alt Hacker NewsI don't really know what unionization has to do with making good games. We've seen plenty of studios fall from grace with raw, unfettered capitalism.
It ultimately will come down to if it can retain talent and don't do a soft reset every project.
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the expectation combined with more studios doing stuff, the fact that video-games don't have 100 years (so it's a maturing art form, somehow) and also investment money... i believe there's much more chances of quality declining on companies by the hook of investors or at least less innovation (which seems to drive a bunch of 'unicorns' on this field)? graphics kinda topped by now, there's no more magic on realism/fancy graphics! maybe at some point role-play/storytelling will get more complex/infinite with AI but it's not clear how or if it'll, as we have player driven multi-player video-games for quite a while, like Albion or some much older: https://www.havenandhearth.com/portal/ ... maybe man vs. the machine in a sensible way and not those engines stomping pro-players on Dota
I don't think "raw, unfettered capitalism" and unions are orthogonal.
Actually, quite the opposite - in a free market, labor is free to organize in any way they want. If they have enough leverage over the employer, they'll succeed.
The anti-free market part is the regulatory quagmire that the US has in place for organized labor.
I think that's the thing that most people take umbrage with.
I don't know for sure, but I've heard from knowledgeable folks that it is more effective in Europe.
One theory is that building/maintaining games is knowledge work, and each worker you retain helps with that. But as always, human social groups can deviate against the common good, but they can also boost it, and in this case even protect against abuses of the masses workers by management.