Capital would rather burn everything down than lose a penny to the working class. Yes in this example, highly paid developers are considered working class relative to billionaire owners
Yes in reality, like 90% of people are working class, but I just wanted to make that designation for anyone reading it and going “software engineers aren’t working class”. I mean it in the more general working class vs capital owners.
Anyone who cannot stop working and live off their own wealth (and not rely on the working income of others) for the rest of their lives is, by definition, working class.
That’s a mistake. If you treat them as your equal then you can make then see they aren’t special or “middle class” and then you have another pair of hands to help the working class.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m talking about not treating then as special but just as anyone else and reply as you would with anyone else, not as if they are superior.
Noooo, not even close. There may be some senior devs in AAA studios making bank, but the vast majority of people doing the day-to-day art and development work on games typically get much worse pay and benefits than similar roles in other parts of the tech sphere.
A lot of people are very passionate about making games, and the games industry heavily exploits that passion to short change its workers. A lot of (mostly young) devs are willing to accept less pay to work on games because they feel like it will be more fulfilling than working on other mindless corporate crap, and those who do get jobs in the industry are afraid to ask for more money or try to unionize because they know there are a dozen equally passionate candidates waiting to replace them for less money if they make too many waves.
The result is that wages stay lower than other tech jobs and hours worked are much higher. With AI on the rise the problem will no doubt get even worse as execs use it as an excuse to shrink teams and “do more with less”.
That’s interesting. Because writing code for 3D graphics is way more complicated than writing an SQL query or some input form UI. I assumed those devs are super skilled and hence paid accordingly.
Generally the more money that depends on their systems being functional without errors or interruptions, the more an industry is willing to pay for devs.
However in addition to that there is also the supply-demand effect: in demand specialists for which there are few available experts get paid more than people doing the kind of work for which there are a lot more experiences professionals around.
3D graphics programmers would benefit from the second effect but generally not from the first.
As a comparison, for example Quants (who program complex mathematical models used in asset valuation software for complex assets such as derivatives) in Investment Banking in London - thus who gain from both effects - about a decade ago had salaries of around £300k per year as they’re both working on critical software elements in systems used for managing billions of dollars of assets and have a very rare expertise (they’re usually people with Mathematics or Physics Masters or Doctorates who are also developers and who also have quite a lot of specific knowledge of the business of investment banking, which all adds up to a very rare combination of skillsets)
Gaming industry relies on game devs being super passionate about it, so they can pay them less.
My game dev friends almost all got out of it because they weren’t paid well and had to crunch all the time.
In corporate software you get paid well and just hate the work you do.
It’s not by chance that for example the Investment Banking industry pays a lot more money to developers than the wider IT industry - a system breaking down for an hour or two there can cost millions because, for example, trader’s can’t actually trade certain assets.
Generally the more money that depends on their systems being functional without errors or interruptions, the more an industry is willing to pay for devs.
Not to mention generally enterprise devs aren’t beholden to public launch dates set externally by publishers and therefore end up burning out really fast trying to make a deliverable happen. Not saying that doesn’t happen elsewhere in software, but it’s really common in the games industry
Everyone wants to work in games. Few want to work on accounting software and client messaging organization programs. Who do you think gets paid more despite doing basically the same thing?
Doing matrix operations in C++ is super annoying and difficult coompared to writing SQL queries wrapped in Java jdbc, or creating some REST APIs in python/ruby for some js react UI. Another comment response acknowledges this.
But I get that probably most people want to write games. Having the skills to do 3D graphics programming is another thing. (I remember this kid in my undergrad linear algebra class, who was complaining he failed the class like three times, and that he was going to go to the department head and get the professor fired lol. I think that guy wanted to do game programming. I’m betting he’s writing unit tests now.)
