Tech Won't Save Us - Unionizing the Video Game Industry w/ Taylor Welling & Kathryn Friesen

Episode Date: September 5, 2024

Paris Marx is joined by Taylor Welling and Kathryn Friesen to discuss how they formed wall-to-wall unions in the video game industry and their thoughts on broader challenges like layoffs and corporate consolidation.Taylor Welling is a producer and union member at OneBGS and Kathryn Friesen is quest designer and member of the World of Warcraft GameMakers Guild.Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.Also mentioned in this episode:OneBGS and the World of Warcraft GameMakers Guild each won their union votes in July 2024.More video game workers have already been laid off in 2024 than did in all of 2023.Microsoft and the Communication Workers of America signed a labor neutrality agreement in 2022, to take effect 60 days after its acquisition of Activision Blizzard closed. In May, that agreement was extended to ZeniMax Studios.Microsoft laid off 1,900 gaming workers in January and closed four internal studios in May.Blizzard provides swords, shields, and helmets to employees celebrating 5, 10, and 20 years at the company.The ZeniMax Workers Union struck an agreement with their employer on the use of AI.Nicole Carpenter at Polygon put together a list of video game unions and an explainer on the rise of video game unions.Communication Workers of America has more information on unionizing as part of their CODE-CWA campaign.Support the show

A union isn't a detriment to a company. The best thing we can do for our studios is to keep the talented people who make our games amazing. And we do that by having the agency and power of a strong union. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us, made in partnership with The Nation magazine. I'm your host, Paris Mars, and this week I have two fantastic guests for you. Taylor Welling is a producer and union member at 1BGS, which is the new union at Bethesda Game Studios, and Catherine Friesen is a quest designer for World of Warcraft and a member of the World of Warcraft Game Makers Guild. Over the past couple of years, a growing number of workers in the video games industry have been forming unions. Often, that is quality assurance workers, though not always. But in July, there was some really notable news when workers at Bethesda Game Studios and in the World of Warcraft team at Blizzard both formed wall-to-wall unions.

So it wasn't just, say, one role that was in this union, for example, quality assurance workers. It was actually many different roles at the studio, recognizing that everyone is part of making these games and should be part of this collective decision-making and this negotiation that is happening with employers. And so that stood out for me for a number of reasons. One, because it set a fantastic precedent to see more video game workers forming unions and of course, many different roles being able to do so. But also because these are both studios that are underneath Microsoft, which recently, you know, over the past few years has been on this binge of acquiring studios, especially really big ones like Zenimax Studios, which owns Bethesda or Activision Blizzard, which World of Warcraft is of course a part of, but many other major video game franchises.

And there have also been some questions recently about some of the decisions that the Xbox team, the gaming team within Microsoft has been making. And across the wider industry, we have seen a lot of layoffs. So I thought it would be a good opportunity to speak to workers at these unions to learn about what was motivating them to unionize, but also what they think about these broader trends that they're seeing in the industry that they work in. And in particular, I wanted to ask them about a neutrality agreement between Microsoft and the Communication Workers of America, which has been helping many of these video game unions to get formed, that essentially said Microsoft would be neutral if its workers in these various video game companies wanted to unionize in exchange for the Communication Workers of America saying it was okay with the acquisition of Activision Blizzard. And while there was criticism of that at the time, you know, it seems to be paying off and working out because this acquisition was probably going to happen whether the Communication Workers of America was okay with it or not. But, you know, as a result of that, we've been seeing more and more unions

at Microsoft Studios. And the hope is that that will start to, you know, kind of form a beachhead there and help this union movement to filter out to studios well beyond that as well. Not to say that hasn't already been happening, but just to a greater degree. So I was really happy to talk to Taylor and Catherine to dig into their thoughts on the industry that they work in, and also what went into winning these unions in their workplaces and what they hope to achieve next. So I hope you enjoy this conversation. I certainly did. If you do, make sure to leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice. You can also share this conversation on social media or with from Lower Hutt in Aotearoa, New Zealand, and Claude in Montreal by going to patreon.com slash techwon'tsaveus where you can become a supporter as well. Thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation. Taylor, welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. Thank you so much for having me.

Very excited to have you on the show. And Catherine, welcome to you. Thanks. So happy to be here. I'm excited to speak with both of you. You know, obviously, you've both recently formed unions at your respective workplaces. But before we dig into all that, I was hoping you could tell us a bit about what it's like to do the work that you do in the games industry. So maybe Taylor, we'll start with you. Sure. So as a producer, that term is a little bit different from studio to studio.

