- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
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Video game developers need to unionize, like as a whole. This has pretty much become the norm for these big studios and it’s fucked up.
I feel like that would change video game development to be like filmmaking. In Hollywood, everyone working on a movie is unionized but jobs are not steady. You have to get a job on each movie separately and once filming wraps up you’re out of a job again.
Game publishers seem to already want that sort of model anyway. They don’t want to hire 1000 people full time. They want temporary workers until the game releases, then a small staff for maintenance and updates.
That’s more or less how it works so unionising to get better working conditions would just be a win.
I’m so glad I didn’t go into games development. I make boring old business software and it’s great.
It would be a win in the short term for the developers who unionize but I think it would be a long term loss. The AAA games industry is already in a pretty precarious position. Hollywood (which I think is a preview of things to come for game studios) is practically moribund.
The issue is that the bar keeps getting raised on production costs. That means spending more and more money up front which involves bigger and bigger risks. This in turn leads studios to take fewer and fewer risks in gameplay design, story, and all the other innovations that people want.
At the same time, the indie game world is getting better and better at innovating and capturing more of the many small niches that people are looking for. This further adds to the pressure on big studios to spend more on artists and level designers. It’s a vicious cycle!
I think unionizing will lead to the closure of a lot of game studios for the above reasons, so those developers may find themselves in the indie game market (which offers zero job security and is really feast or famine in terms of success).
Uh, that’s how it works already.
Somewhat, but not formally. Epic did keep those 1000 staff on Fortnite until now. They would’ve laid them all off years ago under the Hollywood model (gone as soon as filming completes).
How is this unexpected?
I would guess, Fortnite has peaked a while ago and entered the decline phase. So…
One could argue, that it would have been nice to split the revenue more evenly. But shrinking an unprofitable business isn’t bad per se. Or ist it?
Something pointed out via a friend is that, while we like to shit on corpos for these layoffs, sometimes in the art/story field they (the employees) really are not needed or not desired anymore. Some places eant to hire a new storyboard person/team, or art directors to make changes to the existing items . The first guy made his impact, now the company wants changes that, as an artist, they just don’t see from their artstyle (of any medium like story, characters, environment etc) perspective. Think the botched Ecce Homo fresco as it was originally painted, and then the restoration - the original artist could not concieve of what it became and therefore is legitimately no longer needed. Paying him his dues and letting him go is the nature of it, if done honestly.
That doesn’t excuse hoarding wealth and trying to get out of paying severance, retirements, royalties for their work, and insurances, but while we often praise that one time Nintendos kept people on at the expense of the CEO, the question is “for what though” if it was a legitimate direction pivot.
But in general fuck epic because thats not what this is. This is almost always"line must go up" behavior. Just wanted to mention it so I can say “ah, there it is” when fortnite skin quality/story direction/landscape changes invariably catches up with and shows the result of these missing staff in a season or 2, as a direct result of these people’s layoffs.
