Ask Me Anything: Unionizing the Games Industry Q&A with Kevin Agwaze

[Music] so uh we'd like to welcome our speaker today uh kevin aguaza he's a game play programmer at studio gobo out of brighton uk working on an unannounced aaa game a treasurer at game workers unite uk in chat you can ask kevin about the state of unionization in the global games industry how unions may affect the game industry things like that so we're going to try to steer clear out of away from topics that involve very specific you know country based labor laws so if you could uh just keep that in mind uh so if kevin if you're ready uh yeah i take the first question all right the first one comes from grant chen who says i'm okay with my working

conditions but i'm worried about the industry as a whole should i be trying to push for unions at my current job or should i try to help others unionize what actions should i take great questions right um so i think it's very very good that you want to like help magnets to a better place um and i think like in your situation the first thing you might do is to just go to your work colleagues and you know speak to them and ask them how do you feel about the job where the problems are how things are going and just try to get a and get a an oversight an overview of like what the problems and and like um positive things are that your colleagues have to say about your work and sort of get an overview about are there particular groups of people that have particular issues you know uh certain minorities or women or other or a particular department like maybe you know the team lead of the programmers is a very different management style

let's say that maybe the the game design and stuff trying to figure out in your own company speaking just to your colleagues sort of casually you know how they feel about work what are the issues and what might they be able to do about it as somebody in the past try to like improve something or go to hr or start a like maybe a a group for women or something like that it's something that happened in the past how did it go why did it fail whether it succeed and sort of try to work out how your workplace is structured and where the issues and how trying to figure out how you can improve it with your colleagues and then that's of the very very first step of organizing um at some point you might decide hey i need help with like legal advice on manpower or you know capacities so you might get in contact with union or set to journey with your colleagues and then at union will help you do that what i just described more effectively and more streamlined

great uh we have another question from kabir seth uh how do you feel about game developers not being given overtime paid due to them being exempt from flsa would the union try to make changes to this law i i'm excited in the specific little bit um but it's fine but like in general and so that uh most of the time when it's just unpaid i think it was like three quarters out of at in 2017 in the survey but it might be slightly off the end also depends that can't be a local labor laws right some countries over time is mandatory in some conditions not but one situation we run into particularly in the uk is that we have um workers that are wrongly classified for example as um zero contractors or just contractors uh when we they should be classified as employees and get the full benefits one

of the things you went into is situations where you might fight to get you reclassified from being you know an outside contractor with no overtime pay into being a full employee with maybe statuary overtime pay this one avenue you might get a go about doing that um all this other other things that might be happening especially with like huge um long periods of overtime you can run into in uk for example into super hard labor violations on break time and rest periods like for example in a 14-day time span you need to have at least one entire day we're not working at all if you come in your office for six sorry for seven days straight monday to sunday then you do the same day the next week it's a hard hard break time validation in the uk and you know there are legal avenues so we usually don't start with like the full loss of legal avenue you know we try to talk to other people the

company that said and it's very figured out how other people working overtime is that i'm paid how much do you work do some people get paid and people not um do some people get paid more over time than others with an interesting case where a language translation sort of nordic nor not european languages were paid at a higher rate than south european languages which the a case in the past but that was the basis for like a discriminatory uh suit based on sort of discrimination towards more uh believe in sovereign languages being paid differently in in like um rates um but sort of the puzzle would be trying to figure out trying to get an overview of what's happening in the tech company you've got silver tempeh um then approach management just informally probably you might do that then the union approaching addrent informally and say okay this is the state and we might we think there might be uh a case for a lawsuit or another avenue what happened there

has been a clear relation past and here's what we will do if you don't fix it then you know we slightly escalate bit by bit into maybe doing a full-blown lawsuit or something else maybe you know sometimes even bosses don't really know labor law all that well especially in big international companies so sometimes they're like oh i didn't know that you couldn't do that so you just need to sort of focus and say hey what you're doing here is really not okay and then you're like oh sometimes it does happen bosses don't know everything let's uh keep that in mind uh olivia schwerz asks uh any best practices for someone new to the industry who has concerns about reported working conditions i mean um i think if like so before your first job you're looking for a first job and you don't have like many industry contacts it's hard to like get

