This is a hilarious controversy to me because it is so obviously a labor dispute but nobody is covering it that way.

If you work as a creative and your product doesn't sell because you were forced to cut corners by your boss you should be mad at your boss not your audience.

  • Redcat [he/him]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Being unionized doesn't protect you from mismanagement - but it can protect you from feeling like you have unreasonable expectations to meet.

    Truth be told this issue is entirely besides unionization. The latter is about worker's rights. The former is about the overall objectives of the teams involved. A lot of the studios that stick to their guns and develop their niches into commercial and artistic success also practice predatory workplace policies like crunch time.

    BioWare could have been unionized all along, it wouldn't have changed what sort of games they were working on because most everybody in the studio as well as every single lead came to buy the vision. That their cinematic character driven space/fantasy operas could only be supported by selling 10+ million copíes. Which in turn means they had to 'go mainstream' and 'chase the call of duty audience'. They would say as much when interacting with their fans. And of course they did, it was the prevailing ideology for more than 10 years. Hell, BioWare could have been a co-op. There's no reason they wouldn't co-operatively choose to be fundamentally wrong. Dragon Age: Origins came out in 2009. It was already sold as a 'compromise' between the 'hardcore fan' and the 'normals'. It took 14 years for something like Baldur's Gate 3 to come out and prove the whole project direction of Dragon Age as a series as wrong.

    This feeds back into the popular perception of corporate meddling. People often imagine that the corporate heads at Microsoft or EA are micromanaging studios unto death. That does happen, with highs and downs depending on time and place. However the real danger of corporate meddling doesn't go away even when the publishers take a hands off approach. Far from it. That's when it gets really insidious. The parent company can't help but bleed their own culture into that of their subsidiaries. Something as simple as setting timescales also sets the tone for the entire enterprise. Over the years the prevailing worldview will change all across the spectrum. Even when you are as big as Microsoft and just wants your 'acquisitions' to do their own thing for the Xbox Pass. That's what happened at BioWare. Unions wouldn't have fostered an independent studio culture there and 'pushed back' against EA because EA themselves never had to push themselves in. They didn't have to do anything but be in the same conversations as BioWare employees. The EA producer will learn that maybe you can't push out RPGs yearly like you do with FIFA. The BioWare producer will learn that market appeal is built by chasing industry trends, participating in design arms races with your competitors, and appealing to as many demographics as possible.

    Games development is hard. These projects are massive and complex. They require cooperation and an in-built culture that is attuned to the kinds of projects being developed. Building these teams takes time, and must be done regardless of turn over. Even if a games company isn't too exploitative of their employees, the people involved still have a lot of options for employment. And will seek them over the years. Which is all the more puzzling when studios who are very good at street grafitti decide to change tack and get into wood carvings instead. New employees will show up with spray cans due to the team's fame. Old employees might have tenditinitis that prevents them from using a chisel. And then the whole thing falls into development hell but nobody can really tell why.