A documentary about working conditions in the video game industry
How video games are made
These last months, video game industry news were ...
rather eventful, it's the least we can say.
In January 2018, a Quantic Dream gate appeared after the joint investigations
of the french newspapers Le Monde, Médiapart and Canard PC.
They revealed the bad management inside the company
and the not so professional atmosphere we could find in their offices.
Then in February, a strike appears at Eugen Systems,
something rather unusual in the industry.
Then in March, it's Game Workers Unite in the United States
which was founded, only a few months after the union which was created in France,
called "Syndicat des travailleurs et travailleuses du jeu vidéo" or STJV.
Following this event, journalist Jason Schreier published an investigative book
about working conditions in major studios:
Blood, Sweat and Pixels. Then, last September, the Telltale Games studio,
father of games like the Walking Dead video game adaptation
announced the lay-off of the majority of its employees without warning.
And finally, in October, it was the leaders of the Rockstar Games studio who announced,
a few days before the release of Red Dead Redemption 2, that some people in their teams
had worked nearly 100 hours a week at certain times of development.
And all that made so much noise
that we even ended up talking about working conditions in the biggest french TV news show, which tell a lot.
So as you can see the atmosphere in the industry is rather tense lately
There is a lot of talk everywhere to see how we could improve things.
Because, all the problems raised lately,
in reality, there are here since the beginning, hidden under the carpet.
And nowadays, people start speaking openly about these issues.
If we go back in time in the history of video games, we can find clues
of this reality, moments when the anger suddenly emerged publicly.
As in 1998 for example, where a few Ubisoft employees launched Ubifree,
a kind of virtual union, to protest the working conditions in the company,
and the result of which was obtaining the first elections of staff delegates.
Or in 2004, with the story of the EA Spouse, a case that brought together
the spouse of the EA developers who complained about the working conditions of
their husband. All these are just examples. But this accumulation of scandals,
they reveal each time similar abuses. It reveals the video game as a
dysfunctional industry, with deep structural issues.
Recently, it's an article published on Gamekult
and written by journalist Nicolas Turcev
which was telling a little bit of all that.
So I went to meet him.
[NICOLAS] Working conditions in the video game are relatively difficult.
We are not assembly-line workers, or whatever.
But still, there is a real pain, which is more like a psychological one.
Burnout, depressions, that kind of thing.
Which are direct consequences of management crises
that often provoke overtime, often not paid.
[NARRATOR] These extra hours that Nicolas is describing here
is what we call the crunch,
a kind of institutionalization of overtime, with extra-hours
sometimes even planned in advance in the game development schedule.
It is something very recurrent, which takes often place before each big step of a project,
and that we can find in many studios. According to the International Game Developers Association
nearly 76% of employees in the video game industry experience crunch regularly,
35% working between 65 and 80 hours a week.
And almost a third of workers undergoing the crunch would not see those extra-hours paid.
During my research on the matter, I met Noah Young, Game-Designer at Amplitude Studio
and member of STJV, the very young french workers union
so that he can speaks to us about it.
[NOAH] Crunch culture, let's say it's something that probably emerged with the beginning
of video games where it was already this start-up nation spirit.
We had people doing little things, or even in the big studios like Activision,
the developers they were alone on their games, coded their stuff. So they were working very hard.
And then there is this culture I think that existed at this moment.
And it was often people who did not necessarily have family because they were still young.
So you got the time work a lot, to put yourself into it
and do something you like. Because in general there is this element.
We like what we do, we like the end products we are working on.
And so yeah, nowadays where it is a lot more like a real industry,
a lot less like pals in their garages who make games, by either management
which imposes an institutional crunch in fact.
That is to say who will literally plans periods of work overload during the project.
The other type of crunch, which is a lot more insidious, it's the one we force to ourselves.
It's like, fuck, I want to do it right, so I work hard, so I go there and I do it.
So we force ourselves to make extra hours.
But we should say: "No, I did my hours, either I am paid to work overtime and I work more, either etc" ...
But that is what happened to me for example in my old company.
Where I worked so much that there were days when I was finishing at one o'clock, two o'clock in the morning,
and I came back the next day at 9am, 8am, to work.
[NARRATOR] Crunch is very prevalent in the industry.
But everyone does not agree on the reasons of its existence.
Some think it is necessary to finish a game in time.
Others blame it on managerial methods rather questionable.
[NICOLAS] I'll say as I say often, it's that it's fundamentally dysfunctional.
There is a lot of issues which make us see plenty delays in games development
which make us see people who are forced to work overtime, all that.
All of this is created by, on the one hand there are the problems of expertise.
But also there is a managerial problem which is often bad planning.