But at BGS, that basically is just a project manager. So it's a lot of coordinating of people and tasks. So kind of like if artists and designers and programmers, if they're the cogs in the machine, our producers are the grease in the machine. Cool. I love that. And what sort of things have you been working on recently, if you're allowed to tell us that? Yeah. So for a good chunk of time, I was working on Starfield and the upcoming DLCs. And I'm also working on The Elder Scrolls VI. And Catherine, what about you? So I'm a quest designer on World of Warcraft, which means I make the game mechanics and a

little bit of story. Quest design is kind of a traditional game designer role where we wear so many hats and touch so many parts of WoW at it, which is our engine, our tool. And lately I have been feature point on an end game faction feature called Theater Troop in The War Within and it's been going. So yeah. Cool. That's awesome. And so when you say quest designer does that mean kind of like putting together the mechanics within the game itself for like how a quest is going to work or is that also like designing the idea of the quest too yes you got it all of that uh we kind of own a quest line as a piece of content and a lot of other people come

in and work with us on those quest lines there There are people who start in the world before us, right? Making it look amazing and everything like that. But then we're responsible for getting it functional and telling the story and stuff like that, along with, again, all of our coworkers. Of course, of course. It's a collaborative team effort, I'm sure. There are such big teams working on video games, especially these kind of large ones these days, that it's certainly not just about you guys. And of course, you know, that also speaks to why maybe you're forming a union and why you have hundreds

of members in your unions, of course. And so in July, it was announced that both Bethesda Game Studios and the World of Warcraft team within Blizzard had formed unions. So I'm wondering, you know, from both of you, what was the motivation in your teams to want to pursue unionization? What was driving that? Well, I think there are a lot of different reasons, right? For every person that's in a union, we all have our own individual motivations. But I think you can look at the industry and see the things that are happening in terms of crunch and burnout and inequality and pay. And there's lots of those reasons. I know at Bethesda, something that was a big deal for a lot of our members was wanting to protect the things that are good.

Bethesda has been around for a while. The people at Bethesda, a lot of folks have been there for 15, 20, 30 years because it's generally a really good place to work. And we're in a place now where due to changes in ownership, there isn't protection of those things. And the only way we can protect the things that are important to us is to unionize, get those into a contract and make sure that those things stay safe. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And of course, the change in ownership is the acquisition of Microsoft in 2021 of ZeniMax Studios, which is the parent company, I guess, of Bethesda. And Catherine, what about you? Taylor said it very well. Honestly, people work for Blizzard for decades. I've only been here two and a half years now, but there are people on the team who have been here the whole time. There are people who've been here 18 years, 20 years. There are people who've been here five years, right?

Like the tenure goes a long way and they're marked by like five years, you get a sword, 10 years, you get a shield, right? It's a big deal. And that's a lot of institutional knowledge that people have working here. And so a lot of us want to just keep Blizzard, Blizzard. We want to keep what's already existing about the company that we love. And a union does that for us. It allows us to enshrine those things and also to work towards better working conditions for all of us. A lot of people have individual reasons,

but things that we've heard consistently through our organizing from talking to every single person at the company are things like better pay. Irvine, California, and in Boston, Massachusetts, and Austin, Texas are very expensive places to live. And we're not paid to live in those locations. So that's kind of everyone's number one concern. But there are more, especially as layoffs rack our industry yet again. Of course. And we'll talk about some of those kind of bigger industry-wide trends that you're both mentioning. It's interesting to hear that you get a sword and a shield working at Blizzard. In another time in my life, I was looking at doing a PhD in Finland because I heard that when you get a PhD there, they give you a sword. Maybe I just should have gone and worked at Blizzard.

That is so cool. Yeah. So I found that interesting, but very cool. Hopefully, you know, you will get your sword and shield in the future. I hope that for you. Can you both kind of talk to me about the process of unionizing a workplace like this. You know, obviously, like I was talking about, there are hundreds of members in your respective unions. And one of the things that is really important about them, I think, or really notable about them is that they're

what's called wall-to-wall unions as well, where it's not just one kind of distinct type of employee or whatever at the company, but is actually many different roles that are part of this union. So can you talk to me about having a wall-to-wall union, but also what it looks like to bring people along and to get to this point where you were both celebrating the formation of these unions in July? I would say that the union organizing process, I would just summarize it as a bunch of conversations. You know, we started a conversation with a handful of organizers with actually our peers at ZWU, ZeniMax Workers Union. They are the QA union at ZeniMax. And so we talked with them, learned a lot from them about how to unionize. And then it was just a lot of the organizing

committee having one-on-one conversations with everybody who works at our studio and finding out what's important to them and letting them know that we're doing this thing, that it's real, and letting them know what you can actually expect from a union. Yeah, it is mostly talking to your co-workers, which is something you already do. You already talk to your co-workers, you already air grievances over the lunch table about, you know, the state of the industry and concerns you have about the company and things like that. But now it's a little more focused. And you and your co-workers, the further you go into it, the more you're like, you have to be organized about how you're organizing so that you're not all talking to the same person five times. And it's a lot of

one-on-one conversations. Something I will say is that our start was incredibly democratic and the whole process has been very democratic. When we run into bumps in the road or things that we want to tackle, everyone stops and we take a vote and we talk through everyone's responses and then we take a second vote. And we want to be sure that everyone is heard, even as we're going through the organizing process. We want to make those decisions together and it feels good. Yeah, I'd love to echo that. I personally am a non-hierarchical person, and I just loved working with my fellow organizing committee members.

