14.3: Precariousness as a Function of Policy and Industry Cultures
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- John Banks & Stuart Cunningham
- University of California Press
In the overwhelmingly nonunionized games industry, advocacy for the sector is largely conducted by professional associations, and support is offered through state policies and programs. 29 This section considers the extent to which precariousness is a product of policy, advocacy, and industry self-governance.
A key feature of the games industry is that it is poorly understood by the political class. This is despite its size and growth rates globally dwarfing anything remotely comparable, and is an outstanding example of creative content and use driving technological innovation and take up, not the other way round, as is usually constructed in innovation policy and business strategy. It tends to fall between the three “stools” of cultural policy, industry and innovation policy, while its main interface with the political class and the wider populace is around social and educational policy concerns (violence, game-playing addiction, claims and counterclaims about educational benefits). Inconsistent or nonexistent policy support, particularly compared to other cultural industries, such as film and television, contributes to precariousness. Such policy inconsistency across different countries, as well as policy entrepreneurship or arbitrage between countries in bidding for the services of this high-skill component of the “creative class,” contributes to the hypermobility of games creatives.
In Australia, federal policy and programs supporting the industry had been piecemeal, 30 seeking to fit games into the established cultural template developed over decades for the arts, film, and television. They required developers to articulate game proposals as forms of storytelling to measure the cultural significance of the game. The long march toward a realistic balance between cultural and industry policy for the creative sector was accelerated by the industry transformations of the last five to seven years. Government accepted that very little original IP was being created; that Australian developers were locked into a fee-for-service system; that the country was no longer attractive to licensed IP; and that oversees competitive incentives were “luring” talent away from the country. A significant A$20 million package was developed, the Australian Interactive Games Fund, whose objectives were to promote industry growth and sustainability, support the development of new intellectual property, encourage skills retention and renewal, and maximize the creative opportunities of fast broadband. 31 With a change of government, however, the initiative was cancelled with only half the money spent.
At a state or provincial level, the policy rationale for support has been equally uneven, with an equal or perhaps even greater impact on precariousness for the labor force. The state of Victoria has been most consistent in its approach to games, which are recognized as a core component of the state’s industrial and employment base in its information and communication technology sector. Effective advocacy for the sector forestalled a cost-cutting attempt to close down support in 2012. Funding and programs in support of the sector are administered through a mainstream screen agency. The approach in Queensland was exclusively industrial and remained positive while the industry was generating jobs as midsize small businesses proliferated in the pre-GFC period. The collapse of several of the larger companies effectively eliminated games from a standard industry development policy logic as pursued within a department of state development and saw the policy focus narrow to a minor part of the screen agency’s remit. Government did little to arrest the collapse of the industry in the state, and has done little since. New South Wales, the most populous state and the one with the largest slice of GDP, had rarely focused policy and program attention on games, leading to the irregular doughnut shape of the industry’s geography. 32 The effect of such policy variability is clear—Victoria has seen strong 15–20 percent growth in each of the last few years, while Queensland has not grown strongly out of the downturn. The mobility and associated uncertainties faced by game workers are often forced on them by the volatility of an industry whose profile with government is equally volatile.
Policy fluctuation and failure contributes to precariousness; so does the industry’s reputation for poor management. Some of its notoriously poor working conditions can be attributed to the immaturity of the industry and the need for self-governance reform. The industry’s still overwhelmingly male-dominated production base needs to change if it is to attract the best talent, improve balance and sustainability, and capture value in a rapidly evolving consumption environment. Women and girls now account for 48 percent of all gamers. The high skew toward men and boys—more than 78 percent in the console core demographic—underlines that women are in the majority in the more casual gaming areas of the market. 33 GDAA survey data for 2014 suggests that, of the approximately eight hundred people now working in the industry, some 26 percent are women, and most of these are programmers and artists. This is beginning to align with the IGDA’s most recent survey results, which report 22 percent women employees globally in September 2014. 34
Management deficit is by no means confined to gender. Casey O’Donnell’s loving but forensic description of the “secret world of videogame creators” does not spare the industry. 35 Tacit knowledge has been poorly converted into transferable knowledge. This is a critical shortcoming because the daunting complexity of bringing together engineers, artists, designers, marketers, and managers in intense iteration can lead to crunches, “intense and extended periods of socially mandatory overtime, and a seemingly perpetual start-up environment for game development companies.” 36 There is little industry formalization and representation. Invoking the analytical work of Gina Neff and David Stark, O’Donnell asserts that the industry is in a state of “permanent beta.” Cross-disciplinary collaboration—which causes unremitting creative tension at the level of the firm and poses some of the most challenging project management tasks in contemporary industry practice—is absolutely necessary for the industry’s future. The tendency is for the industry, because of its closed opacity (and, as we have seen, because of its extreme volatility), to continually reinvent the wheel. O’Donnell stresses the great breakthrough by Unity when it made transparent authoring knowledge of great value, for example, for developing country industries. 37 All of these factors contribute to working cultures and conditions that see 50 percent leave with up to ten years exposure. 38 On the other hand, Australian industry, GDAA claims, is rare in the way it shares knowledge and resources among industry players now that the industry is composed overwhelmingly of indies. This is not typical of companies based in the United States, and was also not common when Australian developers were producing licensed IP, as a result of nondisclosure agreements.
A better articulation of the broader value of the industry to the society and economy can address precariousness. Antony Reed, an industry advocate, asserts that “this industry could make such a huge contribution if only it was understood better.” 39 Advocacy, he argues, should seek to raise awareness of, for example, the value of game design input into health and education; the transferability of games skills into mainstream IT or the burgeoning apps industry; and the highly skilled entrepreneurial games workforce, which any country should seek to retain as part of its creative class. This draws on evidence that uncertainty of work in games is mitigated to some extent by the capacity to work outside the sector (due to the high transferability of skills, particularly of programmers). There is also some evidence that companies and individuals manage precarious original IP development with sourcing licensed IP opportunities within the growing domestic apps industry, so-called serious (edutainment) games, and a small range of domestic purchasers of games products and services (sourcing licensed IP domestically can be more sustainable because it is not subject to currency fluctuation).