Workers’ visibility and union organizing in the UK videogames industry

Abstract

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.

Ecogames

“…The independent game development movement in the late 2000s took place in the Global North, building on the appeal by game makers to become visible as authors of their own titles (Ruffino 2021a). Workers' visibility continues to be the crux of some of the major challenges currently faced by union organizing projects in the sector (Ruffino 2021b). Throughout the history of the video game industry, being credited on the final product has often been a determining factor for the careers of designers, artists, programmers, and animators (O'Donnell 2014; Bulut 2020).…”

The Power of the Powerless: Constructions of Self‐Employment in Czechia

“…For example, neoliberal austerity policies and project work have led to the increasing number of precarious employments in civil society organisations (CSOs; Mikołajczak, 2021). As a result, insecurity and precarity-with differences in severity and urgency-are experienced by young workers with low cultural and economic capital (MacDonald & Giazitzoglu, 2019), along with workers with high cultural capital, such as academics (Burlyuk & Rahbari, 2023;Docka-Filipek & Stone, 2021) and the ICT industry and game development sub-sector (Keogh & Abraham, 2022;Ruffino, 2021). Keogh and Abraham (2022) assert that the composition of workers in game development (with one-third self-employed, one-third employed, and one-third working for free) actively reflects their precarious status and self-exploitation.…”

Game worker solidarity

“…In a long-term study, the effects of financialisation on game workers were considered to be a challenge to effective organisation (Legault & Weststar, 2021). Similarly, issues around workers' visibility have been considered in the UK games industry (Ruffino, 2021), as well as how potential strategies for unionisation have had to adapt to this (Ruffino & Woodcock, 2021). This is related to the visibility above and below the line of game production, often with glamour above and precarious conditions below (Bulut, 2015), which challenges how different kinds of workers organise (de Peuter & Young, 2019).…”