Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

GTA 6 Developers Unionize

rockstarintel.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 561 posts

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#81

Post by AndrewKemendo »

amazingamazing wrote: post #67
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japanese auto workers have been unionized since the 60s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederation_of_Japan_Automob... In fact part of the SCAP mandates after World War II two during the MacArthur occupation was specifically to form powerful unions in Japan

Interesting - but seems like Toyota in particular had their cars produced by non unionized group producing workers at least for some period: https://uaw.org/we-keep-toyota-running-workers-at-critical-t... Seems hard to compare since there is no comparison in Japan that is not unionized But given that China is now winning my original point stands

Hey as long as you can find a reason you are right, that’s really what all life is about right?

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#82

Post by kellogah »

Negitivefrags wrote: post #72
agentgt wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is mostly just margins. Sure there are lots of people willing to work for no very little money for game dev but I would say there are tons of people willing to work for very little money for FAANG companies because they want that on their resume. In fact since we are on hackernews that is kind of thing people wanting to be entrepreneurs do. Work at recognizable big tech company for a few years. Leave to be…

People haven’t responded to your very first point, and I want to really stress it because I don’t think most people really get it. Margins. Game development doesn’t pay more because game development companies can’t afford to pay more. Sure, an individual game dev company may make a lot due to the hit driven nature of the field, but the totality of the market simply makes less money per developer than big tech does. I…

Also games are for leisure. The same thing is true in Hollywood—hundreds of crew members getting paid small wages relative to their long hours and a few stars getting millions.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#83

Post by amazingamazing »

simonjgreen wrote: post #73
amazingamazing wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? American cars suck compared to japanese and chinese which are not unionized. What’s an example of a unionized vs non unionized group producing the same thing where unionized is better?

The unionised Openreach in UK who are really the de facto layer 1 network provider telco build infrastructure to a staggeringly higher quality than most of the move fast startup alternatives. Aviation unions force very high standards and represent a lot of the developments in safety and procedures. Nuclear power is heavily unionised, resulting in a very stable and highly qualified workforce. Unions in film and tv hav…

I see the benefit of a union for the workers, but your examples seem strange. They do not illustrate that a union somehow results in a better product.

If that were self evident how come there has never been a company that started with employees unionized? To get this supposed benefit

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#84

Post by jjice »

zarzavat wrote: post #77
parineum wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but also improve the final product by not having underpaid stressed staff with high turn-over. We'll see. It's not like police unions are making life better for citizens. Unions are there for one reason, the union members. This will most likely be good for the employees and good on them for acting in their best interest but it seems just as likely that a unionized rockstar is negative for the consumer in either inc…

I would happily pay extra money for GTA 6 if it goes to improving working conditions. It's only negative for the consumer if the consumer views life as a zero sum game.

I agree with you, but I think most people don't. People generally hate paying for software and the $60->$70 standard AAA game pricing got a lot of people (my well paid friends included) complaining. Even if it was very clearly said that it is the cost of a well paid and respected team behind the game, I think most people won't care.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#85

Post by krzyk »

pawelduda wrote: post #53
LPisGood wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s only true in some instances. Do most AAA titles like Call of Duty, GTA, etc use Unity or Unreal?

There are many studios with their own engines that rival or exceed UE5 - which seems overhyped, because at this point they caught up with graphics fidelity without terrible performance that dread a lot of UE5 titles. Recent notable example is Crimson Desert, they spent years building their own engine for this game and IMO they raised the bar when it comes to creating a huge realistic world. Others that come to my min…

Companies I remember: CD Project RED, but they are now switching their newest game to Unreal Engine.

id Software, the new Doom series uses highly performant engine (as if there was some legacy there for that).

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#86

Post by bwestergard »

bko wrote: post #62
bwestergard wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a unionized software developer in media, not games. I helped the game workers at Blizzard unionize and they all spoke of the "passion tax". One reason the "passion tax" is possible for employers is that there seems to be a degree of labor monopsony for the kind of development done by AAA game studios. In this respect it's quite a bit like Hollywood film production in its heyday.

