The video game industry's horrible labour record.

[The Man]

Lengthy article detailing many of the problems in the industry. Amongst the many problems with the industry, it's not uncommon for workers to be forced to work 60+ hour weeks; labourers are frequently dismissed after less than a year; women make up less than 20% of the work force; there are no data on the employment of minorities; poverty-level wages are common; all of this is exacerbated by a for-profit college system that manufactures worthless degrees. None of this is covered in the media because the video game industry isn't taken seriously.

There's a lot more in the article and I don't want to summarise it all; the piece is long but worth reading in full.

[AynMisesLibertarian]

Do you have any idea how it is hard to project,put out and support a game these days?

You have really no chance, or 60+ hours week or your game is oudated before it hit the market (or will no receive no patches and support)

While the tech sector tends to skew libertarian,

see? even the "exploited"(lol labor value theory)nobody support socialism or whatever the jacobin is proposed, they want more freedom

[Dragar]

Originally Posted by AynMisesLibertarian

You have really no chance, or 60+ hours week or your game is oudated before it hit the market (or will no receive no patches and support)

That's why Blizzard release their games within a year of starting production trololol.

Anyway, moving on from the village idiot: I think the main reason for this is the same as why there are terrible working conditions for postdocs in academia. Lots of people want to do this job. Working on video games is, for many people, a dream. And so when they get there and find that there are 60 hour weeks, crunch time, bad pay, no job security - it's pretty easy to be replaced when you decide this isn't quite the dream you had in mind.

Exactly like academia, in fact.

[Sauron]

Originally Posted by EinWhinyPlagiarian

You have really no chance,

[BrotherMan]

Some one us up the bomb!

[lisarea]

I interviewed at a video game company once a long time ago, and it was shocking how low the pay was. It was less than half anything I would have considered, so I was pretty mad they'd even bothered me. They told me it was one of the higher salaries in the company, and I told them LOL.

Since then, I've just assumed most people working in the industry were still living with their parents, sort of like with those exploitative 'internships' that are fucking up other industries.

Be A Game Designer - YouTube

[Sauron]

Originally Posted by lisarea

I interviewed at a video game company once a long time ago, and it was shocking how low the pay was. It was less than half anything I would have considered, so I was pretty mad they'd even bothered me. They told me it was one of the higher salaries in the company, and I told them LOL.

Since then, I've just assumed most people working in the industry were still living with their parents, sort of like with those exploitative 'internships' that are fucking up other industries.

Be A Game Designer - YouTube

OMG I thought this was a Youtube parody.

But I looked it up online, and it's real.

[thedoc]

If you object to the way the industry operates, don't support it and put all those people, who have no other income and livelihood, out of work. Good riddance, right?

[lpetrich]

Originally Posted by thedoc

If you object to the way the industry operates, don't support it and put all those people, who have no other income and livelihood, out of work. Good riddance, right?

Such employees make great human shields for exploitative business practices, don't they?

I think that that's a false dilemma. There's a third alternative: good working conditions. However wrong that might seem to some people.

[lisarea]

It's hardly limited to just that industry, either. There is a general trend toward exploitative employment practices in a whole lot of fields that used to be fairly immune to that sort of thing. Various fields use different tactics, but there's a definite race downward in pretty much every profession I can think of.

Unpaid and grossly underpaid fake internships, fraudulent visa practices, using part time and freelance workers, things like that. In a lot of fields, the wages start so low that most people can't afford to work in them. They churn through naive wannabes and kids who live with their parents. The quality of work is often pretty bad, but it's cheap and plentiful enough that it doesn't matter. (This is why you see so much bad writing on the web--it's coming from content mills that pay nothing or close to it.)

It's practically impossible to avoid supporting exploitative industries on an individual basis, but until we start enforcing existing labor laws and improving the ones we already have, that's really the only thing most people can do.

[Ari]

Yup!
The video game industry is also going through a giant flip as they based their structure on tech and film industries without having a real grasp on what makes either tick. In an effort to save themselves first lots of upper management is just throwing everything at the wall, including employees to see what sticks. Games are rushed, finished then canceled. People are moved around or fired based on salary/company-cost and not talent, which unsurprisingly breaks the game, leading to poor sales and more dev cuts.

I kinda can't wait for the current industry to tumble and for real games to emerge from the skinner box pit of greedy execs who hate their customers and developers, and it's coming soon.

[Corona688]

Originally Posted by Ari

I kinda can't wait for the current industry to tumble and for real games to emerge from the skinner box pit of greedy execs who hate their customers and developers, and it's coming soon.

Yup, just like the collapse of the music industry I predicted 10 years ago. Wait...