Welcome, Happy Monday, and Happy Labor Day, everyone, and come on in for the Weekly Video Games Thread!
Today is an important day here in America, as we’re supposed to take this day to consider the ongoing labor movement (and for the Canadians here, who celebrate theirs on the same day, a specific Happy Labour Day to you as well!). And “ongoing” is perhaps the operative word, as the struggle of workers is one that continues to this day. Those of us who play games, who write about games, and who care about the gaming world know this all too well. Widespread workplace abuse. Toxic management. Coerced overtime and unhealthy working hours. Gigantic acquisitions that end with hundreds of layoffs. Confused and unhealthy direction that wastes workers’ time. Economic models that discourage sustainable development for developers and players. Impossible, pie in the sky expectations that crush the workers who had no say in their implementation. Our industry is a nightmare of workplace cruelties, and one of the important tropes of modern gaming culture is realizing how extensive and ever-present that is.
The fight over the rights and dignity of labor is one of the most important, and longstanding, aspects of the modern world. And the video game industry is one of its newest and arguably most important fronts. It is part of both the tech and entertainment industries, it is one of the largest fields of revenue on the planet, and the high profile nature of its products, series, and companies makes stories of good and bad all the more memorable. In addition, we’re now seeing the rapid shoring up of collective labor through the development of game industry workers’ unions across not just the US but over the world. This field is one of deep inequity and of potential for something better. I’ll be enjoying my Monday off, but I’m going to try to think a bit of the labor that went into this medium I love so much, and I encourage you to do the same.
I… don’t actually have a prompt here. If you’d just like to talk about what you played this weekend, that’s more than enough. That’s what I’ll be putting in here. If you have stories about labor in the games industry, that’s also good. Hell, if you know a game that discusses this stuff well in its own story, that’s an option, as are ideas for mechanics to explore these themes within gameplay. Be as heady as you’d like, or not, but if you’ve got thoughts on any of this and stuff well beyond what I’d put down I’d love to hear them all.