I keep seeing this same website posted on Lemmy and it’s always the same thing. A click bait title that makes unnecessary connections between two things attached to an article that just regurgitates basic concepts without adding anything. All the paragraphs are one, maybe two sentences so the whole thing feels like reading a series of tweets instead of an actual article.
Maybe it would bother me less if this was poised less as the opinion of the authors and instead was just objective reporting on SKG. SKG has press materials available for that purpose that The Conversation is choosing not to use. Heck, they could even include some statements from game publishers or government officials. It’s still a good thing that they are spreading awareness of the movement, but I’m really confused as to what kind of person consumes and enjoys this website.
It’s frustrating because I largely agree with their sentiments. I support Stop Killing Games, and I support worker’s rights, but this article is just… Bad. It doesn’t even make a connection between SKG and the working environemt- it just makes a claim that such a connection exists and leaves that claim unsubstantiated. Such a connection DOES exist, these authors just fail to communicate that.
And two hard boiled eggs.
Because why not.
FWIW, the piece here is remarkably light on its headline issue. The most I can see in there is:
Policymakers need to protect both players and the workers creating games. That means, among other things, rethinking release schedules, enforcing rest periods for development teams and holding companies accountable for the well-being of their staff. The overall health of the industry depends on it.
That is almost entirely meaningless. Rest periods for dev teams are already established in legislation, as they are for any other EU worker. It’s called holidays and we got to that way earlier than to live service gaming. There are also maximum caps on overtime in the labor legislation of most EU countries.
This is asking for nothing, as far as I can tell.
I think it should also include a pony and solve the war in Ukraine
Ponies are overrated. A choice of comfort animal is the least they can include
And here we go again, globbing every bleeding heart cause onto something that remotely has traction, only to inevitably smother it and snuff out any momentum the movement has.
Why would you phrase workers rights that way? Its like people have been brainwashed into thinking anything good for everyone, we have to come up with a word for it to make it sound awful…its propaganda 101, and you’ve either bought into it, or youre a bad actor. Either way, fuck off.
He’s right. Movements need to focus on their thing. Workers rights already has a movement and it isn’t specific to game development. The two should both fight for their interests but trying to combine things that have nothing to do with each other just muddies the waters. How do you write a piece of legislation that covers both how video game rights are handled and also mandates worker rights? It doesn’t make sense.
I’m 100% for workers rights, but is stop killing games about workers rights or consumer rights?
If you try and push every issue through every protest/movement you’re watering it down and making it easier and easier for people to dismiss it as unreasonable or unclear.
Terrible title Louis and Miikka… Now, both of you go to your rooms and think about what you did 🤣
If people actually read the article, it’s not calling for workers rights to be included in skg but is saying that the problems that skg is addressing stem from the same industry practices that treat industry workers as disposable. The article is right, companies will happily dispose of both workers and games as soon as it is their financial interest to do so.
Yes, it actually spends the majority of its word count on the Stop Killing Games movement as-is, then notes in a single section at the end that industry practices for developers are also killing games (since developers make the games). Thus if you support Stop Killing Games uppercase because you want the industry to stop killing games lowercase, reforming that part is important too.
I’m sure everyone is for better treatment of developers but in the context of the movement they’re not important. The movement is concerned with preservation not with who will do the preservation. The movement in general has positioned itself to not care how preservation happens as long as it happens. If a game company wants to fire everyone and then hire a completely new team to do the preservation then as far as the movement is concerned as long as games get preserved that’s just fine.
The second point is that the movement has focused primarily on the EU market (because initiatives elsewhere have failed). EU already has pretty good labor laws and most of the things mentioned in the article are already enforced to some extent in the EU. Furthermore most layoffs happen outside the EU so there’s also very little argument to be made that EU should step in on the mistreatment of labor. And if it should why just game developers, why not broaden it to other industries where people also get mistreated?
The inclusion of labor rights is just going to derail what the movement wants to achieve in the EU. Instead of trying to fix the entire world all at once lets start by fixing what is realistic to fix and fix the rest when Americans stop being corporate cucks. After all the vast majority of labor mistreatment happens in the US.
I’m sure everyone is for better treatment of developers but in the context of the movement they’re not important.
I’m not sure I agree with your premise. If developers with good work conditions had their say over whether games were killed or preserved, I think most would choose the latter. The two issues are perhaps not as insular as we wished they were for the sake of a clean and simple “message” for SKG.
And now you’re growing initiative into a full blown socialist movement. You can’t add worker rights into this movement without grossly changing scale of the movement.
The headline is part of the article.
What? This is not what skg is about.
No :)
I agree, that workers’ rights are an important topic, but adding more scope, won’t do either goal any good.
