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IRISH GAME WORKERS feel that the government should provide greater investment in the gaming industry, a survey has indicated.
Irish game workers have recently joined the Financial Services Union to lobby for their workers’ rights. This part of the international Game Workers Unite group, which includes artists, designers, testers and production workers.
Issues that game workers are concerned about include low pay, unpaid overtime, and uncertain work.
A survey is currently being carried out among gamers – preliminary results indicate that survey respondents feel low pay is an issue in the sector (64%), and that the government should be lobbied to provide greater investment in the game industry (67%).
“All that game workers want is to work in a sustainable industry where they are not taken advantage of,” game workers representative Ellen Cunningham told TheJournal.ie.
They want to be paid for any work they do for a company past their expected work hours and they want those hours to be capped to avoid mental and physical illness.
“They want increased funding in the sector relative to the funding of flourishing game industries seen in other countries such as England or Canada.”
About the Irish gaming industry
The Irish games industry employs around 2,000 people.
Despite being an emerging industry, the Irish game industry has hit the headlines a few times, including the valuation of Keywords at over €1 billion and LA-based Scopely acquiring Dublin based game development company Digit.
Some of the more popular and anticipated Irish games include the indie hit Guild of Dungeoneering; the popular narrative game Darkside Detective; the upcoming Empire of Sin from Romero Games; and If Found by Dreamfeel.
There are also many notable Irish developers who have emigrated and found success in other countries such as Brendan Greene (designer of Player Unknown’s Battleground), or Terry Cavanagh (developer of indie hits VVVVVV and Super Hexagon).
Ellen Cunningham, the Game Workers Unite Ireland coordinator says that there are a number of workplace issues that gaming workers experience.
She says that some of the most reported issues include:
Cunningham says: “The game industry sits at an intersection between tech and art and almost all of the workers I have talked to are incredibly passionate about their work.”
They feel prepared to sacrifice in order to do what they love and this has lead them to be taken advantage of and has resulted in, what is slowly being revealed to be, an unsustainable industry to work in.
State investment
So why should the State invest in the gaming industry?
“This could be used as an argument to withdraw all state investment from all cultural industries indefinitely,” Cunningham replies.
“The Irish State has a lot to gain and very little to lose in increasing funding in cultural industries, particularity games which is estimated by experts to be work at around €177 billion globally.”
I think it’s about time that Ireland raise its ambitions and assist its highly qualified Irish trained game workers, large and small Irish based companies and foreign game companies wishing to build new offices and hire in Ireland to acquire some of that global value and create a flourishing and sustainable industry.
The survey has been shared by members with their colleagues, and list their roles within the sector, as well as their employer, while remaining confidential and anonymous.
On 16 November, Game Workers Unite Ireland members officially launched the branch.
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I had an underpaid job. I left and got a job that paid more. It was a lot quicker than industrial action.
@John Horan: I have friends who’ve changed jobs three or four times thinking that the next one will magically be better. Industrial action is the long term solution.
@John Horan: hardly helpful when you’ve built a career that you like in a specific industry.
@John Horan: would you make the same comment if this article was referring to nursing? I think not but you got a few likes so that’s the main thing.
@Ro-your-nan: surely you’re not comparing the importance of the gaming industry to nursing?? #facepalm
@Liz Greehy: he surely isn’t from what I can see
@Stephanie Fitzgerald: sorry I didn’t realise that the businesses were run solely for the benefit of the employees
@SC: in the long term industrial action reduces the efficiency of the company so less profits. That really helps the ability of the employers to pay a good salary
@John Horan: underpaying your staff and running them into the ground doesn’t benefit anybody in the long run. They’re not asking for much – pay that allows them some quality of life and a reasonable limit on overtime work to prevent burnout. This is an industry with lots of potential to contribute to and diversify the economy a bit. It deserves some investment and fairness.
@B Collins: even to the point where the company is no longer viable?
@John Horan: even to the point, no staff no company
@John Horan: Plenty of soft jobs for the likes of you with your Blueshirt connections. Outside the privileged bubble it’s a different world.
@John Horan: Industrial action is required because of how developers are treated across the board by the industry. Must have been very nice for you to be able to move jobs within your field, clearly its that simple for everyone!
Throughout my teenage years I dreamt to work in game development. When I picked my degree I decided to go into software engineering. But by the time it came to career I understood the better software jobs were not in game development.
If you look at it from the perspective of the company, they make massive investments into the development of a game they dont know would sell enough to cover the costs. Its extremely risky. So the industry is rife with keeping costs low and axing staff when a game doesn’t perform well in the market. It’s near impossible to be exactly sure how much your game would earn for the company, even if you somehow new it was a damn good game a bigger developer could come out with something similar and take away your share of the market with better advertisement.
Personally I wouldn’t recommend taxes being invested in this industry.
@Colm A. Corcoran: This is true of every creative industry, there is always a risk when making an entertainment product that it will be unsuccessful. However the film, theater and music industries receive lots of public funding to mitigate these risks because of their cultural value as well as the variety of jobs they provide to musicians, writers, costume designers, set designers, camera operators etc… Games offer the same cultural value and provide jobs in software, art, music, animation, writing and design. They also offer the potential for significant commerical success.
@Colm A. Corcoran: and, especially for a newer company, a commercially successful game doesn’t mean finances are good.
