undefined | Better HN

0 pointsForHackernews7y ago0 comments

Why not? The US film industry is mostly unionized, and there's tons of people who love movies, too.

0 comments

8 comments · 1 top-level

diminoten7y ago· 7 in thread

The supply of jobs is much lower in the games industry relative to the demand.

robocat7y ago

And there are way more actors than acting jobs.

Yet they have the SAG-AFTRA union which had a strike to force better working conditions from games companies.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016–17_video_game_voice_act...

diminoten7y ago

There are "way more" actors in the sense that there are many people who want to act for a living, but the analogy doesn't hold from an education and experience married to that desire standpoint.

Further acting is older than gaming, and those unions were given space to form during a period of time that was very different from today.

3 more replies

egypturnash7y ago

There's a lot more kids who grow up wanting to be animators than there are animation jobs, and yet they have a successful union.

diminoten7y ago

"A lot" is not nearly as many as there are competent programmers who want to break into the games industry.

The concept is similar, the volume of people is vastly different, however.

usefulcat7y ago

Don't know why you're downvoted; that is exactly right.

There's nothing particularly unusual about game dev jobs or companies compared to other areas of tech (especially including startups); it's just that there are a lot of people who want to work on games. It's been that way for at least a couple of decades now.

diminoten7y ago

I think people assume I'm anti-developer or anti-union, but I was just trying to remind people stuff they seem to be discounting (but already know -- nothing I said was innovative at all). It really isn't that complicated, I don't believe. :/

andrewflnr7y ago

I suspect not. My family hosted a couple aspiring actors in LA as boarders. They left because they couldn't get enough work. There's a lot of people out there trying to break in to Hollywood.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse