For months, Andrés Vásquez’s days working on the first-person shooter “Doom” have been mixed into one another.

As an id software QA tester in Texas, he spent 10 hours a day sitting at a desk and “beating” the game with colleagues, playing over and over through his map creation mode and going through multiplayer matches looking for glitches before they happened. 2016 release. He often worked on weekends, logging nearly 60 hours a week.

“It started feeling like Groundhog Day,” says the 33-year-old. “It’s just very mentally challenging. You are so tired that you fall asleep and wake up to do it all over again the next day. becomes blurry. … peek your head out of the tunnel and you’ll be back to reality once the crisis is over.”

Video game insiders have long decried so-called crunch periods, many of whom dread the months-long Gauntlet leading up to the game’s release. Some workers describe falling asleep at their desks or missing time with family and friends during this period; Others experience anxiety and fatigue.

These and other grievances — including allegations of discrimination and calls for fair and transparent wages — have led a growing segment of the industry’s workforce to unionize — a tactic many would associate more with old-school factory lines than with 21st-century wagons. The regulatory effort represents an emerging shift in strength in an industry that has long relied on contract labor and the romantic ideal that working on games is a dream worth sacrificing for.

About 3.6 billion people are expected to be playing video games globally by 2025, up from 2.9 billion in 2020, according to a report by industry tracker Newzoo. The industry boomed during the first two years of the pandemic, but researchers say 2022 has proven to be a hit Correct path with diminishing revenues. Analysts at Morgan Stanley believe the industry could do just that rebound this yearwith more big-budget games arriving alongside the new consoles.

However, some workers feel that they are not seeing their share in the growth of the industry.

The widening labor struggle has particular resonance in California, home to more game makers — more than 600 of them — than any other state, according to the Entertainment Software Assn. commercial group. A poll on the state of the game industry released in January found that a majority of game developers — 53% — support unionizing. About a fifth say they or their colleagues have actively discussed the issue of unionizing, according to the survey published by the Game Developers Conference and Game Developer, a trade publication.

“This is, historically speaking, something that hasn’t permeated the industry very much,” says Joost van Drunen, game industry analyst and author of One Up: Creativity, Competition, and the Global Business of Video Games.

But regulation efforts have had mixed results for video game studios large and small.

This month, Microsoft took the unusual step of recognizing ZeniMax Workers United, a consortium formed under the Communications Workers of America, or CWA, made up of quality assurance personnel across multiple studios at ZeniMax Media — the parent company of id Software, which was acquired by Microsoft. In 2021 the decision came after Microsoft agreed with the CWA to remain neutral about the union — a decision experts say could mark a turning point in a wave of labor organizing efforts that began five years ago.

Santa Monica-based Activision Blizzard, which Microsoft is seeking to acquire, has taken a different tack. The effort has been hampered by workers at two of the game studios it has acquired, Raven Software and Blizzard Albany, which also unionized with the help of the CWA last year.

Workers at a third studio acquired by Activision Blizzard, Proletariat Inc. The Boston-based company announced plans to unionize in December, but said this month that it would no longer seek an election, citing management’s “confrontational tactics.”

Joe Christinat, a spokesperson for Activision Blizzard, says the claim is false and that the CEO of Proletariat “was responding to concerns from employees who felt pressured…and who wanted more information.”

Activision Blizzard uses a third party to measure employee pay against more than 40 competitors, mostly in technology and games, and the company’s payroll is “fair in those comparisons,” Christinat says.

He added, “We maintain the utmost respect for our employees to decide for themselves whether union representation is appropriate for them.” “Our goal is that our employees will not need to feel the need to be represented by a union because we address their workplace needs.”

The rise in union interest comes amid a broader rise in pro-union sentiment, including among digital journalists, says Jamie Woodcock, a senior lecturer at the University of Essex in the UK who helps run Game Worker Solidarity, which tracks worker organizing in the industry. Industry consolidation has increased dissatisfaction in game studios being acquired by multinational corporations.

Microsoft, Riot Games, and GameSpot all They were recently laid off Game industry employees amid a broader contraction in the technology sector.

Angela Rosborough, an advisor to tech companies at Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and former Chief Diversity Officer at Riot Games, pointed to the #MeToo movement as a major turning point for labor regulation in the gaming industry. Women have spoken out about harassment and abuse across the entertainment industry, including V Riot Games – the developer behind the hugely popular “League of Legends” game – which was Finally sued Due to allegations of unequal pay and sexual harassment. The company agreed to pay $100 million to settle a class action lawsuit.

“It was kind of a catalyst for people to say, ‘Hey, we want to be part of a company that’s doing well in the world, but also doing well for us,’” Rosborough says of the #MeToo movement.

Employees of Insomniac Games, Activision Blizzard’s “World of Warcraft’s” and Ubisoft, the company behind the Assassin’s Creed franchise, later came forward on their own Allegations of abuse and misconduct.

