Striking Writers May Work on Games

The ongoing Writer's Guild strike may soon impact even the games industry. While most of the copy writers working on games are not a part of the guild, via Eurogamer comes a Variety article about a possible Hollywood writer's migration to other media. "While the WGA has made no secret that it would like to eventually cover vidgame writing, it hasn't pushed the issue yet and is allowing members to work on games during the strike. 'It has been an interesting shift," says one tenpercenter who focuses on vidgames. "The literary agents are now saying, 'Why don't we get our clients over there during the strike?' even though in the past they thought the money wasn't good enough or the work is too demanding.'"

Re:Guilds, Associations, Unions, etc.

[edremy]

Back in the day, before unions, houses were built by the thousands with bricks. Not because they were the best, or the cheapest, but because it was the style. The bricklayers, feeling that they were being grifted, unionized, as was the style of the time. Very quickly the cost of building with bricks became too prohibitive, and the bricklayers mostly lost their jobs. Overall society didn't hurt too much, but it had a large impact on the southern California economy.

Southern California? Having lived there, I can tell you unionization had very little to do with not having brick houses. California doesn't have brick houses because they fall down in earthquakes.

Re:Guilds, Associations, Unions, etc.

[damn_registrars]

and perfectly legal for individuals to fix wages?

Frankly, that statement just doesn't hold water. Neither the individual part, nor the fix wages part have much grounding in reality.

First of all, the union isn't about the individual. Its about the union, hence the name union. The union is concerned with seeing that all of its members get a fair shake. There is no individual action within a union, for better or for worse. The union instead goes by something like the strength in numbers principle, using the collective strength of its members together.

But equally wrong is your statement about fixing wages. The union isn't trying to fix wages - that would be communism. The union is just trying to ensure that the wage floor is adequate for full time work. In the example you were complaining about regarding the teachers union, the union wants to ensure that full time teachers make an adequate salary when they start. They don't restrict the maximum that their members can earn (how would they retain members if they did?) - they just want to ensure that their members all have livable wages.

It is also worth pointing out that countries who are doing better economically than the US (their numbers growing every day) tend to actually have higher rates of union membership than we do. For example, Canadian union membership is around 30% nationally, as opposed to around 12% in the US. But yet their dollar is worth more than ours, and their life expectancy exceeds ours. Oh, and their educational system is often more highly regarded than ours.

So you are free to hate the unions if you wish, but please, check your facts before you blame the world on them.

Re:Is this good or bad?

[jacobw]

The reason I have no sympathy for striking writers (aside from the fact that I don't think BOOK authors have unions and I don't want to hear a bunch of starving artists cry about being starving artists while the rest of us have REAL jobs for a living) is that there are very few writers who deserve to have their jobs. Much less negotiate stronger contracts.

First off, I should say that I'm a WGA member, but I'm not speaking for the WGA. This is all my opinion. That out of the way:

We aren't crying about being starving artists. We're engaged in a business negotiation with our employers. If your boss offers you a contract that you don't like, are you whining when you ask for better terms?

The difference is, writing for film and TV more public than many other jobs. Really dedicated fans will notice who wrote their favorite (or least favorite) episodes or movies, and even less obsessive viewers can tell you which movies or shows they think are well-written and which ones aren't. And when we go on strike, we when we go on strike, it screws up millions of peoples' leisure plans.

So the various public statements by the striking writers--the YouTube videos, the blog posts, etc--aren't meant to say, "Oh, boo hoo hoo! Weep, cruel world, for us poor starving geniuses!" Instead, they're meant to say, "We know our strike is screwing up your viewing, so we think we owe you an explanation of what's going on. If you want to take action to support us [fans4writers.com] that's great, but if not, we hope you'll at least understand why we're doing what we're doing."