Just making the distinction that both blue and white collar workers are all still the working class generally. Colloquially, “working class” can be used more to mean blue collar workers, but in my context I mean anyone not in the capital ownership class.
it’s not even just about the money really. it’s just as much about control. you have to make an example of any uppity unionizing peasants right at the start, lest you end up with your entire corral of cubicle drones strutting around thinking they have some kind of say in any aspect of their work environment
Because they actually work on products literally, they’re the base of their profession with pretty much nobody under them bar a few juniors if any
I fear the day when being a dev like me becomes so normal I make minimum wage and can’t afford anything anymore… It’s seriously terrifying to realize I worked and learned all this time and it may be for nothing in like 10 years…
lol that day is coming sooner than you’d think, I think 10 years is being generous tbh
You should learn a highly niche specialization within SWE if you don’t already have one (that’s what I have). That will be overtaken by AI too, but it’ll give you more runway at least.
If I were in your shoes (and I am), I would start trying to blindly use AI to do various aspects of my job (and I have).
The results are laughable.
There are things that I do that AI can do. Stupid, boring, uninteresting things. In particular, AI excels at doing things I already wrote a simple Bash script to do for me a decade ago.
Seriously, I encourage everyone to give it a try.
Let’s all build that passion project we’ve been dreaming of and host it for the world to enjoy.
In the best case, the world has a happy little passion project chugging away being useful.
In the worst case, we learn what AI cannot do yet, and realize we can still keep charging people for our labor for a few more years (and decades and centuries).
I mean, at least you always have those supple wrists to fall back on.
I hope more people do follow this advice, though. It’s always a joy to discover people’s little passion projects. They make life richer for the rest of us.
Currently working on an Ubi-style game set in Middle-Earth. Maybe my niece and I will be the only ones to enjoy it, but I’m ok with that.
Higher wage working class is working class. If your income doesn’t come from owning things, if you put in work to get your income, you are working class. Division among ourselves only weakens us.
how highly paid are we talking? I doubt they’re making 200k
keep in mind that Canadian tech sector wages are not on par with american - as a rough rule, just keep the dollar value and change the currency (i.e. 100k USD salary is 100k CAD salary)
100%. I always ask people to look at their tax return. Does your money come from your labour/work, or from the things you own? If you aren’t living off of the things you own, then you are working class.
If your income comes mainly from your work, you’re Working Class (even if you own you own business), if your income comes mainly from the money made by the money you have (in assets or even “investments”) you’re Owner Class.
Certainly, modern politics only ever divides people in those two classes, with mainstream parties generaly only working for the good of the Owner Class which is how you end up with falling salaries in real terms and growing Asset valuations in the form of bubbles on all kinds of assets, most notably stocks and realestate (notice how most mainstream politicians see the rising of both stockmarkets and house prices - tough of late, they don’t say it about the latter quite as openly - as being good things).
The single greatest scam of modern Neoliberal Capitalism was making people who own their means of production - sometimes only partially or not really because they’re in debt for it - but still have to work for a living think they’re not Working Class and hence Neoliberal Capitalism is actually working for their benefit.
If there is one thing that around a decade working for the Finance Industry has taught me, is that almost all government policies are directed to help those who make money from having money make even more money, which is why, for example, plenty of countries have lower taxes on income from “investments” than on income from “work”, when the fair thing would be the other way around since the former is parasitical so lower taxes on it just induces more economic actors to engage in non-productive, extractive economic activities.
Yeah, that’s another fun aspect of our culture. Jobs that many people actually want due to what they are passionate about lead to abuse.
It’s the reason I never seriously considered getting into game development or becoming a teacher.
I am the rare father involved in the PTO (parent-teacher organization) along with my wife at our kid’s elementary school. We were handing out basic cheap supplies to the teachers last month as a Christmas thing. We’d interrupt the class to give the teacher a SINGLE roll of paper towels and then a small box of tissues or some glue sticks or whatever, and they were excited and grateful every time!
i’ll bet you anything the higher ups crunched the numbers and realized that was the case. your boss’s boss’s boss doesn’t give a shit about any of you and ONLY cares about maximizing the bottom line, regardless of who gets hurt
“hey know how we cut a few developers loose and they created an iconic video game without our oversight? Should we do that again and forsake all profits and consumer goodwill a second time??”
