I’m sorry, but your reasoning is absolute nonsense. Maybe game developers should unionize, but suggesting that it should work like Hollywood is pretty ridiculous.
The huge studios would function just like in Hollywood.
Okay, so fuck the developers at big studios just like how most of the people working on movies get fucked now? You think because a deal was reached by the union that the big studios aren’t still just running to the bank with their loads of cash? The recent strike (and most strikes in Hollywood) were mostly about residuals. You know why? Because people who aren’t above the line in the credits get shit pay. At least in the games industry most people are employees, get paid up front, have a salary, and whether the game succeeds or flops they get their money. And most people don’t get laid off between games. You’re getting paid your salary even while there is downtime. In Hollywood, if the movie flops(*), you’re shit outta luck, my friend. Hope you’re happy with whatever you made during production and you’re able to find your next gig quick. Because you’re not an employee of the studio, you were working for a production company on this one movie and now you gotta fend for yourself because the movie’s done and so is this LLC.
(*) which brings us to the big fucking asterisk in how Hollywood “works”. Movies don’t make money. Not on paper anyway. It’s so bad, it even has its own name: Hollywood Accounting. The gist of it is that they use creative accounting techniques so that profit sharing agreements (like the residuals that were just fought so hard for by the unions) pay as little as possible.
And yeah they would want to pump out those blockbusters, but nothing would stop indie developers from developing.
What stops indie developers from developing now? Indie game developers have it way better than indie movie makers. They have better platforms for distribution, a larger audience, and much lower cost to entry.
I would allow for consistent and fair discussions for the unions and studios as to how pay will be done.
Yeah, because that’s what Hollywood is known for…
It will also put in safeties for crunch and other abuses.
Crunch (and other abuse) still happens in Hollywood production, so… Nope, sorry.
I’m just saying [the Hollywood model] makes way more sense as a model for how modern AAA games are made.
No fucking way. As someone who was a salaried employee for 15 years in the A to AAA game industry over 7 projects, some of which failed but I still got paid, with bonuses and stock awards and job security, please fucking no. I’m glad I didn’t have to fight for a new gig every couple of years and hope for residuals.
Very well said. I think there is an argument that the gaming industry would benefit from more unionisation (there are very few sectors that wouldn’t benefit from it!), but emulating Hollywood doesn’t seem like the answer.
I think it’s fair to say they’re are some significant similarities between the two industries. They both focus on large, multi year creative projects with unknown returns. I’m not sure emulating Hollywood is the answer, but they can at least look at how existing Hollywood unions have approached addressing any similar problems
Indie game developers have it way better than indie movie makers. They have better platforms for distribution...
It kills me that there's no Steam or GOG for TV and movies. My options are either Blu Rays, when they exist, or streaming, even if I buy the movie outright.
You mean delivering an actual file/media that you can watch without streaming? I know Netflix has the ability to download stuff to watch offline later. I assume other platforms support something similar. That’s pretty close to steam or gog where you don’t own a copy of the game, you own a license to use their copy.
Edit: But yes, I do sometimes wish I could pay per title and not have to worry about subscriptions to maintain access to certain things.
It's not close enough if I want to run it from a PC or Steam Deck. They only allow it on mobile where they can enforce their DRM. Then those downloads are only good for a few days before they need to be renewed and they run into all sorts of technical problems trying to enforce the DRM.
Absolutely agreed. I think because the gaming industry is relatively new, it lags behind other sectors on unionisation, and that is definitely something that should change. Not necessarily to emulate Hollywood, but unionisation definitely.
Yeah, that would be ideal. Although whether game artists would be best fitted to a tech workers union or an artists union (which does exist in some places) is a question that would need to be answered.
Heck yeah, game industry workers are long over due for unionization. CDPR developers just had a headline in the news about unionizing after this latest wave of layoffs.
absolutely. Blizzard just had major layoffs to their Esports league, Epic had more than 800 layoffs, Naughty Dog laid off 25 or more developers and Ubisoft let go of 6 more employees after axing 60 earlier this year. and ofc the 9% of layoffs coming from CDPR this year.
The gaming industry absolutely needs union protections to protect their jobs, especially since a job should be steady income, not a volatile workload like developing seems to be in gaming right now. another benefit might be to making big execs actually have reason to listen to workers when it comes to cases of sexual harassment like what we’ve seen at Zenimax and Blizzard
I agree. Both aren’t perfect but the gaming industry is far worse (and so is software development in general) with abuse and lack of mental health resources.
Sakuna of Rice and Ruin. A fun little sides rolling action game as the main and a full 3d rice farm simulator with professional and Japanese government approved rice techniques. It’s a fun relaxing game with amusing mechanics and an interesting story to add.
The rice growing is not Harvest Moon-style “plant your crops, water them every day, and harvest after five days”. You need to monitor the water level of your field, the water temperature (and air temperature), crop spacing (it is not grid based), the nutrient ratios, the field aeration, etc. Your first couple of years are going to be a rough until you level up and unlock actual numbers for these instead of having to guestimate.
So, I really wanted to like Pyre. I love all the rest of Super Giant’s games, and I put maybe 10 hours into Pyre. But I think it was just too much Visual Novel for me. I wanted to spend more time playing the actual game (the rights?), but they only lasted maybe 5-10m and then it was back to reading and flying around.
But yeah, the art, sound, writing, and world are all beautiful. Just couldn’t get into a groove.
Can I just say, that I loaded up Starfield tonight and the NPCs are the worst I’ve ever seen in 30 years of PC gaming. Their bug eyes and lack of reaction or response to anything is so far beyond uncanny Valley that I actually am impressed at how terrible it is. This is the worst game I’ve seen released in a very very long time.
Well, not dedicated to that, but mr samuel streamer (mostly crusader kings and rimworld) has an alt channel where he shoots the shit with his fiance, and sometimes they play games together. They’re playing vampire: the masquerade: bloodlines rn.
They are British, one of their editors is from New Zealand. They threatened to replace their editors’ livers with live badgers if they unionized. 10/10 would watch the surgery.
It’s a pretty popular one but I’m currently playing through Disco Elysium and it’s a masterpiece of thriller detective with very strong RPG integration. Highly recommend even if you don’t like either of those genres as long as you like a good story.
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