Playing video games all day seems like a cool job, right? Wrong. The day and life of your average video game developer many not be as cool as some may picture it. Nina Huntemann of Suffolk University brought up some keys issues involving labor concerns in many game development companies. She states,
"the key issues include prolonged unpaid overtime (referred to in the industry as “crunch time”), declining morale and depression, physical and emotional suffering, lack of raises or cost of living increases despite record-breaking game sales, and the toll these working conditions take on the domestic life of employees, spouses and their children".
These are all considered critical issues because well known game development companies like Rockstar San Diego are exploiting young male workers and their employees are seeing little of the big profit that these companies are racking out. Huntemann also brings up the fact that the gaming industry solely has one demographic in their work force ( which consists of young, white heterosexual males) and extreme working conditions (known as crunch time), which may add to the reason why this industry's inability to attract female workers.
Do you think that the video game industry will eventually create a union that will benefit the employee's work ethics?
Yes I think that there will be a union specializing in game employee and there should be. I know some of people in a small game company working really hard until mid night almost 4days in a week. if some problems occurs at a server or within the game that the small company made, the employee won't be able to have free time until they fix it. It is really horrible for them to keep working in the field. so I think there should be a union that will help the game employee's work ethics.
ReplyDeleteYeah I hope there will eventually be unions that will benefit the employee's work ethics. One of the problems with the gaming industry is that there is no specific regulation on game industry labor, as we discussed during the class. First of all, I think there needs to be a regulation, then, a union that help the game employee's work ethics. It is very unfortunate for those people work under some terrible game companies that treat them terribly.
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