131–140 of 222 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We don't choose our talents nor our passions You choose your job, though. I'm not overly passionate about what I do, but do it for the stress:compensation ratio.
That's exactly my point. There are people who do the same job as you and love it. They may not even feel stress. Should they be paid less than you?
Game companies need this. It’s one of the “software engineering” adjacent subfields that is extremely exploited. The salaries are low, the work is stressful, crunch is high. The reason for this dangerous combo? You’re working your dream job. This is good, I hope the employees at ActivisionBlizzard can finalize their union if they’re purchased by Microsoft.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The analogy works with European soccer as well though, which isn't as much of a monopoly (given that the European model isn't franchise based).
Soccer does have a pretty big difference though: it isn't particularly dangerous and there are players that participate for a decade and more. That's also why it's not as centralized... Players aren't quiet as endangered when entering, so they're likely more willing to participate in games with smaller payouts.
However what we are discussing is rather the levels of money at the top of such an industry and that concept applies to both sports. Where Ronaldo can earn £25m in a year at Manchester United while still having his "dream job". Football in Europe since the Bosman ruling has allowed its players to share in the wealth of the industry; one could argue that programmers in the gaming industry are not afforded that same. It remains an interesting discussion as to exactly why that is and I think the risks that workers take are not as relevant to the amount of money available in the game and scarcity of the best employees available; which results in such inflationary salaries for the very best employees.
There are times I wish I had a union working for tech in finance. Although it seems like a real contract would fix most of the issues without unions. These one page "we make the rules and can change them at any time" contracts are bogus. There's no accountability, no fairness. Things become arbitrary. There's no accountability when the company violates it's own policies.
> Although it seems like a real contract would fix most of the issues without unions. It’s hard to disentangle these, unions are effectively the only way for non-executive[0] employees (in the US) to get an employment contract that isn’t one-sided in favor of the employer. The primary function of a union is to obtain a contract. [0] I highly recommend reading the “Executive Severance Plan” section of any publicly tra…
If they were actually one-sided then no employees would sign them. It's not like there are no alternatives to finance tech.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would you think that's fair? We don't choose our talents nor our passions. You should get a decent share of however much value you create. How much you like your job doesn't come into it because it's random.
Because not only is it consensual, but developers are actively sacrificing things to be in the game industry. When you have alternatives you aren't being exploited.
That kind of thing (collusion by big players to keep wages low) strikes me as exploitative.
Game companies need this. It’s one of the “software engineering” adjacent subfields that is extremely exploited. The salaries are low, the work is stressful, crunch is high. The reason for this dangerous combo? You’re working your dream job. This is good, I hope the employees at ActivisionBlizzard can finalize their union if they’re purchased by Microsoft.
Unions on the game industry would never work, reason why game industry is so abusive is two fold:
1. A lot of young people believe working with games is only fun, providing endless bodies to be hired and replace the previous young that realized how much it suck that they quit.
2. Games market follow a very strong winner takes all model, a few games have all profits, literally thousands games are released yearly that nobody ever heard of or bought.
As such here is the situation:
1. Very few companies (because of previous point 2) can afford to pay good wages and benefits.
2. The few companies that actually are wealthy, get so much applicants that every year starry eyed talented newbies will join for shit pay. Hell, when I had my own company people wanted to work for free even!
3. If a union starts to form, the company will just get rid of it somehow, even if is extremely bad PR, because people will still willingly throw themselves at such jobs thinking "EA Spouse" description of crunch time is a dream, not a nightmare.
Note: currently unemployed again. I am in love enough with games to want to brave all its shittyness, but I don't have my hopes up that I will get a game job, because my wife is pregnant and I need wages that allow me to take care of 3 people now, and I know in the game industry this is very unlikely. When I first finished university nongames companies offered me usually at least 3x what game industry did for same positions. My first job ended with me getting 5x the highest offer I got from game industry. I accepted it because the game industry offer was lower than my student debt repayments for my Game Design and Production degree...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We don't choose our talents nor our passions You choose your job, though. I'm not overly passionate about what I do, but do it for the stress:compensation ratio.
That's exactly my point. There are people who do the same job as you and love it. They may not even feel stress. Should they be paid less than you?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because not only is it consensual, but developers are actively sacrificing things to be in the game industry. When you have alternatives you aren't being exploited.
> When you have alternatives you aren't being exploited. That's a narrow definition. Perhaps a better definition is when the other party knows you don't have leverage and takes advantage of it, you're being exploited. Paying you little, knowing you'd work for a low wage because this is your passion? Exploitation. Horrible working conditions, wages, and abuse knowing you're an illegal immigrant with no recourse? Explo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The reason for this dangerous combo? You’re working your dream job. Doesn't that make it a fair trade? Musicians generally don't make a killing either.
I’m not sure it’s fair if the product ends up making a boat loads of money. Games are high risk but a very lucrative industry. Just look at how successful football players were in getting a slice of the pie. I’d still consider that a dream job.