Quiet Riot: A Cult Of Silence (The Jimquisition)
Added 2019-05-20 13:36:49 +0000 UTCThere's a culture of silence in the game industry, which pairs "nicely" with the unquestioning loyalty some companies expect from their workers.
In the wake of Riot employees staging a walkout to protest suppressive forced arbitration, let's look at how abuse festers in an industry where the targets can't speak up.
Comments
I wonder how many episodes on Jimquisition have started with Jim pensively tapping a Boglin on it's... head? Do they have heads as such? Anyway I started this post with a rubbish joke because I don't know what to say about all this. It's genuinely awful, not the kind thing I can even mock or make snide comments about. At this point I'd be amazed if anyone would actively seek to work in the gaming industry. It's the reason why I'm convinced that nations ought to litigate for a kind of universally agreed-on code of conduct for anyone applying for leadership roles. Not just in the gaming industry but in society in general. It's depressing that we live within an ideological backdrop where being an intelligent and objectively reasonable person <b>isn't</b> a set-in-stone requirement for being in charge of anything. People like Scott Gelb and the rest of the bro-dudes cultivating an atmosphere of macho infantilism in gaming has to stop. Has to be stopped if necessary.
Freakish Uproar
2019-05-21 10:02:12 +0000 UTCThanks for this type of coverage. I work for USPS, and the NALC has been great for my coworkers and I. I truly wish developers would form a union. A union could set industry standards at a humane level. But corporations are sociopaths. Also, get your belt back soon!
Gage
2019-05-21 00:40:26 +0000 UTCIt seems the only way to get a job in a non-unionized industry to sign up to forced arbitration. And it sucks because so many people (myself included) just want to get paid and be done with it so we don't fight that, we just do our jobs and pray we don't ever have a need to try to circumvent that arbitration. It's a mess. And I'm sad to see Riot Games isn't getting better. Since the sexist culture articles showed up, I haven't touched League of Legends, a game I had been playing for years, hoping to return one day once the company fixed itself. Guess my tiny protest will continue perhaps in perpetuity. Oh well.
Perpetual Noob
2019-05-20 16:03:38 +0000 UTCI've been doing customer service in various places for 20 years. I'm already irreplaceable... I took a week off and came back to literal tears of joy. But my boss is an idiot who doesn't believe in giving raises unless she needs to lure someone who has quit back, and she thinks she has an unlimited replacement pool in a town of 2000 souls. Trust me, when I get something else, I'm not giving two weeks. They haven't earned that, with all their attempts to bully and intimidate me. Too bad for them two decades of that crap builds a really thick skin. Hell I'm only doing this job because I had to move back to the middle of nowhere for a few years to help my parents.
Trevor Bond
2019-05-20 15:42:30 +0000 UTCI work in the tech sector myself. My company has me hired as an independant contractor. The nice thing about that tho is that I managed to make myself pretty vital and hard to replace, so it's fiscally smart to treat me right and give me reasonable requests. I've also been in a position when they wanted me to move up where I demanded to renegotiate my contract or walk, and was given the reasonable demands I asked for. Unfortunately, often times it comes down to how easy are you to replace. They could replace me but they'd lose some good will from clients and probably a few mill in the interim training period by virtue of extended downtimes.... Your situation leaves you with limited viability to make demands, however you are in a position to put in some extra work to distinguish yourself and in doing so make the case that shit would fall apart at night without you. This can lead to promotions or at least a raise. Other than that... yeah you're just fucked and capitalism is often fucked. Especially in the low skill (no offense, I got much respect for service workers, I came up that way myself) sectors. My advice is to put applications out there, find someone willing to wait a couple weeks (a company hiring) so you can put in your two weeks, and bounce. It's going to get worse before it gets better... trust me.
Harry Moore
2019-05-20 15:22:37 +0000 UTCAudio's a bit off on this one. Like two mono speakers transmitting the same audio with some echo rather than stereo
Harry Moore
2019-05-20 15:16:10 +0000 UTCI work at THE well known Canadian franchise coffee shop (which shall remain obvious but nameless) as night crew. I've just been bitched out by my assistant supervisor this morning not because I personally do a bad job, but because some OTHER members of the night shift are lazy, useless idiots. But rather than confront those individuals about their laziness, they say 'night shift is a team so we're talking to all of you'. Which they are doing individually to avoid having to actually confront anyone about their poor work directly. Yeah... ALL companies are slimebags, video game or service or pretty well any sector at all. And if 'night shift is a team', I suppose that makes management and day shifts the opposition? Or are the people that actually work all night expected to pick up their feet a little more and babysit the non-workers that get the same pay? I dunno, man... the world doesn't make sense.
Trevor Bond
2019-05-20 14:29:23 +0000 UTC
