Re:Making Video Games Is Not a Dream Job
by Cthulhu_ on Friday April 05, 2019 @10:06AM
(#19582601)
The main problem with the game industry - I believe - is that for a lot of people it's a dream job, which means the supply for people to work in the industry far outweights that of the demand - meaning, if you're not doing crunch time, there's ten others waiting in line to take over. This is I think the problem in a lot of big employers with dubious worker practices - think Amazon, Uber, etc. They get away with it because the people are easily replaced. They can just fire any Amazon worker who even thinks about joining a union. In the gaming industry, they can - and will, and have - replace a voice actor with one that isn't unionized. Because they can. Because if not everyone is in the union, it is powerless. Because if they can offer a job to someone not in the union, who is willing to get underpaid to just have a job, they will.
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Re:Making Video Games Is Not a Dream Job
by jamestenglish on Friday April 05, 2019 @11:36AM
(#19583557)
This was my thought exactly! It is awfully pretentious to tell someone else what their "dream job" is. People value different things and there are a ton of people who value the ability to work on a game over better working conditions.
As a society we do want to protect people from exploitation, but a game developer is significantly different from the other 2 examples you used: amazon (I assume you meant warehouse) worker and uber driver. Those are low skill jobs so employers have all the leverage, I don't think many of them want to be an uber driver or warehouse worker.
Contrast that with a game dev, which is a very high skill job. They can take those skills into many other fields and make money, but they don't want to. Is that exploitation? I don't know, but it doesn't feel like it is to me.