Wow, a whole unionized and competent studio now free to pursue internally chosen productions? I sure hope they don’t get some of those “Canadian Heritage” media subsidies. Seriously though this is the shit the state should be funding, it’d be a shame to have this kind of resource squandered.
Ubisoft asked the Rayman team (who have produced some of the best platformers) to develop Prince of Persia The Lost Crown, regarded as the best metroidvania of 2024.
It failed to meet sales expectations, so they disbanded the teams and cancelled the sequel.
Turns out gamers™️ do vote with their wallets, and they vote for churned out sequels.
It amazes me that anyone played any far cry or assassins creed game in the last 10 years and went “yes this is a good game”. All they make is bare minimum surface level crap and it’s been that way for a loooooong time.
If the Canadian government were real it would exact punishing fines on the company’s Canadian held assets in response to this. And I don’t mean cost of business fees, I mean hurtful costs, because these giant fucking companies seriously damage Canadian lives when they just rugpull the labour after making massive profits of Canadian operations. There is no justifiable reason to side with Ubisoft or their scumsucking management here.
I completely agree. This isn’t so much a failure of business; it’s a failure of the government to properly hurt businesses that enact policies that hurt workers and consumers. And in democratic countries with voters, it’s also the failure of the voters.
This is why we need people like Lina Khan to be given much more power in society. There are good, liberal economists out there who understand that if you don’t regulate externalities, then market systems will cause extreme disfunction in society. Smart economists understand this, elite rich people understand it, the problem is that the bottom tier of society that is ignorant and believes in religious myths is easily deceived by the upper classes.
The result is a society with progressively more unequal wealth distribution, rapidly descending into environmental hell, with a public that is mostly confused, religious, and idioticly upset about market conditions, but glad the evil trans girl won’t be able to play softball.
All of these issues are part of the same problem: how do you convince the poor and stupid to not get tricked by the elite again? But perhaps it’s just impossible. After all, the poor are mostly religious and believe in crazy things like virgin births and flat earth… Until the poor reject such lunacy, or society becomes so awful that they are compelled to reject it, there’s really not much hope for change.
Genuinely, invest in education and you can resolve a lot of this in one fell swoop. I firmly believe that a large part of the reason the US is in its current state is because of the systematic cuts to our education system which have been happening for damn near half a century (fucking Reagan). Invest in the youth, give them the critical thinking and media literacy skills needed to draw their own conclusions, and I think you’ll have made significant progress on the issue.
Easier said than done, though, I’ll admit, and it’s a plan that operates on a pretty goddamn long timeline - a much longer one than the current critical situation is likely to allow us.
This is a great point. Specifically an increase in economic education required of students would be helpful, including helpful for things like understanding environmental science, because externalities and environmental science and regulation have overlap that most don’t understand.
Well put all around, and in response to your final point, I’m really not sure. I want to say this is the value of public education, but I don’t recall a terribly strong effort to educate people in common sense and media literacy so as to not be manipulated so easily, and end up voting against our own best interests back when I was in the system. Still, I had access to better education than most young people do today.
I think that lackluster regulation of media really is failing us too, since any billionaire can just buy up a large organization and dictate what it will and will not report on, and how it aims to persuade people in out society. All of this requires rooting out apathy and corruption in our governing public servants, and strengthening regulation, and every day I see more of the exact opposite of that. It’s hard to tell what the endpoint is that’s going to force a turn-around, if such a thing even exists beyond a systemic collapse that strips the power to manipulate the systems of governance from the ultra-rich.
Generally that means terrible suffering for all, and I’d much rather see a better path, like, oh I don’t know, massive taxation of enormous and excessive private wealth. Until I see politicians willing to take meaningful actions to resist and confront oligarchy, and a general public developing more self-awareness, I’ll continue to believe that outcome seems like a pipe dream.
I started to Boycott Ubisoft when they started online DRM checks for single player games that you could not play offline anymore. It was with the release of Assassins Creed 2 and I think it was Settler 7. That was about 16 years ago.
