The Great Leverage
Big Tech Holds the Key to Mass Movements
Over the course of this pandemic, we’ve bared witness to the direct failure of our political system to meet this moment and provide the necessary stimulus to justify an economic shutdown in light of the health crises. We’ve seen the politicians bend over backward to provide bailouts to corporate interests and the wealthy while leaving behind the essential workers, the millions left uninsured from loss of employment, left to be homeless, and go hungry. We’ve seen progressive representatives capitulate to austerity at their greatest moment of influence and strength. #GeneralStrike trended multiple times last year, but we’ve only seen small wild-cat strikes amongst local municipalities under the 1st wave of this crisis. Our labor unions are at their weakest with little push from the populace to bolster a mass direct action for change within our society.
There is hope, in actions to be taken against the prevailing shadows of austerity. A labor force that can hold incredible sway of the masses and achieve everlasting change for their own professional lives and the lives of future generations. Like Steel and Coal of the 30s, the Video Game/Tech industry provides a product that billions of people use around the world, with a labor force that is mistreated through crunch and discarded through agile development cycles. A force that has yet to unite around the collective power it yields out of the standard fears presented by a labor market out of control and an industry that thrives on propping up an individual at the cost of burning out.
Picture if you will, a young veteran discharges from the military to seek a professional career in the Video Game Industry. I’m told in order to even be considered for a position, I need a degree. So in my naivety with education, I earned an honors degree from a for-profit college that promised field placements within career fields, but only delivering QA opportunities. I learned production methodologies, interviewed industry leaders for advice on ways forward to advance my career, and found that not only is a degree important(as if mine would ever be), but experience in development is even more important. What industry doesn’t have that requirement these days?
The reality of watching fellow students forced to enlist in the military to pay off their student debt after I had just served 8 years, with no real career prospects pushed me to start an Indie game developer with the mandate of preparing individuals for the industry by allowing them to gain experience within it. Basically, make games together, if they’re profitable, that's a bonus to the experience that you can leverage for a job in your career. It got the acceptance and backing of IGDA leadership as a method of entry-level experience in an industry that doesn’t offer that, at a time when multiple colleges were just offering degrees within the industry. Inflating this false premise that the industry was desperate to hire people when in fact it is a labor force desperate to be hired.
There is no more fabled position in this industry than a full-time job. One where you can have some semblance of stability in a gig-economy that mirrors the entertainment industry. It was a brutal pill to swallow that even after 6 years operating my company and releasing 2 games, I couldn’t parlay that experience into even a contract position. The excuse from the gatekeepers being that I was now overqualified for the contract jobs but under-experienced for the leadership positions. I use to think the problems of the game industry, in labor, and in end-product were small issues that mean little to the national crisis we face as a society, but in my naivete, I was wrong again in realizing that they are incredibly linked and a lynch-pin for actionable change.
To organize this labor force, this specific one, needs an argument against the pathetic amenities provided by the executives to keep this mentality that we’re special in some way and the project could not be complete without you, individual you, knowing full well that the team makes the project possible. To elevate single “rockstars” in the industry creates a corrosive work environment that has become overtly sexist, racist, and exclusionary. What amenities are you really getting? Free lunches, unlimited snacks, gym membership you’ll never use? What are you forced to endure? 80hr work weeks, double-OT, and vacation never delivered? Crunch, from every company out there, even CD Project Red which by far had a larger standing of respect from customers and developers alike…emphasis on HAD.
All out of fear that the abuse will end, the position you slaved yourself over will vanish so easily because there’s no shortage of people who would literally kill themselves for your job, which is true. There is little solidarity amongst the labor force that includes full-time game makers and the contract game makers vying for those positions, except on the issues of crunch and the prevailing threats of the industry. The threat by the consumer if the game happens to be broken, the threat by the employer if they don’t kill themselves for the project, and the threat by a gig economy with no safety net between jobs.
