I remember watching the G4 television network quite often in my youth. As a young gamer, I was exposed to countless commercials and advertisements present in a variety of gaming media, all of which were promoting online programs and colleges where you could basically become a professional gamer in a few short years—something that at the time seemed something of a fantasy job. As I got older, I stopped gaming, and G4 eventually went to the wayside; but I was quite surprised to recall these ads from the past while reading the article “You Can Sleep Here All Night.
Its assessment of the gaming industry suggests that the endemic labor practices, and the precariousity as a result, seem to be a direct consequence of these commercials I watched in my youth, as well as a toxic work environment surrounding its most underappreciated employees —the entry level QA. Perhaps one of the main reasons that employees in the gaming industry suffer so much is the fact that gaming is almost an afterthought in the tech industry, and when it is, it’s grouped along with industries that garner loads more attention.
When people think about jobs at tech companies; some picture the job of a lifetime, working your own hours, telecommuting, and sitting on a beanbag instead of a desk chair. Employers like Apple, Google, Facebook, and even smaller companies offer interesting benefits; but while this might be true for some positions within the tech world, it can’t always be taken as the reality of most entry level tech jobs. Many of these positions require long hours and high commitment for little pay, and little (but some) hope of advancement.
A large number of people gunning for a job in the gaming industry are chasing their dreams, which can lead to some studios taking advantage of plentiful, cheap, and dedicated employees who can in turn, be hired, abused, and laid off at will. Many incoming employees start their gaming careers as a QA, testing and recording errors present in a prerelease of an upcoming game. While the task involves playing video games for a living, it more than likely isn’t the most stable, or fulfilling job.
Entry level QAs still put up with these menial tasks and poor job experience because in their minds, if they work hard enough and stick around, they might be offered a permanent position or the chance to move into management positions in the QA department. As well as getting little hope for promotion to a full time dev position, the article states that oftentimes these QA are even completely cut off from the full time “real” developers, even treated as second-class-citizens and unimportant throughout the building.
QAs are practically part time servants in some studios, even relied on for menial tasks like taking out garbage when a “real developer” doesn’t feel like it. With many of these new employees chasing after their dream careers, the most dedicated people are especially prone to putting up with this poor treatment and substandard working hours it includes, before eventually burning themselves out.
To make this trend even worse, the perpetual deskilling of the entry level workforce has further stifled new hires’ chances for industry experience and promotion; and while these entry level jobs are plentiful, this only means that the employees in these positions are easily replaced. Why work for a game studio if you’re stuck in a cubicle for ten hours a day, and six days a week, treated like garbage by management and the “more respected” departments; and especially for gamers, with no time to enjoy gaming as the hobby they once loved?
Not only are these entry level jobs generally poor and grueling, but they don’t seem to last very long either. Many studios employ a variety of positions, including the QA testers, as temps who are cut loose at the end of a project en masse. While temps may get loads of work during a product’s development (oftentimes 60+ hours a week), work can be sporadic and uncertain during downtimes. This trend means that many of these people seeking advancement in the industry, often end up getting nowhere in particular-wasting away at studio after studio until they give up and find another career outside of the industry.
Studios don’t mind this glaring ethics problem either, because for them, hiring fresh inexperienced temps means cheaper and more exploitable labor, and in-turn lower production costs. With sales of console games staggering by the day, this cheapening, deskilling, and exploitation of plentiful essential labor means that studios cans still increase their profit and reduce their costs despite this downturn. To make matters worse for the entry level employee, the gaming industry is completely lacking in the union department.
The International Game Developers Association is the closest thing to a union employees have, and even then, many of those within IGDA are guilty of exploiting labor. The article mentions a man named Mike Capps (then CEO of Epic Games) as stating that Epic wouldn’t hire anyone who wasn’t willing to work over 60 hours a week as a matter of principle. Although the words are uncertain, he even went so far as to say that “it was patently absurd that anyone getting into the industry shouldn’t expect the same”.
Expecting temp workers, who are treated like garbage, to dedicate 60+ hours a week for a slim shot at a dream job is ridiculous, especially coming from a member of an organization meant to advocate for employees of the industry. Furthermore, to justify this exploitation as “a worker’s passion” is ingenuine and ignores the glaring mistreatment of them across the board. If the QAs of the gaming industry had a video game about themselves, maybe it would reflect some of the inconvenient truths of their chosen career path?
Precariousity is an impossibly difficult, yet seemingly simple, platformer with no clear goal in sight; players of this game must complete basic and unrewarding tasks multiple times in a row, grinding for meager cash, rewards, and only a dream that they might just make it to the next level. Just to learn this game, one is required to attend classes and pay large amounts of money for the privilege of playing in the first place, with no guarantee that they will even get a shot once all their training is finished.
One would also need to commit at least 60 hours a week MINIMUM, or else they would instantly lose the whole game and have to start fresh on the first level. In the event that this happens, all of the progress, as well as the game itself, are transferred over to a brand new player without any kind of compensation. Just to keep you coming back for more, the game’s publisher even sends you a notice after the “game over” screen saying that they might let you play again, and to keep an eye out for more opportunities in the future.
For those that have already lost the game, a television series could possibly be adapted from it. This series would follow a group of hardcore gamers who decide to turn their love for games into a job. After spending thousands on for-profit degree programs, they struggle to balance their home lives and hobbies along with their new entry level positions; and eventually start to lose their minds in the process.
The broken games they play day in and day out begin to invade their minds as the pressure grows, and life itself seems to be travelling nowhere fast in this career path. Periodically throughout the series, one of the cast will give up and find a job at a more fulfilling, albeit non-gaming career, and they will be immediately replaced with a fresh member. Fresh from school, these new cast members will all have one thing in common: they are eager to be exploited for a shot at “the dream,” something that never truly happens to any of the character throughout its run.