In the article Gender and
Labor in the Video Game Workplace by Nina B. Huntemann, she states that the
work conditions of game development “challenge assumptions about digital labor
and the ‘cool factor’ of creative production.”
The assumptions that she is referring too are the assumptions that a job
in the creative industries, especially a job in video game development, are
dream jobs, with relaxed dress code, open-space offices, flexible hours, and
good pay, so who wouldn’t want a job like that?
In reality however, a job in creative production, specifically video
game development, is not nearly this glamorous and laid back. In the article, a group of wives whose
husbands are employed by Rockstar, a video game developing company, complain about
the working conditions that their significant others are subject to. The wives complaints include “prolonged
unpaid overtime (referred to in the industry as “crunch time”), declining
morale and depression, physical and emotional suffering, lack of raises or cost
of living increases despite record-breaking game sales, and the toll these
working conditions take on the domestic life of employees, spouses and their
children.” Employees complain of dealing
with inhumane deadlines and working hours, and the employees and their families
are suffering because of it.
Subpar working conditions
affect production in all industries in this Post-Fordist era, and it is
definitely seen in the video game industry.
It’s an old saying that you do your best work when you are happy and
enjoy what you’re doing, and from my previous experiences this saying is definitely
true, so these working conditions are definitely affecting the production of
the games. If the employees designing
and producing the games aren’t happy, then the production and design of
videogames will suffer. As a slight
gamer myself, I have seen a bit of this lately.
Besides the franchise games like Call of Duty, Halo, FIFA, and Madden to
name a few, no games have really been catching my eye like they used to. It seems like the games are not nearly as
creative as they used to be, and I believe this is a direct result of the
unhappy employees in the video game industry.
This phenomenon in the
video game industry as well as other creative industries is an example of the push
towards casual work in today’s ‘symbolic economy’. The employees are seeing more flexibility and
creative control in their workplaces; however this relaxed atmosphere leads to
intense periods of crunch time, which are periods of intense work that can have
workers working up to 20 hours a day, in order to meet deadlines and such. Because of these intense periods of work,
which are getting longer and more frequent, the employees are suffering, and
will continue to suffer unless they organize and fight for better work
conditions.
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