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Anime is a $25B industry that pays its animators pennies

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Re: Anime is a $25B industry that pays its animators pennies

#111

Post by munificent »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #6

Then by definition, that’s what their time is worth. It should alarm animators that they’re paid so little. It alarmed me as a gamedev when I saw how much webdevs earned in comparison. It’s partly why I left, and I was much happier for it. No amount of legislation or shame articles will change the reality that market forces have profound effects, and these effects are difficult to break. Unions try. To my knowledge,…

> Then by definition, that’s what their time is worth.

Only if the market for animation is efficient.

Re: Anime is a $25B industry that pays its animators pennies

#113

Post by neaden »

pcwalton wrote: post #79

The comments here are talking about how that's the entertainment industry for you, and that's true, but it's also Japan, where salaries are much lower in general than in the US or Europe. Per a quick Google search, at current exchange rates, it's not uncommon to see programmers with 2-3 years of experience earning $30K/year USD there, sometimes lower than that. Japan's economy has been stagnating for decades and that…

Labor conditions in Japan in general, in terms of pay and hours, seem so much worse then nations with similar per capita GDP I don't really get why.

Re: Anime is a $25B industry that pays its animators pennies

#114

Post by sillysaurusx »

vlovich123 wrote: post #102
sillysaurusx wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then by definition, that’s what their labor is worth. Unions can be a stopgap measure, but they can’t correct the underlying market forces. Or at least, I haven’t seen particularly persuasive evidence that unions can do more than make everyone collectively equal, which implies that everyone in X industry would be paid the same, or based on seniority rather than merit. Not my cup of tea, but I’m also privileged no…

> I haven’t seen particularly persuasive evidence that unions can do more than make everyone collectively equal, which implies that everyone in X industry would be paid the same, or based on seniority rather than merit. Not my cup of tea, but I’m also privileged not to have chosen a field suffering from a surplus of labor. It sounds like you actually have a wildly incorrect view of how unions can and do work. you may…

I’d be interested to learn. If there aren’t harmful effects to outliers (I.e. exceptional people can still earn a great deal) then that does give me pause. Possibly enough to change my mind.

Thanks. If you have any references on where specifically to start reading, feel free to drop them here. Otherwise I’ll start at the acronyms you mentioned.

Re: Anime is a $25B industry that pays its animators pennies

#115

Post by ycdxvjp »

madrox wrote: post #3

When I read things like this, I think back on my experience in games and entertainment. I believe that the more generally prestigious the industry is, the more likely it is to see worker exploitation. Part of your pay is wrapped up in getting to brag that you work in industry X on product Y. Almost by definition, that means young, passionate labor. Industry leaders quickly learn how to exploit the young and passionat…

It can be fixed.

People need to learn some basic finance if they want to influence how creator economy businesses run. If you can't do that make friends with business experience who you can trust and rely on. If you can't do either, don't get into a creative field.

Most of the time creatives just hand over all financial decisions completely to some one else.

And then guess what, the financial engineers gain much more influence over how the business run. Even Disney is being pushed around (see Nelson Peltz). And the reason Peltz and finance logic hasn't totally over run them is there are people with finance skills saying profit maximizing, cost cutting finance logic cannot run this shop.

You will not find a single sucess story in a creative field without someone with business skills involved.

Re: Anime is a $25B industry that pays its animators pennies

#116

Post by Retric »

numlock86 wrote: post #70
chasing wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "if we paid people fairly things would be prohibitively expensive" argument is a terrible one, just to note. First, it rarely seems to actually be the case since the requirement that employees be paid fairly mostly just drives away low-value efforts. It's also an attitude that, if taken to its logical extreme, demands society have an underpaid underclass that suffers so the rest of us can have nice things.

> It's also an attitude that, if taken to its logical extreme, demands society have an underpaid underclass that suffers so the rest of us can have nice things. That is how (modern) society works already on a global scale. I am not saying it's good, but it's the way things are.

The worlds economy isn’t underpinned by an underpaid underclass.