Everything that we were doing was non-hierarchical. Nobody was in charge of anything. We had some people who owned this or that, but it was just a matter of where people fit. And people just did what they could, where they could, when they could, and it got done. Yeah, the same for us. People would take charge of particular tasks as they could, but then if they needed to, they handed them off to somebody else and we kept moving. And at what point in that process, when you're talking to your co-workers,

when you're getting more people on board, at what point do people start to liaise with the communication workers of America who were assisting in this process? What does that look like? So the campaign for the WOW Game Makers Guild has been going on for a very long time. It started very, very quiet and has ramped up a lot in the past year-ish. I joined the organizing committee in January of this year. But I'm told that our organizing committee reached out to CWA pretty early on. CWA, their part in this process is helping train us to do those conversations, how to talk to your coworkers about these issues, to keep yourself safe and your coworkers safe in doing this in the process and the legality of it, and how to be respectful about it and how to stay organized

as you're organizing. So they kind of stood up the organizing committee and then we have to do the work, right? CWA cannot talk to every single one of our 550 some odd coworkers. And yeah, so that's kind of how they operate in this process is kind of a guide at the beginning there. At BGS, it was a different story. We had actually a comparatively pretty quick unionizing effort. We started organizing in November of 2023. And our US locales were certified by July of 2024. And then our Montreal was officially certified by August of 2024. So we were real quick. And our first conversations were with ZWU at the beginning of November. And I think within a week, we had contacted CWA, had a rep who was, you know, telling us what to do. We took like the online course that CodeCWA offers on how to have these conversations, what your rights are, and how to get your

organizing committee together and working. I just want to say we were watching y'all move so fast. We were rooting for y'all. And I know y'all were rooting for us because we had some back and forth conversations. It was so cool because we were in the process of doing our vote and we were like, are they going to beat us? And y'all did. Y'all unionized on a Friday and then we unionized the next Wednesday or something. Or won our votes rather. But yeah, so kudos to y'all. It was amazing. Thank you so much. Yeah yeah it was really cool so you guys like started your online voting portal process before us but like due to some like technicalities ours was shorter so it's really cool that we were able to you know go public within the same week that

that was really exciting it was so much fun i'm so glad y'all were able to do that. Thank you. I love this so much. It's so cool hearing about that process and how it all worked and, you know, how it was distinct for both companies and groups of workers as you kind of, you know, went toward unionization. And so funny that like the final decisions, the final votes, arrived so close to one another. I love that so much. I mentioned earlier that these are wall to wall unions, and that seems quite unique. You know, usually what we've seen in the video games industry, especially in the United States, and I should say I'm in Montreal, so I loved seeing the unionization in Montreal as well. You know, when we talk about a wall to wall union, usually we're talking about, you know,

as you're saying, quality assurance workers who have unionized at some of these video game companies or kind of much smaller groups of workers. Why is it so important that it's wall to wall and that it includes so many different roles within the organization? Well, yeah, this might be a surprise to some people in the industry, probably very few, but quality assurance is dev. Here at World of Warcraft, they sit in our rooms, their desks are next to our desks. We work with them every single day. And if you've been in the industry, you know how close that relationship is. The divide between QA and dev is completely false. And I'm very glad that our two unions can help signal that to the rest of the industry, loud and clear that QA is dev, they've always been dev, and they should be

treated like dev. And we all deserve to have a voice at that table together, because they're our co workers. They're not somewhere else. And we never talked to them. They're here with us every day in the trenches. So Absolutely. I feel that so much, especially like the experience of shipping Starfield, how much we were interacting with QA. They are a vital part of development. Unfortunately, the way that the structures at BGS and ZeniMax are, they are pretty separate from us. Honestly, it just slows things down, in my opinion. But having them unionized before us was so incredibly helpful. They created such a good example for us, not just in how to do it, but also in what we can expect. We could talk to

our co-workers about like, yeah, ZWU got this and they don't even have a contract yet. And, you know, this is what neutrality looks like. This is what they've experienced. And then in terms of having a wall-to-wall union, that's so incredibly important because unions basically operate off of, you know, strength in numbers. And when you have everybody together in one unit, then we can all stand up for each other and we have more collective bargaining power when we're all working together. Yeah, that's so important, right? And it's so fantastic to see that it's happened for your two unions.

And hopefully that, you know, kind of sets the standard for us to start seeing them at so many other video games companies as well. Fingers crossed. I'm sure it's in the works and we'll be hearing more good news in the future. You know, that's not me speaking on insider information. It's just my hopes and dreams, you know. You know, so you were talking about having these discussions with your workers and moving toward the votes. How did the bosses and management at your companies respond to these unionization efforts and, you know, ultimately the successful votes that you had in order to certify your unions? Well, I would say for us, like the neutrality agreement between CWA and Microsoft had a big hand in that. I don't actually know what leaders at my company actually genuinely think about unionization because they are required to be neutral. So if we were to go up to them and say, hey, what do you think?