get access to the zuma mill right where people are just sort of casually at conferences that you know incredible times don't really exist in the same way uh or local meetups they just you know talk about their workplace and usually i'd say that um if finish it in a job or a location you know go there go to like local events go to conferences try to speak to people figure out what they think about their employer and usually after like a beer too they will tell you a lot probably what in the should um it's a little bit harder to do you know it's corona people don't usually just gather in large messes anymore um so you can and it just happened to me um you know someone just hit me up on linkedin and i was like hey can i ask you a couple of questions about your company do you like it then i was like sure i have that person out you can try to identify people that work there try to speak to them see what they think if you're already working there you know it's a larger company

as i said this might be entirely possible that certain apartments or locations or buildings or other sort of splits are have very different conditions and issues and other ones so it's always good to you know speak to your colleagues especially more diverse ones you know if you're a man who just speaks to some women if you're a white person try to speak some people of color and see what they experience it's like the company to get a better overview parts of the entire company culture great uh great question so far uh keep them coming i'll try to get them all in here uh this one's from becky grady uh there are so many different roles in the games industry developers designers project managers community etc who have very different needs and challenges our current initiatives looking to unionize games industry workers as a whole or focusing focusing on one area such you know specifically one discipline um and how will that choice affect the contracts expectations

timelines etc sure um i think the situation at least was that the the sort of small bits of the games in this international unit have been unionized for a longer time usually very specific roles that are sort of coming from other industries like um after before the emergency sector becomes psychological in the us they had their first interactive media agreement right they didn't even use the term video games back then in 1993 sort of laying out the conditions for voice actors to work in interactive media slash the games industry and that's nearly 30 years ago oh my god wow it's nearly 30 years ago but it's a long time ago and you know you have voice actors motion capture artists sometimes writers um or other like more specific um you know people that have specific skills that are applicable to modern games industry

literally oftentimes come from outside with existing union experience membership into the games industry and i think that has worked to some to to a certain agree for you know if you happen to have that very specific skill set um but the plan or what you see the new unions coming up um gangster uk in the uk um supported wgb uh coming tonight ireland in ireland as part of the french sources union games workers finland is part of a finnish term that i forgot and as well as the union sdj back which popped up recently in france they all aim to unionize the entire industry across disciplines well to a certain degree we had discussions about like what about people in esports professional sports players uh game journalists uh contractors people working in finance people working

people working in the cafeteria of your building you know helping to make environment conductive to making good games and where do we sort of draw the line and at least in uk we said okay everybody who works at a company that makes games or a department that makes them so directly they can join the union um so they could be a writer an artist a programmer like i am or whatever and the idea being that um first of their strength and solidarity the more people across the company other more employees of course company like trying to achieve something easy it gets right this power is strength from in in being part of a large group um but also uh there are some you know this concerns about like people different disciplines can have very very different experiences and external

contractor working qa for a company at maybe slightly above minimum wage hopefully it's a very different experience to very highly paid programmer but if they are part of the same union and they're pulling or pushing in the same direction and they can lift each other up right then it's very important to us that especially the worlds that have you know are traditionally a little bit more pushed aside uh um i being empowered by the people who traditionally have a little bit more power and like um bargaining room uh with the company so that's why we that's why i think recent initiatives all are starting out trying to go for as wide um of a group of people working games as possible to get as much um power uh to negotiate and to not leave anyone behind that has already traditionally been left behind

excellent uh next one comes from joanna thomas who asks will unions help the issues uh concerning lack of diversity in the games industry including like harassment issues and hiring diversity issues right that's a good question and i don't think it's a set answer but i think they can if they set out to do it right um you know they have news in the past if you look at let's say early 1900's in 1900s you know union where unions were maybe perpetuating white supremacy and didn't allow any black people to join while still getting benefits for the right union members um so there can definitely be a tool that sort of circles in a a privileged group to give them more benefits while leaving other people out but if you if you try to avoid

the push for structure for for union that actually plans to do and increase diversity and stuff there's lots of things you can do i'm looking for example at and i love the organization that has been happening in games writing uh like vice or other places in the u.s where in a bargaining contract it was very hard to get the company to spend on one university or have better reporting processes for sexual harassment or i think singapore's advice media but they especially push to give trans employees a better healthcare because they usually have higher medical needs than non-trans employees and if you if it's a goal that you set that's a priority for for the union as a whole then i think it can be a very strong tool to achieve that but they don't necessarily have to be there are bad examples a police union will will not

probably make the u.s police much more diverse and friendly but it still like gives this particular group of police officers a lot of power that maybe they shouldn't have but it's a different discussion but i think yeah unions are tool to achieve something and what you achieve with them really depends on how the units made up and who's in it and who's not great uh moving on next one getting some up votes uh one from andrew ross who asks what can press and players do to help workers unionize all right that's interesting so i think in recent years um since maybe 2017 we really started going and solved the international game as far as reporting on labor conditions you know it works there or white games or other places and i think it's very good and supporting people know that but to some degree lots of people in the games industry