Suppose you double their pay, make them more in line with other tech workers. How should you allocate these highly coveted game dev jobs? The supply of jobs won't magically increase (it would likely decrease with higher wages), and the number of people interested in working there would grow as well. Do you just have a lottery? Now rather than being a relatively underpaid worker in an industry you're passionate about,…

Your hypothetical is interesting, but it doesn't accord with the reasons these workers organized. They did not conceive of the issue as primarily about multiplying all worker compensation by some large factor (e.g. 2x). While they were certainly fighting for higher pay, it was as much about the arbitrariness of career paths as anything. Sexual harassment, crunch time, and layoff cycles were all problems they sought to address.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activision_Blizzard_worker_org...

Regarding your hypothetical, two points. First, Hollywood unions did essentially go down the path you imagine. The solution there was to create a less arbitrary system that allowed actors to work their way into the union and get a degree of income stability and protection from (previously horrendous) employer abuse.

"The supply of jobs won't magically increase (it would likely decrease with higher wages)"

You should look into the economics of these game studios a bit more. The unit economics are not like those of producing bricks which an essentially linear (capital, labor) -> bricks production function. The distributive effects between the employers, workers, and consumers would be very difficult to model. You can't really figure out the marginal contribution of the factors of production. To use a Hollywood analogy: Do we know how much less one of George Clooney's films would net if a different actor were cast instead of him? If we can't be sure, can we know what his marginal contribution was?

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#87

Post by amazingamazing »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #81
amazingamazing wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting - but seems like Toyota in particular had their cars produced by non unionized group producing workers at least for some period: https://uaw.org/we-keep-toyota-running-workers-at-critical-t... Seems hard to compare since there is no comparison in Japan that is not unionized But given that China is now winning my original point stands

Hey as long as you can find a reason you are right, that’s really what all life is about right?

Huh? Are you projecting something here?

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#88

Post by keybored »

parineum wrote: post #70
HugoTea wrote: post #5

This is great news, unions not only improve working conditions, but also improve the final product by not having underpaid stressed staff with high turn-over. It's a good sign for the future product quality of any company to see workers unionise.

> but also improve the final product by not having underpaid stressed staff with high turn-over. We'll see. It's not like police unions are making life better for citizens. Unions are there for one reason, the union members. This will most likely be good for the employees and good on them for acting in their best interest but it seems just as likely that a unionized rockstar is negative for the consumer in either inc…

Anti-unionists are here to tell us that consumers might possibly suffer. Higher prices and delays on a video game. Which has not seen a release in this series in half this century so far.

For all this consumer cares, great. Make it 20% more expensive. Make it 50% more expensive. A hundred. If that helps the greater union cause I can take more walks in the woods to pass the time instead.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#89

Post by saadn92 »

WarmWash wrote: post #4

Can anyone comment on why "big video game" dev pay has lagged "big tech" pay so badly? Ostensibly they are doing remarkably similar engineering problem solving, so why is there such a disparity?

my guess is: the ENGINEERING problems they solve are harder, but they're still just video games at the end of the day, compared to something that solves an actual business need.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#90

Post by swatcoder »

WarmWash wrote: post #4

Can anyone comment on why "big video game" dev pay has lagged "big tech" pay so badly? Ostensibly they are doing remarkably similar engineering problem solving, so why is there such a disparity?

There are more silos in the software engineering industry than you might expect as a "Big Tech" kind of engineer (assuming that's where you're speaking from). Gaming, embedded, audio, aviation, defense, automotive, medtech and pharmacy, deep enterprise, finance, etc.

Those silos maintain different processes and workflows, different company cultures, different skill specializations, etc and jumping around between them in mid-career or senior can be very challenging. So they tend to have their own org chart shapes and salary/benefit norms.

When a Big Tech company moves into or absorbs one of those silos, or emerges from one of those silos, it can shake up what the people within them get paid (and thereby have big knock-on effects for legacy employers), but otherwise it's just it's own little bubble in a lot of ways. People can share stories and ideas across the siloes in venues like HN, but many of the "what are you even talking about" reactions that happen on here often occur when people from these different silos stumble into what are sometimes deep differences in what they do and what their work experience is like.

Post reply on HN