Game Workers and the Empire: Unionisation in the UK Video Game Industry

Ruffino, Paolo; Woodcock, Jamie

doi:10.1177/1555412020947096

Cited by 26 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…The authors argue that a number of material and cultural conditions might be converging to facilitate the establishment of labor unions, such as the presence of organized leadership and bottom-up initiatives reaching an international audience through social media. These initiatives might catalyze already existing forms of mobilization, ranging from individual acts of resistance to collective actions affecting large companies, which have been emerging in recent history (Weststar & Legault, 2019;Ruffino & Woodcock, 2020).…”

Section: Invisible Barriers: Historical Challenges To Unionization In the Videogame Industrymentioning

confidence: 99%

Workers’ visibility and union organizing in the UK videogames industry

Ruffino

2021

Critical Studies in Media Communication

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The article investigates how the union IWGB Game Workers has been introducing strategies that allow members to be more closely in control of their visibility with bosses and peers. The videogame sector has been traditionally averse to unionization. Its compulsory network sociality, and the belief that game-work should be passion-driven, limit the expression of discontent and proposals for structural change. Drawing on 2 years of participatory observation and interviews with board members, the article looks at how the union has been protecting members' anonymity and helping identify relations of power within the workplace while avoiding exposure. The strategies open new possibilities for workers' organizing and shed light on how labor is understood in a fundamental sector of the creative economy. The article analyzes the implications currently affecting the union organizing project: board members become over-exposed, and internal policies protecting anonymity are challenged by the promotional cultures of social media.

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Section: Invisible Barriers: Historical Challenges To Unionization In the Videogame Industrymentioning

confidence: 99%

Workers’ visibility and union organizing in the UK videogames industry

Ruffino

2021

Critical Studies in Media Communication

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“…Stimulating the conditions for workplace and sectoral dialogue between game workers is vital for the development of worker solidarity and awareness. The use of online communications tools such as Discord by GWU UK has been hugely beneficial for providing a confidential space for game workers to share their experiences with anonymity (Ruffino and Woodcock 2020), an essential protection for workers as they begin the process of organising. Facilitating an online community through communications tools that game workers are familiar with can help foster the dialogue needed to begin this process.…”

Section: Key Recommendationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

What's the Score? Surveying Game Workers in Ireland 2020.

Moody¹,

Kerr²

2021

Preprint

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This report summarises the findings of a survey of workers and working issues in the games sector in Ireland. The survey was designed and administered by Game Workers Unite Ireland in 2019. GWUI is an affiliated branch of the Financial Services Union in Ireland and part of an international organisation with branches in a number of countries. The findings of this survey will inform the GWU charter in Ireland.

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“…When Games of Empire was being written, worker mobilization in the games sector seemed unlikely. Ten years on, as Ruffino and Woodcock (this issue) observe, game labor grievances have unprecedented public profile: sexism, racism, crunch, job insecurity, and studio mismanagement are being pushed into the open by developers—frequently marginalized—who have spoken out, social media campaigns, critical game journalism, and rank-and-file organizing. While not a panacea, unionization, as the Game Workers Unite campaign rightly insists, is an essential strategy to improve the conditions of game labor.…”

Section: Organizing and Organizationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Postscript: Gaming While Empire Burns

Dyer‐Witheford

Peuter

2020

Games and Culture

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Responding to a journal issue revisiting Games of Empire, this article begins by surveying the state of digital play amid a conjuncture of pandemic lockdown, anti-racism protest, and looming recession. We go on to address criticism of our book’s outlook on “games of multitude” in the face of the reactionary side of gaming culture expressed by Gamergate. We next outline elements of a research itinerary, were we to update our book’s project, including climate crisis, platform proliferation, organizing and organizations, and video gaming’s violent intersections. We conclude by reasserting the need to attend to emancipatory currents within—and against—game cultures. While gaming’s complicity in energy overconsumption and cultures of domination raises serious questions about its contribution to any postcapitalist future, the struggles that might bring us to this point will be waged by combatants whose subjectivities have been formed within the digital complexes of which gaming is now an integral part.

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Game Workers and the Empire: Unionisation in the UK Video Game Industry

Cited by 26 publications

References 11 publications

Workers’ visibility and union organizing in the UK videogames industry

Workers’ visibility and union organizing in the UK videogames industry

What's the Score? Surveying Game Workers in Ireland 2020.

Postscript: Gaming While Empire Burns

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