“I’ve known people who have been blacklisted or fired, and there’s been so little recourse for people,” says Carolyn Jong, a Montreal-based organizer. For a long time, these stories were only told privately among friends, Jong says. But now that was changing, and the small groups were networking. “We were able to mobilize fairly quickly because we communicate with one another.”“I think the title and language around the meeting seemed particularly like a red flag to me,” explains Emma, an organizer with GWU. “And the fact it was a roundtable, not a panel or lecture. It felt like more of an opportunity where we could arrive and get something out of it.”What was so striking watching it unfold was the international flavor of the conversation. What had been strictly American and Canadian became transatlantic, as members of the Finnish and French games unions offered support, then transpacific as Australian organizers offered aid.“I think things are just at a really bad place right now. There’s a realization that, politically, everything is getting worse,” says Tim Colwill, an Australian trade unionist. “Because of that, we’ve now got real talk of inequality and a need for change, for justice. For video game developers, it’s finally starting to push through.”"There’s a realization that, politically, everything is getting worse.” -Tim Colwill, Trade Unionist
“People talk about unions like they’re impossible, but it’s just not true,." -Liz Ryerson, Game Designer & Critic
There was applause, too. An Australian woman, part of the French game union, was cheered when she called out unpaid internships. The next speaker spoke about the ability of a union to make a difference in the lives of marginalized people of color, LGBTQ, and others.It was there MacLean’s responses took a telling turn.“Wait,” MacLean asked, “How do you see unions helping protect marginalized people?”The question had already been answered prior, when the speaker brought up equal pay, and further answered when they mentioned their grad student union helping trans bathroom rights at their university, but MacLean’s question wasn’t looking for an answer. It was a wedge, designed to create an imaginary rift between the class concerns typically associated with union questions and the cultural questions of identity."If you’re making indie work? You’re not secure. You’re just not. You’re one recession away, right?" -Scott Benson, Night in the Woods
MacLean’s defensive posture amounted to anti-union rhetoric, but worse, it’s rhetoric for a status quo which the IGDA exists only in opposition to. You cannot expect the tension between labor and bosses to be resolved when you skew towards the bosses. When your funding comes from studios, you can’t then advocate for a necessarily adversarial relationship with those same studios. You can’t have executives from Epic, Kongregate, and 38 Studios on the board and get anywhere.A short, but necessary, digression on 38 Studios and Jen MacLean. MacLean was the CEO of that studio, which ended up involved in one of the biggest scandals in video game history when it closed abruptly without paying $75 million in loans to the Rhode Island government. Putting the CEO of a company which so grossly mishandled its finances and the ambitions of its project, flaws in judgment which led to hundreds of layoffs, at the top of the IGDA seems odd only until you realize that the “CEO” in a person’s title means more than the studio name and history which follows it.Ultimately, this is the root of why the roundtable set this off. It came at a time and place ready for the discussion, but sponsored by a creaky organization which just can’t do what’s needed. As one member of the GWU chat room put it, they’re well-meaning people with no imagination stuck in a mindset which says there’s no alternative to what we have.When your funding comes from studios, you can’t then advocate for a necessarily adversarial relationship with those same studios.
“Speaking only for myself, there must be a replacement for the IGDA which is a union,” explains Ryerson. “It has to do what the IGDA claims to do, but actually does it. We’re not in a position to make demands now, but I think we want to push for an organization which does have that power.”On Thursday evening, with criticism coming from multiple outlets, MacLean softened her stance in an interview with ZAM, stating “If you have a studio where, as Steve [Kaplan of the IATSE] mentioned [at the roundtable], the overwhelming majority of employees wants to unionise–and that was the union representative’s clear description of what has to happen [in order] to unionise–if that’s what our members want, that’s what we’ll support.”There’s still a lot of room for skepticism. An awful lot of the ZAM interview still dwells within the IGDA’s established enthusiasm for talking about talking, and the criticism demanded some damage control. What matters is what the IGDA does from here, not what’s said.Regardless, everyone I spoke to was buoyant after the roundtable. Some, like Emma, were charitable toward MacLean. Others less so. But not a one didn’t think there wasn’t more to come, even the more cautious among them.“I’m optimistic,” says Emma. “I’ve done unionizing work in the past, I’ve worked in local politics. I’ve seen a real, tangible change happen for people’s lives, and I feel the same kind of cooperation, spirit, and energy here, the same as elsewhere. It feels sustainable and like something we can grow into something important. Even though we’re so young, and we need to be careful about growing sustainably and anonymity, we’re already talking with SAG, with the Writer’s Guild, with all these organizations. I think that’s a sign that this can be something real, not just at GDC, but something lasting and meaningful for everyone.”"It feels sustainable and like something we can grow into something important." - Emma, GWU Organizer