They would have to say, I have to remain neutral. Here's the link to Microsoft's labor standards, which there's pros and cons to knowing and not knowing what they think. But the neutrality agreement was truly a game changer. I'll say the same. Management here at Blizzard has been neutral. They've stepped back and they've allowed us to organize and be very public with our campaign on campus and in break rooms and things. So it's honestly been excellent. And I'm looking forward to bargaining with Microsoft and Blizzard because things have gone very well. That's really great to hear. And I wanted to ask you about that neutrality agreement as well, right? Because this is something that was announced in June of 2022 initially between Microsoft

and the Communication Workers of America. And the idea was that if the Activision Blizzard acquisition went through, then it would take effect 60 days after that. So basically, Microsoft, as you're saying, would be neutral in, you know, any kind of unionization campaign. And then, of course, that was extended to ZeniMax Studios, which includes Bethesda in May of 2024, if I have my dates correct. So I know at the time there was some criticism of the CWA for doing this, you know, because Microsoft was buying this set of game studios

under Activision Blizzard as part of this broader consolidation push as it was, you know, buying up a lot of different studios. But then, of course, we have seen results from that where, you know, based on what you're both saying, it seems like that has really helped some of the workers at these companies that are now owned by Microsoft to pursue the unions like you have. So I wonder what your reflections are on this neutrality agreement and kind of the pros and cons of it. Yeah, well, like I said, I see that neutrality agreement as truly a game changer. My personal politics, I don't love the idea of corporate consolidation. So I see that as maybe like a negative thing just like for commerce in general. But when it leads

to something like this, where it's providing neutrality for so many people to unionize and get actual strength and actual power, that to me is so important. And I think that there's so much potential for that net gain to just be astronomical because, you know, we have neutrality for all of the folks at ABK, which like, I don't know the exact numbers, but it feels massive. So it's just like a gajillion people now have neutrality and then ZeniMax, and I'm pretty sure it applies to all of Microsoft essentially. And so if we can get all of Microsoft Game Studios unionized, and then all of Microsoft unionized, like that's going to make a huge impact on tech and the games industry that could potentially, you know, spread outside of Microsoft and make this a sustainable place to work. Over here, organizing for World of Warcraft,

it was a shot in the arm to have that neutrality agreement. One of, honestly, many shots in the arm in their various forms, but it was a help. A non-significant number of people suddenly felt that they could sign an authorization card, sign effectively a yes vote for the union to happen. And you can't buy that. It's nice to have that peace of mind to know that I don't have to worry about risking my job or other things by agreeing to stand up with my own co-workers for collective bargaining power. I'm just excited to see what we can do industry-wide as each of these sibling studios pops up with their own unions

and we can bind that network together to just increase everything, make everything better across the board. I love that so much. And like, you know, we've obviously heard these stories over the past few years of what say workers at Amazon or workers at Apple retail stores or, you know, at Starbucks or at so many other places have experienced as they have tried

to unionize and like, you know, knowing that they were going to get this real pushback from the company and that it was going to be really difficult. And it must make it a bit easier for workers to come on board with union campaigns like yours and say, okay, I know that Microsoft or that Blizzard or that Bethesda are not going to be really coming after me, really trying to threaten my job if I'm organizing and talking to my coworkers. That must be such a huge help. Absolutely. It's helpful to organizing committee members. We feel confident that we can have conversations with our coworkers without it getting out and turning around to retaliation toward us. We can let our coworkers know, hey, your job is safe even if you do this, and it's not

going to affect you negatively. It's just so incredibly important. And I think it's best for everyone involved, right? Because these companies who aren't neutral, they spend more money fighting, organizing campaigns than they would if they just paid everyone effectively, right? So it's not better for them to be not neutral. They just think it is, I guess, and invest all this money into union busting. So it's saving a lot of people a lot of energy and a lot of heartache. And it's better for everyone involved. There are certainly pros and cons to having a neutrality agreement.

As I'm sure you can imagine, it's a little harder to convince your co-workers that a union is necessary if they're not immediately seeing the retaliation or the negative overbearing, union busting stuff happening, you don't have a monster you're fighting. It's not obvious that there's a dragon in the next corridor there ready to eat you. The dragon is sitting on its hands and saying, no, go for it. It's a little harder to convince people to take up their swords and stand together on that sort of a front. However, I wouldn't want it any other way. I'd much rather us and the dragon work out how best to go forward together in managing this dungeon because we all like working in dungeons with the dragons. Yeah, that makes perfect sense, right? But I guess even though you don't have this company

that's like breathing down your neck and trying to retaliate and stuff, I guess when you look at kind of the broader trends in the industry that helps you have a dragon to use your metaphor to present to people, right? Because we've seen these massive layoffs quite recently. What is it? 10,000 workers, I think last year, over 11,000 already this year. And that includes, of course, 1,900 workers at Microsoft in the Microsoft Games division that has been laid off. And of course, a number of ZeniMax studios that have been closed as a result of corporate actions. So I guess, you know, what do you make, you know, certainly feel free to comment on what's been happening at Microsoft specifically,

but also industry-wide what you have been seeing with all these layoffs over the past couple of years and what that means for workers like you who work in this industry and are seeing so many of your wider colleagues kind of being wiped out from this. So I'm relatively new to this industry. I graduated college in 2021 and I've been here at Blizzard pretty much since, but I'm not unfamiliar. My previous boss, when I was in college working at a research lab as a game designer, he'd been through several layoffs because he was an industry veteran and it's just normal. A game finishes, we don't need the people that made it anymore. Just play them all off. It's a normal story. The last couple