The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, or IATSE, has been the union that represents the labor force behind the TV and Film industry that has made it work for their respected industry that closely matches ours. Allowing those that are between contracts to still have liberties to provide for themselves and their loved ones. There’s never been a desire for better labor practices within the industry and if we mirror better labor standards to better-finished projects then we can argue to the customer base to be an ally against the executive, instead of against the developers. We have avenues in front of us to utilize, but we also have many roadblocks in the way.
The IGDA or International Game Developers Association is a nonprofit professional association whose stated mission is to “support and empower game developers around the world in achieving fulfilling and sustainable careers”…except when it comes to forming a union, which was always mind-boggling to me that instead of empowering game developers as the people behind the companies, they’re more in tune with the ESA (Entertainment Software Association) and the corporate power structure of empowering the business side. As a lifetime member of the IGDA, I’ve debated with board members on this subject matter till I’ve been coarse but they continue to be in support of education to corporate executives on the need to curb current labor practices. As if someone married to the value of the business and the profit of the stockholders is going to put the needs for better labor protections on the forefront of their business. Michelle Ehrhardt out of NYC, wrote this report on the hostile nature of IGDA board members towards a round table discussion in 2018 on the needs for unions, to shed a better light on this:
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the Game Workers United International organization that has been driving the industry to unionize. However, even with those good intentions and call outs by then Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, there are systemic issues that are pervasive in the industry like so many others, that people would rather sweep under the rug, instead of dealing with and it infects the good intentions of the organizations that are at the frontlines of the movement. For GWU, their blindspots came from a lack of condemnation towards white supremacy, leadership fomenting hate and bullying, and chapter organizations forced to call them out publically because of the lack of communication and internal address. It’s not too surprising, 4chan incels spouting racist and xenophobic slurs to each other over games they suck at isn’t new, but what they carry with them to other places was always going to be an issue that needed to be addressed head-on instead of the excuses made by GWUI. Not wanting to condemn racism out of fear of alienating developers isn’t the hill to die on.
There have been leadership changes from the International and local chapters on down since this happened but as Sisi Jiang writes in her guest editorial on Kotaku, “A white supremacist union is worse than no union at all. When there is no union, people of color only have to survive bad managers. When people of color have to survive both bad managers and a hostile union, the situation will only drive more people of color out of the video game industry”.
If this movement can introspect and resolve the systemic issues it carries, GWU could work under the organizer CODE-CWA which just had a major victory this past week, to achieve union victories around the country.
As I was writing this story, an announcement out of silicon valley rocked the planet. CODE-CWA organized for an entire year to announce the forming of AWU, Alphabet Workers Union. The first union of its kind in the tech industry and for a company that has a lot of fingers in everything including national security. The announcement of the union has brought an increase of membership from only 100 dues-paying union members, to 560 over the last few days. The need for a union in Google has only gotten more traction and the leverage that they hold is immense. This is the game-changer that I’m proposing, there isn’t an industry that has more power in our society over our 1st Amendment rights, communications, analytics, and national security than Big Tech, and when the labor forces begin to collectively bargain for better work conditions, better benefits, more ethical practices, real change can be leveraged.
Can you picture a massive labor movement on the West Coast, building up in Silicon Valley and putting a halt on tech companies and social media companies at the source? Imagine a user base, that can no longer utilize their social media platforms, shop online, play and stream video games, tweet performative theatrics, influence crap. Do they go back to playing with dirt? More likely they’ll ask why, why are all my societal norms breaking on me, what’s happening to this country that needs to be fixed, oh you need me outside in front of the capitol demanding we get more, and you’re not going let me have my social media and video games until you get those things, I guess I should get on your side of the issues or I’m just stuck with dirt.
There are many avenues to affect change in this movement. If we’re not uniting behind labor, we’re going to have a harder time uniting people under economic reasons, and that’s really the one thing power is worried about. If there’s going to be any leverage towards change in this country, we must wield the power that we have, and it’s in the workforce, whether tech or manufacturing, healthcare or transportation, garbage or firefighter, we must unite as a collective force. Whatever leverage I have, as a speaker, or writer, or all-around revolutionary, this seems like a great use of my time whenever I’m not protesting. I encourage you to do the same.
