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United Wizards of the Coast

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Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#131

Post by xienze »

rhcom2 wrote: post #79
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'm not sure that's true. Surely doormen, janitors, and security guards are not "irreplaceable" and can't "halt critical operations beyond their industry".

That's all labor that can only be done "here and now." Can't just have Indians do it over the internet. And replacing the workers at a moment's notice is usually complicated by the striking workers harassing and attacking the replacements. Again, hard to do that when your replacement is on the other side of the globe.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#132

Post by bluefirebrand »

DelaneyM wrote: post #20
iwhalen wrote: post #4

From the full letter[1]: > Our Free Time is Our Own: Currently, if an employee makes anything creative in their free time, with their own resources, Hasbro may claim ownership. What we do in our free time should not be dictated by the company; neither should what we make in our free time be owned by the company. How common is this in creative fields? From my perspective this seems outlandish. Imagine doing FOSS work…

It's not at all uncommon, and important. When someone is empowered to work remotely, and is salaried and not held to specific hours, then it's very hard to identify what work is "theirs" and what work is "the company's" in a legally consistent way. Yes, it's usually obvious from context, but context doesn't always carry to a court of law. It can be particularly messy because the kinds of open source projects one cont…

> When someone is empowered to work remotely, and is salaried and not held to specific hours, then it's very hard to identify what work is "theirs" and what work is "the company's" in a legally consistent way

It's easy. Work done on company issued hardware belongs to the company. Everything else does not

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#133

Post by xienze »

culi wrote: post #19
glasss wrote: post #2

Great to see! I think unions should be the default for most situations.

And they are in much of Europe! Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Austria, Belgium, Iceland, Italy, etc. Even France has over 80% coverage

And what has that really bought them? The wages are laughable compared to the US where you'd THINK us non-unionized tech workers would be paid minimum wage. And the famous European healthcare and long vacations are more a function of the government than anything the unions have explicitly bargained for.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#134

Post by tanjtanjtanj »

JRandomHacker42 wrote: post #111
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/

There was an era about 10-15 years long where that was true but modern cards often fall back on very loose language that they tighten up with rulings prior or sometimes after release. See the language behind the "Prepared" key word in the newest set for a striking example.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#135

Post by qq66 »

xienze wrote: post #131
rhcom2 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that's true. Surely doormen, janitors, and security guards are not "irreplaceable" and can't "halt critical operations beyond their industry".

That's all labor that can only be done "here and now." Can't just have Indians do it over the internet. And replacing the workers at a moment's notice is usually complicated by the striking workers harassing and attacking the replacements. Again, hard to do that when your replacement is on the other side of the globe.

You cannot simply transfer Magic the Gathering to overseas workers and expect any kind of usable result. It will be from an entirely different cultural framework.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#136

Post by charcircuit »

This is a cancer that needs to be addressed as quickly as possible by firing them all. It is a toxic ideologically that should not be allowed to permeate.

>Layoff Protections

Businesses need the ability to layoff employees when markets change and projects are no longer viable.

>Remote Work Protections

Data has shown proven benefits of in person time and in a competitive environment such as gaming every advantage matters.

>Generative AI Protections

AI is revolutionizing all industries. If you refuse to use it to disrupt yourself someone else will.

These demands are very dangerous to the company and should not be considered.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#137

Post by kaoD »

lentil_soup wrote: post #114
nonethewiser wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And in knowledge work we're not instantly replaceable. That's why anti-union propaganda is rampant in SWE fields.

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#138

Post by charcircuit »

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

Doing that would nuke your career. What company wants to hire someone who sabotaged their previous employer?

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#139

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: United Wizards of the Coast

#140

Post by kaoD »

Lonestar1440 wrote: post #90
looneysquash wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company you work for almost always has more power in negotiations than you do. (For some hypothetical "you".) The bigger the company is, the more power they have typically. If you want to make more money or get better benefits or otherwise negotiate a better contract, you need more leverage. Unionizing is one way to gain more negotiation power by negotiating together with your co-workers instead of individually.…

The big assumption here is that the Union's interests are, in fact, aligned with You, the Worker. If they're not, then you're just caught between two powerful, unaccountable entities. You have to join the Union, after all. I see a lot of folks in Education who feel that the Union simply Exists and does not really help them (their employers being rather sympathetic as well). When they are, of course the Worker benefit…

> You have to join the Union, after all

Uh, how? This might be a country thing but you don't have to join any union in my country. You do, if they represent your interests. Big companies have multiple, competing unions, and the anarchists (which refuse state subsidies and are fully self-funded) are pretty good at what they do.

If you have to join a union isn't that essentially a racket?

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