of years have been a little abnormal, honestly. And as you said, we had like 10,000 layoffs within the first few months of this year, which is more than last year already. It's concerning. And it's, as Taylor mentioned earlier, it doesn't make a lot of sense. A union isn't a detriment to a company. The best thing we can do for our studios is to keep the talented people who make our games amazing. And we do that by having the agency and power of a strong union. Something I mentioned before is the amount of institutional knowledge. Someone who's been at Blizzard Entertainment on World of Warcraft for 18 plus years has. We work in such a long standing, it's been out for 20 years game. There's so many little niche things that you have to know to

be able to do this job. And it's almost difficult to train somebody in that. And so losing someone like that to a layoff, it's just, it's a crime. Yeah. And the issue of layoffs at BGS is especially sensitive, not because we have them a lot, but because they're so rare. So for years and years, BGS didn't have any layoffs. And in these last couple of years, we are now affected by them, not to the extent as other studios, but still, it's now become part of our reality. So within our very quick organizing campaign, we had two very close calls. We had the 1900 people who lost their jobs in January within Xbox that got really close to us. And then, of course, in May, when Arcane Austin, Alpha Dog Games, Tango Gameworks, and Roundhouse all got closed. Well, Roundhouse got absorbed, but still, that's really close and really scary. And we have the protection of being a lean studio that's also consistently profitable, but that's still a really precarious place to be. And unionizing doesn't automatically protect you

from layoffs, but it's like having a seatbelt, right? Like it's not protecting you from getting hurt, but it's a lot better to have a seatbelt than to be thrown from the car. That's an excellent metaphor. The 1900 in January, even though a lot of those were obviously not on the World of Warcraft team specifically, there are other teams at Blizzard who did lose people who work with us on our game here or there based on their job roles who are now gone. And it's stressful. And losing even one person, even the few that we lost, had a significant impact on other people's workloads, and it just cascades. But beyond that, something I think you mentioned, Paris, earlier when you asked the question

is we have friends in the wider industry. The industry is so small, and the morale hit of seeing scores of your friends losing their jobs is unmentionable. And it just, across the industry, it's so detrimental in so many ways, right? Catherine sort of touched on it. When companies lay off a big chunk of people, they don't change their, okay, the game can be 10% smaller. They're still expecting you to make the same things in the same amount of time with less resources. So then everybody is stretched even further and we're already burned out and crunching. And then for folks who are trying to enter the industry, it's impossible to find a job because you're competing with a bunch of people who already have experience. And then also, if you're in a job that you're unhappy about,

you can't do anything about it. You can't go find another job because everybody else is trying to get that job. And in a way, that's kind of helping the cause for unionizing because it's like you can't go anywhere else. So you might as well make your current place better. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, it makes perfect sense. And, you know, as someone outside the industry, I can only imagine what it's like for both of you who work in it. But to be constantly seeing these headlines about layoffs and studio closures and things just not going well, you know, when you talk to your friends in the wider industry, is there a growing discussion around unionization because of these layoffs and because of wider trends that you see in the industry? Absolutely. I think my most consistent

check-ins with my friends at other studios are layoffs. And I'm like, hey, are you okay? Which is such a bummer, like that my reminder about my correspondence is, oh, layoffs. And then those conversations are always like, how's it affecting your organizing campaign? Because we have to do it, basically. In one of my discords, we split off one of our games industry channel. We split it into games industry and news, games news, because that channel had just become layoff story after layoff story after layoff story after layoff story and then we were all like yeah i checked in with my friend at this studio and they're gone or i checked in with my friend at this studio they're safe but now they

have to deal with three other people's workload so echoing what taylor said that's the talk right now how do we get away from layoffs being the answer? Yeah, it sucks so much. And like on that point, you know, when we talk about these issues or however you want to put it in the industry, I know that there's a lot of discussion around consolidation, of course, looking at Microsoft and also at Sony and how much, you know, they have bought over the past number of years to bring all these studios in-house because it feels like, I don't know, that's what you needed to compete for a little while or whatever. But also, you know, there are these broader discussions. And of course, I'm sure that you

both will be familiar with this. World of Warcraft is a huge game. Starfield is a huge game. Elder Scrolls is massive. You know, just how the expectations for a lot of these games just keeps getting bigger and bigger. And then, you know, the number of copies that you need to sell or whatever just gets so big. And the development cycles keep stretching. They're so, so long. Like, you know, we're talking about a new Grand Theft Auto game coming out next year. And I think it's over a decade since the last one came out. How did these kind of broader, I guess, trends in the industry, if we can put it that way. How does that make you reflect on what it means to work in the industry today if there are particular issues that you're

seeing? And if that leads to these, obviously, it's a justification of corporate management to lay people off because of these things. But like, how these bigger trends affect, you know, the work that you do, and whether some of that needs to be kind of like reined in or change needs to happen? That's a really big question. So for me, like the way that I, as a gamer, interact with games and play them is I see them as a work of art. Even like the technical component of it is a work of art. You know, anybody who's making a game is doing something for the first time. And it's an honor to be part of making that art. And it's an honor to be able to play and enjoy that art. And I think similarly, when you compare it to other types of entertainment art, there's a component of them that are minimized in order to maximize some type of output. So it has an effect on the art itself. And it makes it so incredibly hard to hit the