Every major commodity cobalt, shoes, cellphones etc has large scale automated production. What’s going on is essentially a parallel system where people making almost nothing can barely out complete automation. However, because both are occurring at the same time consumers wouldn’t notice a significant change if 100% of that production was automated.

Granted without infrastructure and a skilled workforce you can’t instantly swap to automation, but that’s a different question.

Re: Anime is a $25B industry that pays its animators pennies

#118

Post by soulofmischief »

Apreche wrote: post #9

While the industry as a whole makes a lot, the majority of individual anime and manga make next to nothing. It’s a few very popular properties that make all the dough. If people were paid fairly, most productions would be untenable. There would be just a few anime per year instead of many. But also, how would the popular ones come to be? Every new property would be a huge gamble. As an anime and manga fan, I actually…

> If people were paid fairly, most productions would be untenable.

A similar argument was used in favor of perpetuating slavery prior to the civil war.

> People just have to accept that means the industry will shrink dramatically. So many things will just never get made.

I've accepted that. Now let's pay people fairly for their time and skill.

> That also means far fewer people will get to become animators. They’ll have to find some other job as competition for the jobs that remain will be sky high.

The online independent animator community is thriving. If people create something that has appeal, they are able to at least partially subsist from subscriptions and donations. I contribute to several animators' Patreon accounts (though Patreon takes far too much out of it). If there isn't enough appeal, well... I'm sorry. Either everyone agrees to a fair wage based on these market conditions, independent efforts raise money through crowdsourcing, or... people find other ways to sustain themselves. That's just a healthy economy in action.

Re: Anime is a $25B industry that pays its animators pennies

#119

Post by GuB-42 »

savanaly wrote: post #5
madrox wrote: post #3

When I read things like this, I think back on my experience in games and entertainment. I believe that the more generally prestigious the industry is, the more likely it is to see worker exploitation. Part of your pay is wrapped up in getting to brag that you work in industry X on product Y. Almost by definition, that means young, passionate labor. Industry leaders quickly learn how to exploit the young and passionat…

I totally agree with your diagnosis, but I don’t see why it’s considered to be a problem. Why shouldn’t people be free to trade off salary against other desirable traits in a job? Even at the extremes?

Because there are not many desirable traits. If people were really doing what they enjoyed, it would be fine, but the problem is that they often don't. I am thinking more about the video game industry, but I think there is a similar problem in animation and all other "fun" industry.

People who get in these industries often want to get paid for what they already do for fun, being doodling or coding small games. Or maybe they see the big projects like a popular anime or a game they loved and want to be part of it. But in many cases, what they only get is a repetitive, not very creative, and high pressure job, with all the fun sucked out of it. Which would be fine if the pay was worth it, but it isn't, and the prospects are not great either, because the really interesting positions are few compared to the grunt work.

Problem is that newcomers don't know that, or maybe hope they are special, and companies really play on that, schools too. What happens is that a few years later you get a bunch of guys that are completely drawn out, hopefully they find a better job elsewhere, to be replaced by a new batch of kids with a soon to be broken dream. Some are luckier and get the job they really wanted (it probably won't be you), and others are really unlucky because their skillset doesn't translate well to other industries and end up with burn out, depression and poverty.

Re: Anime is a $25B industry that pays its animators pennies

#120

Post by ekianjo »

chasing wrote: post #34
Apreche wrote: post #9

While the industry as a whole makes a lot, the majority of individual anime and manga make next to nothing. It’s a few very popular properties that make all the dough. If people were paid fairly, most productions would be untenable. There would be just a few anime per year instead of many. But also, how would the popular ones come to be? Every new property would be a huge gamble. As an anime and manga fan, I actually…

The "if we paid people fairly things would be prohibitively expensive" argument is a terrible one, just to note. First, it rarely seems to actually be the case since the requirement that employees be paid fairly mostly just drives away low-value efforts. It's also an attitude that, if taken to its logical extreme, demands society have an underpaid underclass that suffers so the rest of us can have nice things.

First, there is no such thing as a "fair pay". All of it is driven by demand and supply, always, except when regulations or external factors somehow break things.

Second, of course increased costs of production lead to consequences for end users or people who buy the content. We see that all of the time in every industry.

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