD is going to be the deciding factor, I think 3rd party support is, as it always is and always will be (this may still favor Sony). Price is also going to matter, and may work in either the XBox 360s favor or the Wii's favor, but it works against Sony.
Well, that's even better news. I wouldn't mind a game where you switched back and forth, either.
Wait... that didn't come out right.
I was hoping for Miles Edgeworth: Ace Prosecutor, myself, but this is good news too.
First of all, it's been done. It was called The Matrix. (I know, it wasn't 100% close to the game.. well that's what we are talking about, right? A version of Shadowrun that doesn't resemble the game.)
Secondly, Dungeons and Dragons: The Movie.
Or... is this what we can expect from big budget, HD blockbusters now. "We can't risk alienating the stupid people if we want to have the broadest audience possible for our game..." "We need a paradigm shift?" "I know how about making one of the Shadowrunners an anthropormorphic dog, say a Hip-Hop Surfer who's totally 'In Your Face' named Poochie!"
Bart Simpson to Martin Prince, referring to Nelson Muntz, "I don't care who wins as long as it's not that guy."
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Message, Spock?"
"None that I'm conscious of. Except of course, Happy Birthday, surely the best of times.
Currently, Dawn of War has some single player problems, I'll admit. Which is a pity, because graphically and thematically it is a great game. I haven't had a chance to play with the AI mod lately so I'm not sure how much improved it is from a previous build I played.
Well, yeah, but that's only because Thompson has no chance of being elected dictator. Imagine if Hitler had remained an artist and someone had compared him to Stalin, "You comparing some two-bit painter with the worst mass murderer in history, are you on crack?"
I'm surprised it hasn't been modded -1 flamebait by now.
1. She would go into a store with a group of her black friends dressed up very hip-hop gangstery and be very loud.
2. She had one white friend who would go into the store seperately, looking demure and wearing a skirt with big inside pockets.
3. While the people in the store were paying attention to the black group, the white girl would rob them blind and leave.
Shoplifting: Life Among The Boosters
Me, as a minimum wage employee in a store, I was taken a few times as part of a confidence game. Usually nothing as complex as the scenario described above. "Quickchange artists" attempt to confuse you about how much change you've given them. The way they do this is they come in late when everyone is tired from a long day, and they are very agressive with you and make you doubt yourself. There are other scams involving claiming that something they are holding was something they brought into the store to check the battery size. The way these work are not by fooling you, but by being agressive and insulting. It's basically the hard sell, which you may have run into in other aspects of your life.
I remember working in a store that was victimized by a "smash and grab" in New Jersey. I almost got in trouble for it and the manager did get in trouble for it. Basically, she had tied a bunch of Street Fighter II games for the Super Nintendo onto a rack (as a display), she thought securely. Well, someone figured it out and grabbed them all while we were all distracted.
Of course, most of the people applauding this stupid prank were probably in diapers when that happened.
I make a good living for the area I live. I'm comfortable.
It would suck if this wasn't true. I'm 36, and my body has started to feel the effects of aging. I realize that not only am I not going to live forever, but I'm going to spend the remainder of my life trying to recapture the vigor I had at 25 (with limited success). However, at least I can look back on my youth and say, "I had fun then at least. I had a lot of fun with girls while I was still young enough to enjoy it. I didn't spend my life on grim, meaningless deathmarches for low wages."
The gaming industry sucks. So does your job, apparently. I guess there is no need to pity you, because you like it, but I really don't understand your motivation.
I think you are wrong though, there are plenty of people out there who have jobs and also have lives. I'm not especially lucky (everyone at my company works similar hours except for a few workaholics who choose to put in manic hours.). Many people in "IT" stupidly think it is macho to give up your life for no reason. I really can't understand this mentality, you aren't going to live forever, and you aren't going to be young and healthy forever. Unless you are making enough to retire early, where's your self interest? Self interest is what motivates me to work. If someone told me to sacrifice for the company, and I wasn't going to get anything out of it, I'd laugh at them. Heck, I laughed during the .COM boom when my former employer tried to get me to work for stock options (and no money, they had run out). However, at least in that case they were trying to get me to buy into the idea that I could retire at 30, a millionaire (kind of tough when they never went public...) Nowadays, people are putting in stupid hours for no reason I can see. I guess they'll work that way until retirement (or more likely "rightsizing"), and if they are typical they'll have to get a retirement job to pay off their credit card debts.
Seriously, I'm really curious, what's the self-interest angle for giving up your life for the company? You aren't a monk trying to get into Heaven or Nirvana, you are supposed to be working for money. If you don't put in stupid hours, you can play the markets, or start a side business, or do something to make money on the side. Or at least save money by taking the time to shop carefully, cooking your own meals, and doing your own laundry.