target because the target isn't about what is right for the game. It's about what is right for the market, which changes so constantly. And how are you supposed to know what the market is going to be in five years? It's such a wild game of cat and mouse. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, a lot of games take a significant amount of time to make, especially to AAA standards, these massive titles. They take a lot of time. And so you have to convince people upfront to invest, right? You have to convince them to invest in that amount of time to scale up teams and to let those teams continue to work on the game for that amount of time. And you have to wait. The return on investment is not immediate. You

can't just be like, all right, in two years, have me a game. In some cases, that is true. Not every game is made the same way or at the same scale. But for a title like World of Warcraft, it takes us a certain amount of time to make an expansion. And trying to shrink that number, or trying to increase that number, it has different effects one way or another. Yeah. At a certain point, expectations just become unrealistic. Look at the size of Bethesda games. They're massive. When I started working at BGS, we still had the nickname of Bugthesda and our reputation for having a lot of bugs. And so I was talking with a friend and, you know, like her brother was like, oh, now that she's at Bethesda, tell her to do something about all of

the bugs. And the thing is, like, the games are so big and so massive that in order to get rid of every single bug, the game would never come out. And even Starfield, it was our cleanest game in terms of bugs. It still took so long. And that game is so big. If you want a high quality product that's also massive, you have to be willing to spend a lot of money and time and hours and people to make it. Expectations need to be realistic. As a person who is pretty visible and opinionated online, I'm hyper aware of safety and security. It's easier than ever to find personal information about people online and all that data

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that's being driven more from like player demands and what gamers want? Or is this like kind of a corporate thing where they're really trying to get this like product that's going to make them a ton of money and they think that if it gets bigger, there's a bigger potential for return or something like do you have an idea of which side that comes from? I would say it comes from both sides, right? There are gamers who are happy to play the 12,000th release of Skyrim, right? The Skyrim community is still massive and super active and that game is, what, 13 years old? So like, yeah, it makes sense that companies would want to continue to make money off of that. To that point, we have World of Warcraft Classic, which continues to release new and exciting things

to do in a game that people have known for a very, very long time. And alongside that, we're releasing new stuff in retail all the time. So yes, both. We have a team dedicated to player insights and interviewing and testing and doing stuff to figure out what players are looking for. And then, yeah, I'm sure there are also market things that people consider when they go forward in this. That's above my pay grade. Yeah, but it's also above my pay grade. So take what I'm saying with a grain of salt. But if you're looking at the math of paying the salaries for devs, like a few hundred devs working on a single game for five to seven years, money has to be coming in from somewhere.

And so if you're a studio that has a beloved game that's still being played, of course you're going to want to make income with that because you have to pay the devs who are making the next great game. So it's just something that it's, I think, I understand why gamers don't love microtransactions, but if you want the games that are happening, it's kind of what has to happen. Yeah, I mean, we're gamers ourselves. So we play games, we have some of your same frustrations. And also, we don't always have the decision making power in those kinds of decisions, at least not now. Yeah, no, just reflecting on what you're both saying, like, I guess the question

comes a bit from like, I remember when I was younger and, you know, I played some World of Warcraft. I played a lot of Lord of the Rings online and I was very into really big games that I could just sink like hundreds of hours into. And thinking now, you know, that I'm in my thirties, it's like, I don't have time for a game that is going to be that long, right? I want something smaller. And so sometimes I'm like, who is really demanding these huge games? But yeah, there's plenty of people who still put a ton of time into this stuff

and it makes perfect sense. It takes gamers of all types, right? Like you and I might need shorter games because we're working full time, but then there are also people who, they want shorter play sessions maybe, but they're still playing the same game for decade after decade, so.

Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. I feel like one of the big questions that people have been talking about recently, of course, you know, whether it's in video games or in many other industries is artificial intelligence, right? Working in video games, artificial intelligence is nothing new. You know, this is like a broad term that refers to many different things. The discussion recently has been around generative AI in particular, and, you know, these more novel tools that people have been promoting for the past year and a half or so. I wonder if you have any reflections on what you think AI or, you know, the rollout of generative AI or specifically, you know, kind of corporate's interest in how they might use AI, what that

means for video game workers like yourselves. Yeah, I'm really glad you made the distinction between artificial intelligence and generative AI or generative artificial intelligence because they're very different. People have long talked about enemy AI in various games, right? My sister and I swap videos about lethal companies, enemy AI all the time, just so we can know just a little bit more about how they work. So AI is something I work with every day, technically making creatures do creature things, but they're talking about something else. They're talking about generative AI. They're talking about pressing a button and

