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GTA 6 Developers Unionize

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Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#61

Post by AndrewKemendo »

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?

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

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#62

Post by bko »

bwestergard wrote: post #18
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?

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, you don't have the opportunity to work there.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#63

Post by victorbjorklund »

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?

More people dream about building the next game than building another CRM system.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#64

Post by jdw64 »

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…

As a Korean freelancer, I’ve spoken with former developers from Pearl Abyss. They officially work 10 to 7, but the relentless crunch culture drives most people out.

While the company is extremely proud of its proprietary engine, I was told it causes severe internal politics. The studio is heavily biased toward the engineers who built the engine. Another huge downside is the lack of documentation—you can't just Google your bugs. (Granted, this was the situation two years ago).

The CEO is famously known in Korea for prioritizing developers while devaluing writers and planners. However, even within that developer-first environment, the proprietary engine has birthed a clear internal hierarchy among the programmers

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#65

Post by savanaly »

bwestergard wrote: post #18
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?

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.

>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.

How is the existence of a monopsony necessary or even related to a passion tax existing? Suppose the market were a fully free market with tons of software companies on one side and tons of developers on the other. It would fly in the face of reason, and fairness in my eyes, if all developers were paid the same but some got to work on fun stuff like games and others worked on the scheduling software for the scheduling software for the warehouse robot repairs. So a passion tax seems like something that should exist and not really be decried.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#66

Post by afavour »

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?

Correlation != causation. There are a ton of differences between the US car industry and those in other countries, unionization is just one factor.

As a counter anecdote I’d point to Boeing’s non-union facilities, which have produced notably less reliable airplanes than their union locations ever did.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#67

Post by amazingamazing »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #61
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?

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

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#69

Post by jhatemyjob »

DrBenCarson wrote: post #27
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?

Video game development is largely grunt work outside of the engine

This, and also, if you just take a step back and think of the bigger picture, the work isn't valuable. There's a lot more value in pushing ads, a CRM, an email app, etc than keeping a 14 year old kid entertained.

I don't really buy the supply/demand argument everyone else is saying here. The end product just doesn't provide value to people's lives. The amount of effort you'd need to put in to provide value to someone's life through a video game is way higher than the effort you'd need to put into a productivity tool.

In fact, more often than not, video games provide negative value to people's lives. They're usually a waste of time at best. And at worst, addictive and carpal tunnel inducing.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#70

Post by parineum »

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 increased pricea, extended timelines or minimum effort to meet exact requirements from employees.

The benefits that workers gain from unionizing come from somewhere.

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