Game unionization always seemed forced by people who were tertiary to the development process anyway. I remember years ago Giant Bomb either intentionally or accidentally booked Ed Boon (Mortal Kombat dev) and some genderspecial pro-union ""game"" """developer""" on the same segment, the latter of which was brought on to talk about the union they were trying to start. It only took a few minutes for it to be revealed that the """developer""" was just a QA tester, which would have been fine, except they kept saying shit like, "We work really hard and have no benefits. Like, even someone who is *just* working construction has benefits", basically trying to get across that playing the same game over and over again is on par with a physically demanding and highly dangerous job like construction.
I think game development attracts people who have a certain type of brain that just tells them they can't quit until a specific problem/feature is solved or implemented. I've known people like that and experienced the same thing when I was working on games. It's very addicting and ultimately results in hours kind of melting away, like a constant string of "15 minutes more, then I'll quit." It's not healthy, but nothing would have ever gotten done had it not happened. Everyone hates it when they're in the middle of something at work, only for the boss to stroll in and announce there's a meeting - then you need time to get back in the zone after the meeting, or you lost the thread you were chasing through whatever project you were working on and have to start over. Game development is like that in a lot of ways. I think most game developers know this and are just silent on the issue.
It's also unrealistic in today's world to have games take years and years to develop anyway. Quality has only gone up and there's serious money in the mix regardless of indie/AA/AAA status.. Early and mid-2000s indie games were given a ton of creative liberties because it was unlikely that artists, programmers, and designers could all come together to work on something, so you'd get these really awesome games that had awful art, clunky programming, or whatever, but they were still good for some reason and nobody gave a shit. Now your average indie developer needs a full marketing plan, soundtrack, art, etc, and likely needs to be worked on full-time. There's no way you aren't crunching if you're serious about going commercial because the money will run out eventually. This was true for every game developer I knew.
Things can be done to make it a healthier industry, but a lot of solutions put forth aren't really interesting IMO. "It's a management problem." Well, for large AAA studios it might be, but they still have to make money. You spend 100M to develop a game but it takes 3 years, so now you need to make at least 100M to break even. Is that possible? Alternatively, you spend 50M and do it in 1.5 years, but there's crunch. In case A, the game only breaks even and the studio shuts down. In case 2 you've still got a job even if the game is only a minor success. I'd be more interested in these ideas if they weren't primarily put forth by people whose resumes read "Bagged Groceries (2 years) QA for Barbie's Horse Adventure (1 year.) Writer at Twitter.com (2016 - ?)"
I don't know why people just can't accept it's a hard job. That's it. If you can't handle it, do something else.