potentially getting a game. And anyone who works on this side of the industry knows that that's a little unreasonable to expect. As far as Blizzard is concerned, we have seen a very cautious stance towards that and a pretty blanket, like, we're not doing that. Thanks for right now. Of course, corporate interests might shift. I know that there's probably a general, like how things go, you might need to say certain things to appease certain shareholders or something. And it's the thing to say right now is we have our own generative AI button thing that you can press. You go to any website and they're like, now powered with AI, it's powered with AI now. It was already powered by an algorithm and that's all we really mean, but we use the fancy

buzzword for the day. Yeah. For me, when I think about generative AI, especially because one of the teams I used to work with was the concept art team, which I think some people might think is like, ah, you can just use generative AI to do that. But I think of it more as like, this is a dangerous thing that we need to be cautious about. Because even for something like concept art, you can't just generate concept art, because the art director is going to say, well, I need this minor tweak to happen. And that's not how generative AI works. And generative AI, you know, even for like helping with code or writing a dialogue or a quest, like it doesn't know what it's saying. It's not going to be good. You're still going to need actual designers, actual artists there to do the work. And so at that point, you know, why are you going to use this tool that's creating a speed bump that is bad for the environment? Like, just let us do our job. We know what we're doing.

And I think that we just need to be cautious about it. It has the potential to be a useful tool, but we need to be cautious about it. And that's one of the things that ZWU, ZeniMax Workers United, has gotten already, they have a tentative agreement over having an agreement over the use of AI in the workplace. And I think that probably any game studio that's unionizing, one of the things that you're probably going to want to talk about in bargaining is how are we going to use AI? How are we going to use it as a tool and not use it to try to replace people? And I say try to replace people because you can try, but I don't think it would actually be an effective replacement for a person. Generative AI just kind of takes information

from elsewhere and aggregates it or takes the average of all of that and then gives you a result and then you pick your favorite that and then gives you a result. And then you pick your favorite result and it spins back into itself. We've already heard stories of generative AI poisoning itself because it's getting its own generated images and it just becomes even worse in its output. What it says it can do isn't quite what it thinks it can do by any means. So yeah, I'm concerned because I'm an artist in my free time. I don't like the notion of generative AI replacing people, but right now it isn't ethical. It would be a risk

to a company right now to be using it because it has so many copyrighted materials already in the well. So Microsoft does not want to be using that, rightfully so. So until they have something that is ethical on several fronts and can actually do that, by then, I don't think even artists would be concerned, right? Because it's not a danger. Yeah, no, that makes complete sense. And Microsoft just wants to sell it to other people through open AI right now, hopefully not kind of cram it down the throats of its video game studios. At least that's what I'm hearing, luckily. With reference to what you were saying there, Taylor, around the negotiations, you know, when you're talking about, you know, the ZeniMax QA workers union that is happening there. Obviously, both of your unions now, I'm sure,

are entering into or have already begun contract negotiations with Microsoft. Is there anything specifically that you're looking for in contract negotiations? Microsoft. Is there anything specifically that you're looking for in contract negotiations? Will AI protections be part of that? What other things are you interested in? Well, without getting into the specifics, because we are still very early on in the process, we still are working on electing our bargaining committee and actually getting to that table. But, you. But we want to have agreements that address all of the things that we've been talking about, that address layoff protections, protections from AI, addressing pay, all of those types of things, just general working conditions,

making sure that we have a voice in making those decisions is really the main part, is having a seat at that table. Yeah, we're so early in the process. We just won the vote, so we're working on standing up our bargaining committee as well. Again, like I said, during our organizing, we heard a wide variety of issues that people are concerned about, but our top four were pay commensurate with cost of living for the areas that we have to live in and for our industry, right? You could make a certain amount doing games or you could make a lot more doing the same thing as a software engineer for some big tech company, right? We're tech. We should be paid like we're tech. And people are concerned about

layoff protections. Again, as Taylor said, unions cannot prevent layoffs, but we can mitigate the effects of layoffs. We already get to bargain with the company over how and when and everything. People at World of Warcraft are also concerned about transparency around performance reviews and promotions, how that happens and why, and all of that needs to be a little less opaque. And the last thing that people are largely concerned about is work from home, access to work from home. Cat's out of the bag. Pandemic happened. People need to be able to choose where they want to work. If that's an office, if that's hybrid, if that's remote. We had that freedom for a long time and people are

keen on seeing that change in some form. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Those demands all seem very reasonable to me. So hopefully, you know, the contract negotiation goes well once that process gets started for both of you. I think I just wanted to end by asking you about, you know, kind of the broader trend we're seeing with unionization, right? You know, we talked about how both of your unions are wall-to-wall unions. We've been seeing QA unions as well. Obviously, we've been seeing some unionization up here in Montreal. What do you see with the trend in video game unionization? And do you think that this is something that like the ball has gotten rolling on and it's just going to

continue going? What are your hopes there? My hopes are what you just said, that we're just the beginning of the line of dominoes, right? Like, I think that we are showing that it is possible to organize a game workers union, especially under Microsoft. I would love to see every game studio under ZeniMax, under Microsoft unionized. It'd be super cool if we could then make a union of our unions. I don't know if that's actually a thing, but it would be dope. And then eventually the rest of the industry, you know, like I think, yes, we're tech workers, but we're also entertainment workers. And when you compare our industry to movies, right, like we make more money than them.

