Post #121803
March 23, 2018, 06:08:42 AM
I'm generally in favor of unionization anyway, so it's kind of a no-brainer to me.
The child part of my brain is screeching 'BUT THEY'LL MAKE YOUR GAMES SLOWER' - but on the other hand, without the spectre of crunch hanging over their heads, QA would probably be better because there's less incentive to just shove it out the door so the metaphorical beatings can stop for a while. I'm certainly more than happy with not having a new Assassin's Creed or whatever every year if they're all made to the same standards as Origins was - and moreover I think that taking some of the disproportionate power out of megalithic publisher's hands like EA or Ubi and putting it into the hands of their employees means we might see a bigger emphasis on what's fun rather than what's profitable.
That's assuming, of course, that they're not merely negotiating fair pay, hours, and conditions (which should still be minimum standards) - I just think that for creative fields it kind of makes sense to have members of the union have some level of ultimate creative control - or at least no 'we're cancelling all single player experiences to do games as a service because there's so much money there' situations like we had with Visceral.