Dark Side of Game Jobs. The computer game industry’s nasty crunch hiring and firing practices are making people advocate for unionization. Have you heard of the Dark Side of the Game Industry? The topic is going viral over recent months. 

I research entertainment and game jobs and business practices and B2B marketing. I have another solution than unionizing the game industry. But first a bit of untold history about gig economies and the game industry. A few entertainment business facts and the results of too much innovation too fast.

The entertainment industry works project to project with crunches and employees receive disclosure. All arts and entertainment industries at one point or another have experienced unionization. Unions are powerful lobby groups. Governments and companies will listen to unions when they will listen to no-one else. Unions lobbied for the wage and work safety minimums that non-union workers take for granted today.

USA entertainment unions have been around for more than a century. The oldest union in Hollywood is the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. The IATSE founded July 17, 1893, in New York City during La Belle Époque and Vaudeville on Broadway.

Established entertainment unions can unionize video game workers department by department. There already exists unions to do that, a few examples below.

Unions & Game Creator Needs

• Actors' trade unions‎ - Mocap actors and performers and voice over artists.

• Directors Guild of America‎ - Sequence design, look, timing etc.

• IATSE‎ - Stop motion builders, live set carpenters, live lighting and more.

• Musicians' trade unions‎ - Licensed original music and foley or live sound effects.

• Scriptwriters' trade unions‎ - Voice scripts and dialog to build texture and worlds in a game story.

• American Advertising Federation - Getting your game out to the big mainstream markets.

There is also a dark side effect of sudden and total unionization. Several big companies will fold and more people will lose their jobs. But companies hiring and firing staff on fake promises shouldn’t be in business. In a court of law it is a scam that puts people on the street. How many game workers are sleeping in their cars and vans in the San Francisco Bay Area tonight?

The currently trending gig economy is also a disaster. Gig employers and employees have no set pay standards or recruiting nor oversight. People participating in gig economy websites don’t have any price guides to work from.

Many are recently out of college and don’t know what to charge or what to pay. They drop their prices to get gigs, and that drops the prices and money to live on for the other gig workers. To make matters worse people living in 3rd world countries. They can afford to charge way less than minimum-minimum wages, so they get most of the gigs.

Craig Newmark copied his Gig section from GigsList #1 in the 2000s. Craig lives in Haight Ashbury, yes really... We’ve chatted a few times at neighborhood BBQ’s and backstage at festivals and parties. Craig told me he is a Grateful Dead fan and wanted to be a rock muso. But then his ‘gigs’ category on Craigslist gave the gig economy idea to others who turned it into apps for that. Then some more “others” turned it into a piece of software you can buy online for $87 USA. Now anybody can start their own gig economy on the web with disastrous results for users.

The gig economy is sending millions of workers to their financial edge in the USA. The USA Federal Reserve’s report on the country’s economic wellbeing is eye opening. In 2018, gig economy workers struggled to make a living. Far more than the average mundane day job worker. They can't compete with third world country prices. Countries where the cost of living is less than $400 a month. People struggling to survive in the USA can’t compete with or live on third world wages. USA Federal Reserve reports over half of full-time gig workers find it difficult to raise $400 for an emergency. That’s in contrast to 38% of people low income steady day jobs.

The USA Federal Reserve’ findings signal gig economies are destabilizing society. More than Silicon Valley VCs will admit. Unions or some form of standards and oversight of game workers and gig workers need help. You can also see a pattern forming of too much innovation too fast. Entanglement effects researched and design thought out. Or else it will always be disaster after disaster.

There is another bunch of my notes about out of USA wages and game workers. Some of the worst offender game companies have non-USA educated founders or recruiters. In their defense they don’t know any better. Paying lowest and hiring and firing without disclosure are normal in some countries.

Nobody with legal or advocacy power is guiding the game industry on what USA standards are. Nor checking in to guide them as their game workforce expands and how to keep up those standards. The topic itself is a whole library of laws. Wages and work conditions are also different state to state and county to county in the USA.

Workers complaining about game cos are only a fraction of a fraction of the game workforce. When a new game is in pre-production a game company hires 150 to 300 new workers at a time. Yesterday on GigsList patreon page there’s a call for 300 game workers for a new game.

Game companies have to hire some USA workers to keep Uncle Sam the tax man happy. Many game companies also hire remote workers from countries for the lower wages and low or no labor laws.

“The U.S. Labor Department, the IRS, the SBA, and U.S. and immigration lawyers say it is legal for a U.S. company (or any U.S. employer) to hire foreigners living outside of the U.S. as remote or telecommute workers.” Steven Rich MBA, Linkedin post. To confuse matters are idiot bloggers calling themselves "experts" but are keyword adverts. An example is Kenneth Liu on Gamasutra. He says the “Dark Side of the Video Game Industry” is an unsolvable situation in brief. Then a list of unrelated game company news packed with keywords and affiliate links. It is clueless and no experience of the industry to understand that there are options. Nor self realization that his readers are not clueless.

Media, film music, theatre, arts and games share the broad niche category “Entertainment.” Backstage and behind the scenes“The Industry.” They also share the same problems that come from remote gig economy sites. But hidden inside older Industry standard business practices is the solution. The solution requires individual local and specialized standards, escrow and legal contracts.

The project is building a cloud of local chapters with local standards and paperwork. You understand the local industry first hand. What hat local workers and employers need to thrive.

GigsList.info builds and manages the technology and group advertising. Gig bookings and contracts managed with our software. No more days and weeks negotiating and waiting. Your chapter is autonomous. You choose your local sponsors and advertisers. You manages the chapter web site and local content. Chapter advertising and directory listing on GigsList.info is free. Featured chapter posts shared the GigsList social media network. GigsList.info promotes your chapter to the industry. Making modern intelligent collaboration without unions a reality. Endorsing your chapter as an industry influencer and innovator for your region.