You don't understand anything about crunch. (Gaming)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Tuesday, May 26, 2020, 12:07 (1642 days ago) @ unoudid

In theory, I'm a fan of unions. But in general I despise them since the ones in my area and profession are so wildly corrupt that it kills innovation and also drives project costs up tremendously.

But that is the benefit of unions. You elect the leaders. So change it up.

I wish it were that simple. I'm an architect that has to deal with the various trade unions that build the buildings we design. I have no say in their leadership, but I do have to deal with the results from their leaders.

Routinely we have to switch to inferior outdated products because the various unions cannot sort out who should have responsibility for installing a new, better, and cheaper product.

Again, not saying that unions don't have their merits. But in NYC the unions were able to keep black iron ceiling grid requirements because of their pull. This added about $2 per square foot cost to a building when it's not necessary. Modern products achieve all of the same features for less material and labor costs. It's been years since I last worked in New York, so this could have changed. But there are tons of similar examples out there in the construction world.

When trade unions are able to mandate building code requirements then things can become issues. It's no longer about the life, safety, and welfare of the building occupants.

My read on it has always been that unions do help in some ways and solve some problems, but there are generally too blunt of an instrument to do what they aim to do properly. Studios of different sizes in different locations working on projects of different scopes and scales... there are just too many variables for a single, industry-wide union to properly address.

Still, crunch is so rampant, and so much of it appears (from what I can gather) to be a result of mismanagement, that a union may very well be a net benefit, at least for the time being.

This is just my gut feeling, but I’m always wary about creating a giant, monolithic, self serving organization which I can’t control in order to combat another giant monolithic self-serving organization that I can’t control. For me personally, if I were going to go work for a game developer, I would only take the position if I had a contract that stated clearly that I could not be forced to work more than X hours per week for Z weeks in a row, or something to that effect. And if no developer was willing to put that in writing, I wouldn’t work for any of them. That certainly wouldn’t do anything to help the industry at large, but it is how I would try to protect myself from these practices.