And we don't get paid as well as a lot of folks in that industry. And it's because that entire industry is basically unionized and ours should be too. And then from there, just unionize every workplace, right? Like we all deserve the protections of a union. And anybody who wants to see change in their world, right? You know, we can't necessarily have a huge effect on the political realities of like, national politics that we all get upset about one way or the other. But if everybody just does one thing, just does what they can, where they can, then we're going to see change in the direction that we want to see it. And for most people, that change is probably going to be unionizing their

workplace. A little union vocab because I'm a huge jerk. There is a process by which unions can come together under one company. It's called accretion. I'm sure there's more specifics on how that process works, but it is possible. For instance, if Diablo or Overwatch or SFD, which is story and franchise development here, if they all unionized and then we were all, all of us decided to accrete into one, that would be possible, but they have to, you know, win their own votes first, if that were the case. But yeah, it would be so exciting. We're already seeing the ball continuing to roll, right? We are unionizing after so many other groups have unionized, Animax and Sega and others. And we're seeing more continuing to

do so in the shadows. So I'm very excited to see what our fellow studios do going forward. Because at least over here, a lot of it's about care for one another. The World of Warcraft team is such a caring place. Every Voice Matters is one of our company values that's printed on a metal plate around the Ork in the center of Irvine campus. And you can feel it here. And I want that for everyone in the industry. I want everyone to feel that their voice matters and that they can stand together with their co-workers for better workplace conditions. Yeah. Don't we all want that? And I'm sure I was thrilled to see the news that both of your studios, you know, had formed these unions. And I'm sure that there will be more good news to come. Again,

not speaking on insider information, just my hopes and dreams, right? I was also wondering, you know, this is putting you on the spot a little bit, maybe. Any games you're really liking lately that you want to recommend to the listeners that you think are really good and fun? I don't want to do the whole self-promotion thing, but I am going to do it because I am very excited about this. So I love mobile gaming and I also really love resource management. For about six months, I got to work on our mobile game Castles. And it is coming out, I think, in like a week. It's coming out within this month.

And it's very cute. It's very fun. And if you like, you know, castle building or resource management or mobile games, I highly recommend it. It's a really fun game. I love that. I've recently been playing the Lord of the Rings Return to Moria, which is very much like a crafting game, collecting a bunch of ores, building my little, you know, houses and buildings and forts and whatever you want to call them. I love that. What about you, Catherine?

Yeah, I mostly have time for games when I'm gaming with friends. So I feel like most of what we do is things like Lethal Company. A lot of my friends are playing Helldivers. I haven't gotten a chance to dive in myself yet. And gosh, I keep playing The Sims 3. I keep going back to old games that I've long loved because I have no brain space for new stuff right now. But we are enjoying Lethal Company still. And I play D&D every week. You go back to Sims 3, not Sims 4? Have you played The Sims 4?

Yeah. Have you played The Sims 3? Oh, yeah. I grew up with The Sims 3. Okay. I was really into Sims 2, but I'm into the building component of things. Oh. And I like the building in Sims 4. You haven't done any modded Sims 3 then? No, I haven't. Despite where I work, I'm not big into mods. I just always get afraid that I'm going to ruin my computer. LimeWire ruined me as a millennial. Oh, okay. No, I so get that. I was

the same way until the pandemic started and we were playing Minecraft nonstop and we got so bored of the base game that we just started modding it. But Sims 3, they got tons of stuff. I love the Sims 3. Sims 4, you're so isolated. You're in your own little home. You can't go anywhere is what it felt like to me. I like being able to walk around the town and poke at stuff, even though there isn't much to poke at. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. For actual gameplay, I get that. But the building in 4 is pretty good. There are things that I get frustrated about. I don't want to drag The Sims or Maxis, so I won't air out my grievances about it. Hey, that's EA. You can drag them. It's not Microsoft, right?

I get going back to old games, though. I lot of it's the most recent civ but i still love playing civilization uh quite a bit six then yeah six i can't wait for seven i'm so thrilled is that is that is that considered old now it's like what a decade close to that right really yeah wow i played it for the first time in college. Gotcha. Gotcha. Well, I've been playing it since it came out. And I played the other ones before that while they were out. But, you know, I will say it was great to talk to both of you to learn about the process of unionizing at both of your companies and, you know, your thoughts on the broader kind of headwinds that are facing the industry and you as workers. So thank you both so much for taking the time. It's really been fantastic to talk to you.

Thank you so much. It's been great talking. Yeah, it's been great to get to know both of you. Taylor Welling is a producer and union member at OneBGS, and Catherine Friesen is a quest designer for World of Warcraft and a member of the World of Warcraft Game Makers Guild. Tech Won't Save Us is made in partnership with The Nation magazine and is hosted by me, Paris Marks. Production is by Eric Wickham and transcripts are by Bridget Palou-Fry. Tech Won't Save Us relies on the support of listeners like you to keep providing critical perspectives

on the tech industry. You can join hundreds of other supporters by going to patreon.com slash tech won't save us and making a pledge of your own. Thanks for listening and make sure to come back next week. Thank you.