At the time the allegations were made, Insomniac tweeted that it had “taken many steps to address” the allegations and that it had “actively promoted diversity, inclusion, representation, and equality.” Many of Ubisoft’s top executives have resigned, and the company has vowed to do better. Activision Blizzard denied any wrongdoing, but agreed to create An $18 million fund for employees Who said they experienced sexual harassment, discrimination, pregnancy discrimination, or retaliation.

Author Van Drunen added that the shift from physical game distribution to digital downloads has also affected business policies in the video game sector. He explained that studios once hired large groups of temporary workers before launching a successful product, only to drop them after the release date. Today, at a time when games are constantly being updated with new expansion packs and downloadable content, studios need to keep a more steady pool of workers.

“The transition to service-based game publishing has improved business conditions because people have to work there for a long time, on a rolling basis,” he says. It gave “more oxygen to the workers so that they may realize their worth”.

For workers who support efforts to organize, unionization is an opportunity to earn a seat at the table and improve working conditions and pay across the industry.

Vasquez, ID’s software quality assurance tester, went through a second crisis in late 2019 and early 2020, when working on “Doom Eternal,” the next installment of “Doom.” He says it was even worse at the time, because he had recently married and had a newborn baby, whom he had barely seen.

After nearly eight years at the same company, Vasquez decided to support organizational efforts to help create a better career growth path for quality assurance testers and push for more transparency around pay, he says.

“I felt I had to add my voice to it,” Vasquez says. “We’re here doing an important job, which is making sure the product is the best it can be so that people will keep buying it. … Why aren’t we looked up to, like developers?”

Amanda Levine says she backed a union at video game development company Blizzard Albany — formerly called Vicarious Visions — to preserve the company’s culture and extend protections to its quality assurance department, which relies on contract work.

“While teamwork without a union is very powerful, the only way to legally secure the benefits and rights you want is to unionize,” says Lavigne, associate test analyst. “Until last year, we were contract workers. We weren’t full-time. We had no career advancement.”

When she started working on Blizzard’s action game “Diablo 4,” she was making $16 an hour. She says some of her colleagues earn as little as $14 an hour. The company has since raised the base pay rate for quality assurance testers, she said, but “compensation is definitely a major issue.”

“There are a lot of misconceptions that the job we do is simple, fun, and appropriate for a teenager,” she says. “But what we do takes a lot of skill and a lot of experience, a lot of critical thinking, a lot of problem-solving skills… The work we do is really important to ensuring the quality of these games.”

Labor advocacy groups have existed in the video game industry for years. In 1984, Atari workers tried and failed to unionize.

In 1994, game developers established what is now known as the International Game Developers Assn. To represent industry workers. Former IGDA executive director Kate Edwards says the group was never meant to be a union, just a way to give workers a voice.

“The fact that the tech sector so hates labor unions and this whole movement, I think, has also carried over into the gaming industry,” says Edwards. She’s like: ‘Well, we don’t need that. This is for people who make cars. This is for people who do physical labor with their hands.”

She added that as time went on, workers became increasingly frustrated with the harsh crunch times leading up to major game releases.

Discussions in the industry have been going on for years – in Facebook groups, in Discord chats, in private conversations. Then came the 2018 Game Developers Conference, where a popular group called Game Workers Unite called for Coordinated organization of workers.

What followed, says Edwards, were early syndication efforts at Activision Blizzard as well as in the UK.

In Southern California, those conversations also extended to independent studios. (The greater Los Angeles area is home to more than 200 video game companies, according to the Entertainment Software Assn. Database.)

Workers at Los Angeles art and game studio Tender Claws joined a CWA campaign to organize digital employees last year. (The CWA is also the parent union of NewsGuild, which represents workers at the Los Angeles Times.)

Robin Trach, gameplay programmer for Tender Claws, says that indie companies can be seen as “completely different” and less exploitative than those producing big-name titles, but that assumption isn’t entirely accurate.

“Some of the greatest horror stories I’ve heard from colleagues in the domestic game industry are from independent companies,” she says. “There is no one you can turn to if the landlord is involved, or sympathetic to the person who was abusive.”

Employees at Tender Claws wanted to unionize, she says, to reduce crunch hours, diversify the hiring process and create a system of pay standardization and fairness. She added that most of the staff love working here and we have a friendly relationship with the management.

The company’s founders said last summer that they were “thrilled to be recognized and working with the union.”

But the 27-year-old Trash remembers getting whacked at another startup in a game that was “really a mess.” On the day appointed for the match, I worked until seven in the morning

“I wasn’t really living any kind of human life,” she says.

Her team went to a restaurant to celebrate after charging the building. When Trash’s boss drives her home afterward, he tells her he’s proud of her.

For Trach, the praise rings hollow.

“I remember at that moment feeling kind of disgusted about it. I totally broke my chops to make your game. I stayed up all night… This isn’t about my personal proof. This is a job.”