(Supposed to be on vacation this week, but did do some game industry news surfing and couldn’t help but get down some thoughts on unions…)

The bug “U” word has come up again, this time floated by design legend Ron Gilbert during a Gamasutra interview. He mentions that if the industry moves to a more “floating freelance” structure, union type glue will be needed. To elaborate on his reservation, here are my personal thoughts on why unions - as traditionally structured - will have a hard time taking hold in game development:

  • Culture Mismatch: Generally speaking unions are a tool for leveling/equalizing labor, which is a direct mismatch with the game industry’s meritocracy oriented culture. Further, unions have traditionally just not done well in tech and knowledge based sectors.
  • Lack of Standards: As noted by Gilbert, tech is still moving fast. Meaning, there are no standards the same way that the majority of movies are made with the same types of cameras, etc. And, it is not just a tech issue, but all kinds of standards: job titles, job roles, processes, pipelines, file formats, engines, platforms, etc, etc. Unions generally operate in an environment of very precise/predictable standards.
  • Poor Process: Despite lots of progress on the project management front, overall, game production processes are still evolving heavily. At noted by Gilbert, a Hollywood per-project approach would require developers to be a whole lot better at scheduling, resource management, etc.
  • Wrong Time Span: Ok, this one is more about the Hollywood process than unions per se… But, large scale games still take too long to develop, making it tough to assemble talent on the fly (”hey, I need you for a gig up in Wisconsin for the next 18 months, cool?”) As side note, this is also why some of the state-based government tax incentives modeled after a Hollywood production model have not attracted much action…
  • Hotspot/Geographic Proximity: Traditional unions are mostly based on physical locations (think the big Ford manufacturing plant in Detroit) with the specific workers in that specific location/office being unionized. The Hollywood guild system works differently since it is a freelance workforce, but even that relies heavily on the physical proximity and clustering of projects and talent (ie, that’s why Hollywood is in Hollywood).

Anyway, those are some quick thoughts on the topic. Note that these bullets are “neutral” in that I’m not saying if unions are good or bad or useful for game development (that’s another post for another day). Rather, I’m just stating some factors as to why I personally believe unions/guilds will have a hard time taking hold in the game industry.

And, BTW, there’s totally something insightful to say in linking this to the recent news about Ken Levine renegotiating his contract with Take-Two. But hey, I’m on vacation, so I’ll let you figure it out!