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United Wizards of the Coast

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Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#111

Post by JRandomHacker42 »

Imnimo wrote: post #57

Back when Arena was first announced, there was an interesting line in their write-up: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/feature/everything-you-nee... >We've created an all-new Games Rules Engine (GRE) that uses sophisticated machine learning that can read any card we can dream up for Magic. That means the shackles are off for our industry-leading designers to build and create cards and in-depth gameplay around new me…

The Arena card engine is based on CLIPS [1] and not modern LLM-based tools. Magic cards are written in a very constrained language (usually called "card templating") that lends itself very well to machine-parseability.

[1]: https://www.clipsrules.net/

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#112

Post by margalabargala »

drob518 wrote: post #102
margalabargala wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most? No. Many, sure. > have a clause that says that the employer owns everything you do while you’re working for them Good companies will have a clause that says the employer owns everything you do in the relevant field of the company while working for them, explicitly naming that field. If you work for a logistics company, you would be able to write your own video editor without any worry. If you work for a not-shi…

I’ve worked at 12 companies in Silicon Valley and they all had variations of such language, whether huge Fortune 50 corporations or 4-person startups with the ink still wet on their incorporation filing. Yes, the better ones have a clause that restricts the claim to competitive work, but not all do. Smaller companies will be more flexible with you, particularly if you’re a key hire. At larger companies, it’s typicall…

> Yes, the better ones have a clause that restricts the claim to competitive work, but not all do.

Yeah, this is my whole point. The rest of your comment, I agree with. In practice you're unlikely to have an issue for something orthogonal and especially something financially worthless.

But you might. There are a lot of people out there that have predatory attitudes towards IP, especially among C-level or would-be-C-level.

And companies that restrict to competing IP do exist.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#113

Post by Lapra »

nonethewiser wrote: post #95
bluefirebrand wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think on the contrary somewhat If everyone at a game developer goes on strike, there is basically no amount of outsourcing or scab labour that can replace them. This is actually probably true of basically all software Just refusing to share passwords into key systems would be enough to significantly halt any attempt to bring on an entirely new development team

Yes but what happens? The video game is not maintained or released. Society doesnt care that much. It's not critical and there are millions of alternatives.

Most entertainment industries have very strong union presence.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#114

Post by lentil_soup »

nonethewiser wrote: post #98
rafram wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That logic doesn’t make any sense to me. Game programming, art, and even marketing are highly specific niches within those broader fields. You can’t pick any random programmer off the street and get them up to speed on game development overnight (let alone your specific crazy custom engine/architecture, as often seems to be the case).

1) Nothing critical is lost if a video game team stops working. Society doesnt need it and there are lots of alternatives. 2) There is already a major labor surplus for video games. It's famously hard to get into and low paying because of it. There is no doubt someone else is willing to step in.

> Nothing critical is lost if a video game team stops working. Society doesnt need it and there are lots of alternatives.

A union represents workers in a company, nothing to do with society. If workers strike the company stops making money, that's their leverage

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#115

Post by fragmede »

mjr00 wrote: post #92
satvikpendem wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure about "all." High earners generally do not benefit from unions as they can make more negotiating their own labor value versus participating in collective negotiation which is more likely to drag their compensation down towards the average, even if it's still higher than average.

> High earners generally do not benefit from unions as they can make more negotiating their own labor value versus participating in collective negotiation which is more likely to drag their compensation down towards the average, even if it's still higher than average. High earners benefit from unions if union rules are made which benefit high earners. The most well-known example of a high-earner union is SAG-AFTRA an…

The Bar association for lawyers, and the MD licensing system are another two examples of a trade having a union.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#116

Post by michaelt »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #87
nonethewiser wrote: post #72

I understand why workers in the video game industry want to unionize. They like the industry but the standards are shit. I do not see how unions will catch on in the video game industry. The ability to unionize has very little to do with the ideology of the workforce and everything to do with the structure of the industry. Unions tend to catch on when labor is irreplacable, workplace is large and centralized, if they…

I think on the contrary somewhat If everyone at a game developer goes on strike, there is basically no amount of outsourcing or scab labour that can replace them. This is actually probably true of basically all software Just refusing to share passwords into key systems would be enough to significantly halt any attempt to bring on an entirely new development team

Some historically powerful unions have enjoyed their power because their strikes not only stop their employers making money, but also impose great inconvenience on many people downstream of them.

If truckers or dockworkers go on strike there's no food on the shelves, if coal miners go on strike the lights go out, and so on.

As a consequence of this, employers are motivated to make a deal not just by missed opportunities to make money, but also by politicians, other powerful capitalists, and public opinion.

Of course there are plenty of unions where this isn't the case; theatres and hollywood are unionised despite the fact nobody freezes or starves when they go on strike.

Game developers are, I think, closer to the hollywood position than the dockworkers position.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#117

Post by lioeters »

sabedevops wrote: post #33
lioeters wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our mom

My Mom’s dead, as is freedom of speech on ycombinator apparently.

By the power invested in me from days of doom-scrolling HN, I hereby resurrect the freedom of speech, at least for this comment branch.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#118

Post by drob518 »

margalabargala wrote: post #112
drob518 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve worked at 12 companies in Silicon Valley and they all had variations of such language, whether huge Fortune 50 corporations or 4-person startups with the ink still wet on their incorporation filing. Yes, the better ones have a clause that restricts the claim to competitive work, but not all do. Smaller companies will be more flexible with you, particularly if you’re a key hire. At larger companies, it’s typicall…

> Yes, the better ones have a clause that restricts the claim to competitive work, but not all do. Yeah, this is my whole point. The rest of your comment, I agree with. In practice you're unlikely to have an issue for something orthogonal and especially something financially worthless. But you might. There are a lot of people out there that have predatory attitudes towards IP, especially among C-level or would-be-C-l…

It’s certainly shifted toward restricting the scope to competing IP, but that’s only in the last 15 years or so. Prior to that it was definitely more all encompassing. But yea, companies are becoming more enlightened as key employees push back and the companies figure out that they don’t really want your orthogonal ideas anyway. But back in the day, particularly when many employees might only work for a maximum of three to five companies anyway, it was extremely common to have “we own everything you create” clauses.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#119

Post by mjr00 »

satvikpendem wrote: post #109
mjr00 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> High earners generally do not benefit from unions as they can make more negotiating their own labor value versus participating in collective negotiation which is more likely to drag their compensation down towards the average, even if it's still higher than average. High earners benefit from unions if union rules are made which benefit high earners. The most well-known example of a high-earner union is SAG-AFTRA an…

Tech workers are fungible while actors or athletes are not though, so they should better be compared to more blue collar worker unions and here it is the case that wages are generally normalized.

> Tech workers are fungible while actors or athletes are not though

Strongly disagree with this, and I'm in 'tech management' now so I'm not saying this out of self-preservation.

Tech workers are similar to athletes in skill disparity IMO. A handful of superstars makes a massive difference. Look at those superstar AI developers who are allegedly getting 8 or 9 figure compensation from Meta etc. They're still technically "just" tech workers.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#120

Post by hootz »

nonethewiser wrote: post #98
rafram wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That logic doesn’t make any sense to me. Game programming, art, and even marketing are highly specific niches within those broader fields. You can’t pick any random programmer off the street and get them up to speed on game development overnight (let alone your specific crazy custom engine/architecture, as often seems to be the case).

1) Nothing critical is lost if a video game team stops working. Society doesnt need it and there are lots of alternatives. 2) There is already a major labor surplus for video games. It's famously hard to get into and low paying because of it. There is no doubt someone else is willing to step in.

Strikes are to get power over the company, not over society.
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