The first Witcher game was CD projekt reds first game. They literally learned to make videos games as they made it. It was a massive hit. Yet.. the second d game almost didn’t happen, because they came really close to being bankrupt despite the success of the first game. Really shows just how fragile the industry is, in many ways.
@Ciarán: I’d argue it’s a little more extreme with game development. People spend more time and money enjoying a game compared to say a movie, play or painting, so competing games would have less consumers that buy both compared to competing movies, plays or paintings.
They will be comparing themselves to doctors and nurses etc next. People think that they have an entitlement to great pay. But people don’t. Leave and find a better paying job. These companies can only pay low wages if they have a glut of people looking for the roles.
@john s: I get your point John, but I would look at the bigger picture. The games development industry earns more revenue than the film & music industry combined. Ireland is trying to position itself as a tech hub. Therefore we should be looking to be a key player in this industry. A foreward looking government would have a plan for this. Not involved in this industry at all, & no idea what is best way to way to make us gaming hub. But looking after workers to a basic level where they get payed for most of the hours they work doesn’t seem outrageous.
@Writeon: Very common in salaried positions to work way more than 40 hours per week.
@D’oh: also not uncommon for that to balance out with some time in lieu or financial compensation in the form of performance bonus.
@john s: nobody but clearly if transactional costs aren’t been met well then they will be disengaged nothing to do with who has better career
I want to be paid the same as a top surgeon, it’s not fair that I’m not, I want a forever home in D4 and a new BMW X5 in the drive!!!
@D’oh: yeah. Stupid employees. Settle for what you got. How dare you try improve your lot in life!
@D’oh: me too except for D4. No amount of money could make me live there
@Kian David Griffin: Sometimes people need to make wise career choices to be financially rewarded. If they are creating games for the love of creating games then that’s their choice.
@D’oh: Plenty of higher paying coding/IT careers out there.
@D’oh: ridiculing something nobody ever said isn’t a very clever way to argue
@D’oh: the low paid people in games aren’t the programmers (though pay is lower than equivalent roles in non games tech). It’s typically QA, artists, animators and musicians who get shafted
@Ciarán: Low skilled jobs pay less than high skilled jobs????
@SC: I never said it was.
@D’oh: where do you work, Mr perfect?
@Brianto: Dublin.
All the snooty comments here..if any of ye with yer smart comments looked up the way gaming is going, it’s going to take the majority shares in sports soon then ye would have a different outlook at it..gaming events selling out massive arenas over and over again..look up esports.. Says it all really.
@Craig Clancy: great then the pay will go up as the demand goes up
That’s what happens when your on the game
@Joe Mc: Ha ha, i was wondering if a “game worker” was a new euphemism for a somewhat older profession myself.
@Morning Gus:
Unlikely that the average gamer would have interest in services of the older profession!
Let’s stop using the phase “the state should invest”. What people really mean when they say this is – I want to compel other citizens by force of law to give THEIR hard earned money to MY special interest area because I THINK its important.
No! our hard earned money should be used on getting the basic things that impact us all right – healthcare, education, infrastructure and care for people who can’t care for themselves (as opposed to those who just aren’t bothered to) If people value “culture” then individuals can support it voluntarily based on what they can afford. If “gaming” is like to result in ROI, then savvy individuals will voluntarily invest in it.
Most of the skills involved in games development are highly transferable to other, much better paid sectors of software development. It’s unfortunately an industry that capitalises on being a “dream job” for so many through terrible pay, inhumane crunch conditions near a project deadline and very little job security.
It has such a high worker turnover for that reason with few lasting more than 5 years but I don’t see it changing with so many software graduates dreaming of a career in gaming. Regulating for better conditions won’t work either and would just see studios move abroad, it’s an industry wide problem globally.
If businesses had their way, they’d pay their employees with “more experience” and low pay for these college-educated positions.
I hear the toilet makers are not happy with pay as well.all out lads.
@Seriously stunned: games development may sound like a bunch of millenials trying to find a way to not do any real work, but it actually involves many years of dedication and hard work just to break into the market; learning and training with a ton of different technologies and obtaining Computer Science degrees or even Masters … and these are TOUGH…a lot of discrete maths and programing languages to say the least. Not for the faint brained. Think engineering on steroids. Actually, CS has some of the highest drop-out rate of any discipline because its so hard. So yeah, same as toilet makers…
@RobPup: Very true, but as has been pointed out to me, these guys are paid well, it’s the low skilled people, like the testers and quality control who, just like in other industries, don’t get huge salaries. They just get what the market is willing to pay.
@RobPup: nice dig but us millenials majority study and work hard m
@jnulty17@gmail.com: But can ye construct coherent sentences?
Move to a career in software development all the c and c++ experience among other languages would have them a shoe in for a better job and a bigger salary if gaming dreams don’t always come through to so if your not happy move industry get a better paying job and be happy. I would rather be happy with my job and pay than be happy just for the sector I work in
Surely these issues are cover in normal employment law. They are concerned about ‘low pay’- there’s laws around min wage, overtime-again there are rules, if your not getting paid politely say you have other plans, uncertain working hours – get a contract!! Its the industry your in… work in a different industry if your not happy with the money. You don’t have an automatic right to get a well paid job that’s ur hobby…
Shadt industry exploting young workers. The Dept of Labour should investigate this industry and their compliance with the WTD.
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