do already know that uh so it's really so that really helps like bring these issues to to the players with people who play games um to be more informed now i don't think that will sort of result necessarily in like boycotts anything like that i don't think boycotts based on labor conditions are a viable strategy in this industry but it helps raise awareness and particularly in this age of brands and branding nobody wants to be so associated with a bad brand so they can help that awareness can i push companies to do better to to preserve this sort of brand image um well translated into brand image goes directly to profit margin to sound review right so that that is good um but it's also i i i i personally feel the idea that you just keep reporting month a month on this company as bad conditioner this company bad conditions then people

sort of just accept that as the baseline and this should be expected like when you get to the point people aren't surprised anymore that they are bad condition they just sort of accepted them because that's the only thing they hear about that might lead to sort of people getting numb to the problems which that's why i think it's important to also not only sort of focus on the problems but set a focus on the people who are trying to solve them i i very much enjoyed the reporting on the riot games walkout um and the whole sort of movement and happening around that and you can compare that one to one two i think five years earlier 2015 when it was a walkout at crytek because crytek i think in england did not pay wages for a bit people just didn't show up to work they walked out of crytek because they weren't getting paid to work and it was supporting sort of on that but if you compare death reporting to

reporting with walker.white games it's night and day on focus on the people doing the actual organizing on the ground you might hear that in the background something is going on here um by just setting a focus on the people affected and the people trying to help themselves but then just the issue is sort of well there is an issue that exists end of article yeah great uh how about this one is interesting it's from gabe uh poffker uh what role can worker-owned cooperative studios play in supporting unions and unionization do you have any thoughts on that kevin yeah i mean i think work on cooperatives uh these are my opinions of the for at least you know small-sized companies of the ideal form um uh but i also don't think that right in the next decade or two

everybody's going to switch to being a worker on cooperative i don't see the worker and yay coming without a grander sort of cultural or labor revolution driving them towards that so i think that's if you're starting out trying to form a new company that it might be a very viable model you want to look at to a uh have a fairer company structure but also be a more attractive company structure because getting direct part ownership of a company partnership of the profit that makes people more invested and if people are more invested i think they will do better it will do better work um so but also um you know if you are in a very big company of an international company or a company that's just too unwieldy to have everyone be a part owner then i think it's where union would slot in with a collective buying agreement right where the wider employees the white employership is part

of the union that sets out our negotiated buying agreement with the company that sets out working conditions reimbursements bonus pay and kind of stuff for everybody working the company so and sort of you know applies for everybody but slightly depending on which country and but qualifying agreements can just apply to everybody working at a location um and even new people joining and that kind of stuff i remember talking once to and the owner of a small indie company said like are you talking about like yeah what happens if your product your small product just blows up and becomes hyper successful uh how much of a small company is just you know based on gentleman's agreements and sort of vague understandings that things should be fine but you know you saw a million dollars at any group of people and you know these sort of gentlemen

nice nice social rules and regulations start breaking down so um so i said to him that maybe he wants to just there might be benefit in having a union for collective fighting agreement because hey now the union can worry about making sure people are happy and he doesn't have to worry as much about making sure people are happy and figuring out what their issues are the union will do that for for him and negotiate with him to make sure people get what they want um but also if the buying agreement contains words about hey profit shares or things like that that the people that employees discuss themselves and worked out and bargained for that sort of means that employers will have a will feel like that is sort of fair and the feeling of fairness that you have if you're if you're part of a work on cooperative cooperative cancer of replicated by adding these sorts of things into a cognifying agreement with the company as a whole

great tobias eisner asks as the industry is quite global and unions usually are bound to national laws how could this problem be addressed for our industry uh creating one international standard and avoiding the fragmentation as it is common in other industries so how can this be more of an international uh movement and not be fragmented so i go point there are some few unions that try to operate entirely globally uh international microsoft world ww it's one that tries to do that by now i as a person said in specific countries you've got specific levels you need to incorporate in specific things probably membership and probably membership currency are split so uh it's not really like one entirely global organization but they try as much as they can to push towards that uh which thinks an interesting idea but