I really wanted to play Watch Dogs when it came out. Unfortunately they also publish a lot of games. They have some cool titles ngl, but I pull through.
Cuz enforcement usually requires more work such as a class action suit. Lawyers aren’t just jumping out there suing companies and filing the paper work to protect workers all on their own. There’s usually at least one person organizing it.
So who’s the person who got let go at Ubisoft that got it started?
I get where you’re coming from but unions should not be mandated, they need to be formed for the actual workers that want things to change for the better. Just look at Sweden for a good example of how to implement unions at almost all workspaces without the need for the state to be involved.
By not getting the state involved at all. All negotiations happens between the workers and the companies with about 88% of workers in Sweden having a collective agreement. All workers also have the right legally to join or start a union and unionbusting is illegal. If the company doesn’t want a collective agreement it usually results in strikes such as the ongoing one against Tesla that has been going on since 2023.
True, that we can agree on is necessary to not get into the same situation that happened here. What I’m saying is that it is not necessary for something to be mandatory for it to still be almost universal.
Don’t worry, the America’s free market provides many paramilitary groups to shutdown those pesky unions and curious journalists. No need for government involvement!
Damn, didn’t even know about those. Starting to sound like the US is just majorily fucked up with how they perceive the neverending chase for more profits (and money in the owners pockets). The problem still with government involvement is that it can then just as easily be removed and you’re back on square one. I’m not well informed enough about the US to actually give any valid input on how you would actually solve this.
Was a bit tired when writing the comment, should have been adjusted to minimal involvement as the main procedures should still be between workers and companies with the state just guaranteeing that these procedures can take place at all.
Absolutely this. We need mandated unions for every single company that exists. And with loopholes closed, like offshoring/outsourcing, corporate “headquarters” is a closet in Delaware, etc.
That’s the way it works in France (and other EU countries, I assume?). We literally have to have a workers reprensative council past a certain number of employees.
As a Canadian living north of the nut-hatch, I wish I had the money to excercise my dual citizenship and get out of here to Portugal, or anywhere else in the EU.
I live in Germany. Here its not mandated to have a workers representative council, but you are entitled to be allowed to make one. A workers representative council is distinct from a union, though.
Right… They closed it as a “cost-cutting measure” and “not because the studio unionized”. This is where the lawmakers are just letting everyone know that they are garbage to be walked all over. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that “cost-cutting” a studio that just unionized is because they unionized, because a union means they have to start paying their workers their fair share, which means “higher costs” to them, when it should’ve been like that from the start.
A lot of the reasons unions form in the USA are mitigated by Canadian labour laws. So you generally only see them in large work forces such as government employees, school teachers, and trades. People already get severance pay based on length of employment for getting fired without cause. If you’re laid off you can get EI (60% wages from gov’t).
So to answer your question… nothing probably -though I am speculating. Unless they did something egregious they likely broke no laws.
When the butchers at a single Walmart successfully formed a tiny union, Walmart responded by firing every butcher in every store in the company and switching to pre-packaged meats only.
Every government does. I can’t think of a single law that exists because people signed a petition and not because there was massive social unrest surrounding the issue.
Broken roads.
Deathbound.
Open roads.
Star wars outlaws.
South Park: snow day.
Funko fusion.
Left horizon adventures.
Alone in the dark.
Skull and bones.
Concord.
Look at it this way, Disappointing =/= Bad. One of my biggest disappointments is Metal Gear Solid V and I love that game, but I know that my expectations were not met.
I see we have reached the point where people are going to start saying “Okay, its time for everyone stop having fun” and writing about how the game isn’t that big of deal.
Point being: let’s not listen to the shrieking streamers and strange subsection of Japanese game defenders, and just calm down about some naked adult bodies standing around in a character creator, shall we? It’s time games got comfortable with the human form.
