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GTA 6 Developers Unionize

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Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#251

Post by Scaled »

appreciatorBus wrote: post #80
Negitivefrags wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> In order for that to change, the market has to increase in size by appealing to a more casual audience, or existing gamers have to pay more. The fun part of all this is that when union demands start forcing the industry in the opposite direction - higher cost, higher prices, smaller market. In a sane world, we would connect this, but in this world, we will just blame management. The union will forever have an invin…

While I fundamentally agree with the concern about unions raising costs in a market where most titles cannot absorb them, GTA/Rockstar definitely can. Especially since the union is fighting for basic quality of life like no crunch instead of (for now at least) increased pay. I am generally not prounion but crunch -- especially at studios that are guaranteed to be profitable (GTA) -- needs to be curbed.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#252

Post by AndrewKemendo »

tpmoney wrote: post #220
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Police unions aren’t labor unions and are illegal in many countries including Japan. https://theconversation.com/why-police-unions-are-not-part-o... Notably, American police (the country that invented police unions) are a modern invention that largely exist as a output of slave catching and bounty hunting services.

This is a just so story that is trivially and obviously false and I don’t understand why it continues to persist. Paid public police forces in the US appear as early as the 1600s in Boston. The first what we might consider modern police departments were formed in the urban hubs of 1800s America where immigration tensions and the general increases in crime you expect when putting a lot of unconnected people into a con…

> formed in the urban hubs of 1800s America where immigration tensions and the general increases in crime you expect when putting a lot of unconnected people into a concentrated area were driving factors for changes to what laws were made and how they were enforced

This is a dog whistle if I’ve ever seen one. I’m not going to let that slide and your citations are not supportive of the strength of your claim

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#253

Post by zem »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #151
deanCommie wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not wrong, but it's also so sad. FAANG used to be the _dream_. Change the world. Work on groundbreaking tech. Solve harder problems than anywhere else. Get Paid incredibly well. Then I guess a generation focused exclusively on that last part flooded the zone. I still believe that The Great Resignation of 2021 did more harm to our industry than COVID or any interest rate or VC changes. It polluted the brains of…

Interesting choice to blame FAANG demise on its workers

I was going to post a more extended rant but really yeah, this says it all

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#254

Post by VanTheBrand »

amazingamazing wrote: post #54
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.

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?

But Japanese autoworkers are unionized and have been for a very long time? So there is an example of a unionized group producing a great product!

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#256

Post by asdff »

LPisGood wrote: post #24
flohofwoe wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern AAA video game development has much more in common with a traditional factory assembly line than a typical tech startup (for better or worse) - or maybe movie production is an even better comparison (especially now where most of the production seems to happen 'in post'). Also VC doesn't seem to be all that interested in investing into game dev companies, I guess because it's such an extreme hit-and-miss busine…

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

Microsoft moved Halo to Unreal Engine. Call of duty engine is based off ID tech 3.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#257

Post by asdff »

stevekemp wrote: post #45
para_parolu wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in tech. I would be happy to work on gta 6 for 30% of my current income.

In addition to low salary, and crunchtime, the other big downside in the gaming industry is frequently layoffs, and studioes going bust. You can't ride on a single game for long, and if the next one goes badly half the company will get fired. Not true of the bigger studios, but of course not everybody works in those. I have friends who work in gaming, and it's a regular thing for studios to form with a great game, go…

Shit can hit the fan with bigger studios when Microsoft or Sony acquire them.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#258

Post by sonzohan »

RobRivera wrote: post #232
sonzohan wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Game dev here, have worked on AAA and indie. First off let me get on my high horse and say the engineering in video gaming is generally more complex than the engineering I've done working in big tech. You need a lot more creativity and ingenuity to solve the unusual problems you run into in gaming. From there, as others have said, it's a simple supply and demand issue. Nowadays I am a university professor, nearly eve…

What was your route to teaching like? I kinda am considering putting my hat in a similar ring on a part time, evening class type basis if I can get away with it.

I graduated in 2011, went straight to work at Blizzard entertainment. At the same time I had gotten accepted into graduate school so I opted for an internship at Blizzard to try both. I went back to Blizzard in 2012, but quickly realized I wanted to do my PhD. So I left Blizzard and went full-time as a student. I didn't have funding so I TAd classes. Eventually my advisor and I scored a big NSF grant, so she used the funds to buy out a course and have me teach it as the instructor.

From there, I wound up at a community college running a bachelor's level degree. They hired me because I was the only candidate with NSF experience. They proceeded to fire their grant manager and have me manage the whole grant without extra pay.

Actually used to hire people for exactly what you want to do: be an adjunct for night classes in tech.

If you want to go that route you need to make friends with the Dean and the head of program. It's rare that we hire someone from the general application process, because most people who work in tech do not make good instructors.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#259

Post by asdff »

geriatricguy wrote: post #167
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 would be that game prices haven't dramatically changed in 20-30 years and development costs have skyrocketed. Easiest way to save money is on payroll.

This forgets about microtransactions.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#260

Post by Scaled »

abcd_f wrote: post #246
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?

Way outdated info, but back in mid '00s when I was interviewing with EA, the recruiter guy who happened to like me said - "be careful when entering gamedev domain, because it's very hard to exit it once in." Not in a sense that it's so good so you don't want to leave, but that other companies are leery of hiring people with the gamedev experience. Make what you will out of that remark.

Not true. Regularly had FAANG want to double/triple my salary to leave games.
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