um um i already spoke a lot about like oh we think about unions often as if by the industry is global and we think of unions often as also global or maybe national it's entirely possible every union for a company of 20 people in the uk union is just for that one company and worries about that one company um like lots of unions know string up uh back in the day where like particular companies or you know miners in one mine had issues so they're unionized to make the issues at that mine be better and i think on that level you maybe don't need to worry about international you can just worry about your own particular issues at the workplace but of course in this globalized economy there's the sweat of outsourcing or um um you know if you're or the car or if you're part of a big internship company then they might

decide to shut that location down and outsource to somewhere else is a sweat um that a lot of people have sort of if you oh if you push too far if you don't want too much you may just make the whole thing go away which you say well nobody like opens up a studio in office building in san francisco and hires highly paid engineers to then immediately sort of hosting away once they start demanding a little bit more maybe start demanding a little bit more for the people who aren't as highly paid as they are um but i've been going around europe a bit in the recent couple of years being two unions in sweden and denmark france finland and then i remember i was talking to a member of union which left the biggest swedish union as a whole and sweden being a very unionist country in general big union membership

you know telling me that they have enough like money in their war chest so that every single member of the union could go on strike for multiple years and not get paid anything they have that watches that allows them to have a lot of bargaining power because they can literally strike for forever essentially um versus we as a very new union we do not have a watch as that big where you can pay everybody's salaries in full for years but um again sort of going slightly back to the riot games vodka you know did see the solidarity of people um working at other locations and i think in dublin in ireland there was also a walkout by people over there on solidarity and i think in this more globally connected world it's much easier for struggles in one region but one arm of the company to reach people working at other in other

regions or other parts of a company and to have solidarity action across the globe um it's much easier than it was you know before the digital age so i think it's definitely the possibilities to coordinate and cooperate across borders um and again just as we said okay we want to get as much different people inside of the union so the more privileged people can help the less privileged people whatever that particular privilege may be same is true for cross-borders if multiple unions across borders of a company cooperate then if the highly paid engineers in san francisco can stand in solidarity with the maybe definitely notice highly paid qa testers in india that very much can help with bargaining power and improving the situation great all right we have about two minutes left to try to get two more in uh there's one from just came in from ryan lippert um what if anything could i do between

now um and when this person graduates uh law school shortly what can they do between now and then to get some relevant experience in this area and are there any specific reading recommendations this person's interested in getting getting into this subject reading recommendations uh and law school uh i just assumed from the term law school that it's about the u.s uh in which case the what you should do as a lawyer in the u.s sort of outside of my my knowledge but when it comes to sort of general reading recommendations uh i know you can show a book in camera uh secret i think it's a successful organizer by labor notes um this book that sort of lays out okay how do i approach how they approach organizing my workplace sort of start to finish

what are things look out for what uh you know things that organizers have learned over the decades of organizing um and uh this book as well as like other books by labor notes um other good resources about organizing when it comes to legal resources well i guess become familiar with the national labour relationship act as i said in the beginning that's sort of outside of my realm of knowledge i think that's probably all they need they want a little uh research and then we'll we'll go over where you can find uh kevin um and uh his organization online let's try to get this one in uh gabriel uh uh miko sorry pronunciation i don't have the temperament to organize or lead a union however i would like to join one am i doomed to a unionless country if most everyone is like me uh what can i do to still contribute unions make it a quick one

i would say there's no country that is entirely unionist if you want to join the union there's only one in your country that would accept you and i could maybe help you get started on doing more but you know in general it is a union you can join you know money does definitely help people to do stuff uh i know that very much as a treasurer having money allows you know allows us to take on pro bono cases i work with lawyers and do all kinds of stuff so just you know joining union and paying the membership fees will definitely help them um if everybody thinks like that um but i think that's something that's definitely changing across uh the industry more and more people are firstly becoming aware of immunization and be becoming positive juniorization and i think as the decade will go on um you will see a huge shift in public emptiness opinion about unionization all right great kevin thank you so much for joining us uh it's been really insightful uh like

for me as well thank you to everyone who showed up and asked these great questions if people want to contact you or gw uk for more info uh what's the best way to do it kevin uh again i think the gc description has a twitter handle yeah yeah check out the uh description down there yeah so my like sort of speaker by my twitter handle or uh um you know just googling my name discover unique name apparently so you probably find me um when it comes to to like connecting us uh i used to again say we've got local meetings over the country come to one but not during corona so now go to our website and you can contact us there or you know hit up the gangster uk twitter uh yeah no any way you want yeah all right great seo uh so uh thanks again and uh

i'll see you all around thanks bye