Let’s be frank: The real point is that the writer wants to feel superior to both of these demographics. Not that I support either, but this is just someone acting smug and superior and wanting a cookie for it. But I gotta say that the more blatant aspect is this ridiculous take that keeps popping up in modern criticism:
But there’s also plain old casual nudity—something that US cinema has historically shied away from (particularly with the male form), but that European cinema has been way more comfortable with for years. The whole gap between how the US and European ratings boards react to nudity is pretty well documented, and well summarised in this piece written at Quartz. Baldur’s Gate 3 is, of course, a European-made game, and we—yep, even us fusty old Brits—are historically a lot more relaxed about that kind of stuff.
Which is just absurd. I’m not North American, but let me tell you, if I see any plain dicks or pussy in a movie or TV series or game, it will be A Thing for me. I won’t just sit there and act like a robot thinking “That’s just a organic human body, much like mine, there’s nothing unusual about that”. There’s no homogenous understanding in Europe, or South America or in any other non-US country where full blown nudity is just a casual happening that anyone would not bat an eye at, adult or not.
Furthermore:
Streamers are “shocked” by the nudity? Well, that’s because they’re either a) sheltered people whose lives are largely based in their bedrooms and/or b) aware of the fact that looking aghast, being shocked, and squealing at the sight of a willy or tuft of pubes counts as entertainment. It’s a tale as old as PewDiePie: overreact on camera to things that happen in a game, and you’ll keep viewers, especially younger ones, engaged.
Whether it’s a performance or genuine shock, or a bit of both, video game streamers exist in a pretty particular bubble whose reactions aren’t exactly a gauge of society at large.
I won’t deny that streamers overact for views and content, but honestly? Fuck this guy. If I were playing by myself and saw a random cock dangling on my screen, I would have a reaction and feel flustered. If I were playing in front of hundreds, maybe thousands of strangers online? You can bet your ass that I would have a mini-anxiety attack. If the average streamer is a "sheltered people whose lives are largely based in their bedrooms " (again, fuck this writer) then that’s even more reason to not make light of a moment of panic. Having a hobby where you get to interact with people beyond your screen instead of face-to-face can be a mirror, but it also opens you to a lot of repercussions and a human, if overblown reaction like this being talked down is genuinely infuriating.
Frankly, this is just a plain asshole of a person, and the fact that every other writing of theirs on BG3 is “Its not that good, everyone” just solidifies my stance.
I won’t deny that streamers overact for views and content…
The reason why streamers freak out about bob’s and vagene is because Twitch has some pretty hardcore rules about what’s acceptable and what’s not. Nudity and sexual content are only allowed in unmodded games. Any nudity or sexual content is a bannable offense if the game has been modded or if the streamer brings too much attention to it. Streams that are rated “for mature audiences” don’t give streamers a free pass to in-game nudity, they just make the rules slightly more flexible.
Vinny Vinesauce got banned a few years ago for a few frames of Bladerunner 2049 titty because it was part of an overhaul mod that turned Serious Sam into a Bladerunner game. These were tit pics that were in the movie. Didn’t matter to twitch, he still got a temp ban. When a streamer stops the stream to delete the stream vod, that’s not “playing it up” or prudishness, that’s them trying to keep their ass in one piece.
Hell. I watch a number of furry streamers, some of whom openly joke about fetishes and kinks,and they freak out about nudity on stream.
Right. I was adding onto the statement the person I replied to was making. The original article talks about how streamers pretend to be all shocked and appalled by Japanese nudity but are unfazed by baldurs gate. My point is that streamers have to be serious about nudity because twitch can and will ban them for it.
I was watching a streamer who had nudity off and bare breasts still flashed on stream while the game loaded in. So, she no longer switches the stream to show the game before loading a save for the first time that day. And she deleted the clip and the VOD to cover her own ass from Twitch. Not sure if the game was, or can be, fixed for this, but the checkbox isn't the panacea most think it is.
I think you hit the nail on the head with how surprised someone might be when they are streaming to a large crowd. I can account for the 10 or so people that watch my buddy stream being adults because I have played with most of them. A big streamer can’t know their audience and if that provided their income surprise nudity could have a real impact
If I were playing by myself and saw a random cock dangling on my screen, I would have a reaction and feel flustered.
You’re missing something big: it’s NOT a surprise. Literally the first thing that happens when you open the game for the first time is it asks you if you want to enable nudity. You have to answer that question before you even get to the main menu.
“Show Nudity” is still very vague. For any other videogame, it’d mean at best some nipples. The instance of full frontal in any media is extremely rare, hence the reactions are still justified. It would be a surprise, yes.
If you’re bothered by any kind of nudity, just say no when you’re asked if you want nudity. It’s really not complicated. It sounds like the only way to satisfy you is for the game to offer the exact amount of nudity you’re comfortable with and not a bit more.
I mean, that's sort of how it's acceptable at all, right? It's almost entirely about the fact that it's like accepted to lust after them or hit on them and the rest that would actually get them busted is not explicitly shown, but there's enough there for you to understand that it's gross.
And I love Japanese games, but even still, currently I'm playing Apollo Justice Ace Attorney, and there are scenes where characters comment on the beauty and attractiveness of Trucy (with no reprimanding from any other character), a 15 year old girl explicitly mentioned to not even be in high school yet.
That's not explicit, her character design isn't sexy, but the behavior of much older men lusting after a pre-high schooler is totally normalized. I think that's more of what you'll see commonly.
There aren’t even correct anymore. Japan changed their national age of consent to 16, and it was functionally never as low as 13 because each prefecture had it set at 16 before that. The old, national age of consent was so no prefecture could ever go below that age.
Not 13 any more. It’s officially 16 now, and that old age of 13 never applied to anyone because every prefecture had a prefectural age of consent set at 16, and the old, national age of consent WAS 13 so no prefecture could go below that. There was NO WHERE in Japan where it was actually legal to have sex with a 13 year old because no prefecture allowed it.
AoC is not the same as morally appropriate. I am willing to bet that most of Japan would not be ok with a 65 year old man pursuing a 15 year old.
Also prefectures have different ages of consent just like US states do so in much of Japan you really can’t have sex with a 13 year old even if that is the age of consent.
I can read Japanese, so I can check the Japanese version and see what age they used there. Just one example is fine.
I know that there is lolicon in Japan, but this doesn’t get released in the west, nor is it intended for a western audience.
I’m talking about a game published with western audience in mind, that has a scene involving a minor that you consider to be worse than an implicit sex scene with a bear.
The games that tend to get criticism are games like the dead or alive xtreme volleyball series. Do you think those games deserve the criticism they get while bg3 doesn’t?
I also can speak and read Japanese because I’ve lived here for over 20 years. There are many games that aren’t visual novels that have had characters specially aged up for their western releases.
And stop moving the goalposts. The article was clearly talking about games that have been released in the west, originally intended to be or no.
Rapelay is just straight up porn and wasnt even intended to reach the west, and any western equivalent would get the same treatment because rape porn and lolicon altogether is illegal in the west. I don’t think anyone is upset about that game being banned or censored. It is not even being distributed in Japan anymore.
But westerners aren’t complaining about this game. They are complaining that the female characters wear too skimpy outfits or that anime characters look too young in Japanese games like resident evil.
Was it a bear sex scene in that a player character has sex with a non sophont bear, or was it a bear sex scene where a player character has sex with a sophont druid in the shape of a bear. These are so incredibly different things that it needs to be stated before I can form an opinion.
Well if you want to manufacture outrage and put zero further thought into your philosophies and convictions that is certainly one of the first takes you might stumble across.
I mean, you’re complaining about bestiality in a game and then don’t care about consent? A strange take to be sure.
Oh alright. So completely fine then, from the sounds of it. That being the case im realizing a lot of people don’t actually understand consent or why bestiality is bad.
I am going to just leave this here. It’s a rough link just as a warning as it discusses a Japanese game where raping a 12 year old is part of the game.
dualshockers.com
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