Collective action and representation gap among videogame developers, 2004-14 : summary report

How involved are VGDs in the process of regulating their workplace? We are interested in building a more general framework of the new regulation mode(s) taking place in project-based knowledge organisations typical of the knowledge economy and their forms of contemporary work citizenship. From a labour relations standpoint, as a benchmark for the evolution of the collective regulation of labour, we stress four practical assets of what was called the new industrial citizenship emerging during the 1950-60s: 1) Protection against arbitrary treatment by employers; 2) Protection against economic insecurity and the risks of losing one’s working capacity; 3) Participation in local regulation of labour (negotiation of collective agreements); 4) Broader social participation in State regulation of work (for the labour movement). This allows us to compare three milestones in the young life of this industry. Our aim is twofold: - To first take stock of the evolution in the international industry’s working problems, of satisfaction and dissatisfaction among developers. Many issues about working conditions besmirch the industry’s image. The paramount issue is working time and its compensation; then there are discretionary rules in establishing wage levels, in appointing to projects, in attributing credits, intellectual property and funds for updating knowledge; lack of job security and arbitrary hiring and firing decision processes; and non-disclosure and non-competition agreements that may end up in legal proceedings. - We also wish to document actions taken and not taken in response to challenges in working conditions, be they individual or collective, and also explore positions on representation of interests in this non-unionised industry. What do developers want? By this, we want to shed some light on the representation issue in the international videogame industry, and in the Canadian one in particular, and to relate it to the broader theoretical debate on the representation gap in the labor studies community. We begin by laying out in this document the plain raw results without any theoretical framework. The data used for this report was collected through an industry and university partnership between the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), Western University and TÉLUQ