Comments on: Fear? Stubbornness? Ignorance? While looking into automobile industry unions, I found this article: "The industry has matured enough to realize competition needs to be constrained by reasonable practices. Evidently, the games industry has not." I wonder what it will take, then? Just time? The automobile industry is unionized I believe, that might help -- but whenever I talk to people about unionizing the game industry, they bring up good counter points about how it could make things worse. I still would rather unionize than not unionize, but only slightly as it feels like fighting fire with fire. I can't speak for the auto industry, but I feel that creative industries are intrinsically motivating, so people will want to improve over the last game because they want to play the cool game they are going to make just as much as their customers. Still, if we must have competition, I wish we could be more courteous about it. That's why I wish this industry would unionize, at least partially; not because I want strikes specifically (I'd actually rather have a union that can't strike because I believe there are other tactics it could provide), but because I want some sort of centralized authority that causes employers to be more accountable. I wish it wasn't necessary, that those that employee were more respectful to those that they hire than to crunch them and dump them to the street with no royalties for their hard work (and as recently happened on LA Noire, sometimes without crediting them); but evidently employers don't feel like we are human beings deserving of respect. And if they just don't care about us but hold all the power in this industry, how can we fix it without a fight? I don't see how time alone will heal these wounds. “The industry has matured enough to realize competition needs to be constrained by reasonable practices.
Evidently, the games industry has not.”

I wonder what it will take, then? Just time? The automobile industry is unionized I believe, that might help — but whenever I talk to people about unionizing the game industry, they bring up good counter points about how it could make things worse. I still would rather unionize than not unionize, but only slightly as it feels like fighting fire with fire.

I can’t speak for the auto industry, but I feel that creative industries are intrinsically motivating, so people will want to improve over the last game because they want to play the cool game they are going to make just as much as their customers. Still, if we must have competition, I wish we could be more courteous about it. That’s why I wish this industry would unionize, at least partially; not because I want strikes specifically (I’d actually rather have a union that can’t strike because I believe there are other tactics it could provide), but because I want some sort of centralized authority that causes employers to be more accountable. I wish it wasn’t necessary, that those that employee were more respectful to those that they hire than to crunch them and dump them to the street with no royalties for their hard work (and as recently happened on LA Noire, sometimes without crediting them); but evidently employers don’t feel like we are human beings deserving of respect. And if they just don’t care about us but hold all the power in this industry, how can we fix it without a fight? I don’t see how time alone will heal these wounds.

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By: Keith Fuller/2011/06/21/fear-stubbornness-ignorance/#comment-6302 Keith Fuller Fri, 24 Jun 2011 21:56:48 +0000 "how do we fix it?" I don't see any easy answers, but I feel that the competition-oriented economy we are in is the largest problem. This clouds our vision and our potential with fear. Instead of focusing on bringing joy to the world through our games, we are focused on keeping our jobs as employees and keeping our businesses as employers. We are scared to death of "the other studio" outperforming us. This fear leads to all sorts of unethical actions (crunch, unnecessary layoffs, bribed reviews) that are "justified" in the name of self-defense; that is, companies that behave this way do so, perhaps not out of an innate tendency toward evil (though those companies exist too), but out of a genuine sense of fear that if they don't they will lose to the "other" companies that do. And once you start assuming that the "other" companies are going to do evil things, then evil things become inevitable. And if evil is inevitable then why shouldn't _I_ ride the wave? I mean, evil is going to happen anyway, just as well be me giving it instead of taking it. And on and on. We must stop this nonsensical, antiquated view of business as competition. It's so ingrained in our heads that I bet most people never stopped to question it; why, without competition, we wouldn't have constantly increasing quality! But is this true in an industry full of passionate artists that want to make the best game intrinsically? I say clearly, inarguably not. What we need is to view other companies as our brethren - work together to not release similar games at the same time, share algorithms instead of patenting them, give money from the highly successful studios to the ones working just as hard but that are down on their luck. I am trying to come up with a "Guild" system of sorts that encourages this thinking, and it's already prevalent in the indie scene. However, with all the self-justification and fear going on in this industry (oh we can't unionize, unions would make things worse, and if I stand up to my boss I'll be replaced by a college student, and blah blah blah), I have absolutely no more faith in the Industry Proper. My current hope lies toward the indie scene overthrowing the corrupt mainstream industry, but I don't have high expectations. “how do we fix it?”

I don’t see any easy answers, but I feel that the competition-oriented economy we are in is the largest problem. This clouds our vision and our potential with fear. Instead of focusing on bringing joy to the world through our games, we are focused on keeping our jobs as employees and keeping our businesses as employers. We are scared to death of “the other studio” outperforming us. This fear leads to all sorts of unethical actions (crunch, unnecessary layoffs, bribed reviews) that are “justified” in the name of self-defense; that is, companies that behave this way do so, perhaps not out of an innate tendency toward evil (though those companies exist too), but out of a genuine sense of fear that if they don’t they will lose to the “other” companies that do. And once you start assuming that the “other” companies are going to do evil things, then evil things become inevitable. And if evil is inevitable then why shouldn’t _I_ ride the wave? I mean, evil is going to happen anyway, just as well be me giving it instead of taking it.

And on and on.

We must stop this nonsensical, antiquated view of business as competition. It’s so ingrained in our heads that I bet most people never stopped to question it; why, without competition, we wouldn’t have constantly increasing quality! But is this true in an industry full of passionate artists that want to make the best game intrinsically? I say clearly, inarguably not. What we need is to view other companies as our brethren – work together to not release similar games at the same time, share algorithms instead of patenting them, give money from the highly successful studios to the ones working just as hard but that are down on their luck. I am trying to come up with a “Guild” system of sorts that encourages this thinking, and it’s already prevalent in the indie scene. However, with all the self-justification and fear going on in this industry (oh we can’t unionize, unions would make things worse, and if I stand up to my boss I’ll be replaced by a college student, and blah blah blah), I have absolutely no more faith in the Industry Proper. My current hope lies toward the indie scene overthrowing the corrupt mainstream industry, but I don’t have high expectations.

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