In the video game industry, there is not too much a culture
of good production, I would say, perhaps realistic production,
which we could say has healthy ambitions in term of planning.
Because they are people who are not necessarily trained,
because there are many people who find themselves at these producer positions
and who have not necessarily the profile.
And there are not a lot of very good producers.
[NARRATOR] These production problems are often mentioned when we talk about crunch.
There is for example this crazy story about the development of Red Dead Redemption 2.
It was revealed that the creators of the game decided quite late in the making of the game
to add some black bars during dialogue scenes.
The thing is, these scenes had already been shot without the black bars.
So developers had to redo all the dialogues,
without being able to delay the release date of the game.
The result was days and nights of overtime to finish in time.
Management issues that also evokes Corentin and Alexis, two founding members of the STJV.
[ALEXIS] That is to say that games are developments that are still very complex.
So necessarily difficult to estimate. And often, in fact, they come out at a time that does not match
the moment when the game is really finished. There are always bugs
and we can always improve things. And in fact we could do it forever.
In the planning, we often decide on a moment when we stop development and at that moment we try
to fix everything that is important before release.
We are always late. Games are never release on time.
And so, we do crunch, etc.
We are afraid of not finishing in time, we are afraid to make a bad game
because we are concerned about the quality of the games that we do.
In fact, it's living with the general disorganization that is hard.
And sometimes also, more cynically,
it can happen that we are actually counting on this corporate culture
where we are going to work really hard, we will work dozens of hours.
We count on it, we integrate it in the schedules, we integrate it in a production logic,
and it's completely assumed sometimes.
Employees are clearly an adjustment variable sometimes.
[NARRATOR] This employee who becomes an adjustment variable,
he is sometimes trained very early to become one.
Video game schools, often private and very expensive,
trained a lot of malleable employees, who will fit easily in the industry.
In an article published in July 2012 on Gamekult,
William Audureau revealed that in Valenciennes,
the Supinfogame specialized school had planned a room dedicated to work at night,
equipped with a kitchen and a fridge.
[NOAH] Video game schools are a part, we will not say a cause but, a place where this system starts.
Where it begins. Because basically we learn from school
with projects to work really hard. People are doing sleepless nights and all that.
And it's like a badge of honor: ah yeah I did a sleepless night for the project.
But it's stupid. It is useless.
And so, at school, we start to become used to crunch.
The problem is that the crunch is not a practice without consequence.
The body has its limits, and working enormously does not help
to preserve one's physical health, nor his mental health.
It's Anaïs Simonnet, 3D Graphic Designer at Amplitude Studios
and Member of the association Women in Games, which told me about it.
[ANAÏS] Video games development is sometimes pretty chaotic in terms of planning.
There are technical problems, there is pressure from publishers, there are decisions
that are made at the last moment and we often tend to end up in these situations.
And the problem is that the crunch is never a good thing.
Because people are exhausted. People burn out.
They finish the project, ok.
But they sometimes leave the video game industry after.
Repetitive depressions sometimes, burnouts very often.
Also life trajectories that will go wrong, which will create
also maybe family problems. I had some testimonials of the kind.
And also a disgust, a disgust for the job, and for their vocation.
Maybe they are very good in their job. But it's just the work environment that make them run away.
[NARRATOR] These realities reveal a rather blatant lack of consideration of the sector employees.
Many, often exhausted, end up leave the industry quite young.
There is what is called a strong turn-over. Employees leave the industry after
a few years and are often quickly replaced by new hands.
During my research on this subject, I had the chance to interview
Katharine Neil, a freelance game developer from New Zealand who works nowadays in France.
She worked 20 years in the industry, and still continues to work in the video game industry,
which makes her an exception in the sector.
[KATHARIN] Me, for example, I am a dinosaur. My friends who work in the field of film,
in the field of television, in the arts, etc ..., my friends around my age, they are
in the middle of their career. But, for me, it's a little bit weird. I am not a manager,
I do not have my own company, I'm not a director of a company. It's a little bit weird.
I am like a grandmother in comparison to others, and that's really weird for me.
My retirement, when will it be? When I'm 70 years old, what will I do for the next 30 years?
There is pressure on me and people like me.
There is, of course, ageism. And I find it a bit ironic in a moment
when we talk a lot about diversity. How can we have a real diversity when there are
people with children who can not maintain a normal life because you have to give everything
to your boss.
We did a study within the STJV.
And basically the drop-off is 35 years old. After 35 years, there is a lot less
people who work in the video games industry because in fact they are just too tired,
not paid well enough, etc ... And so they prefer to look toward other types of industries.
And so yes, there is strong turn-over because of managerial reasons.
But also because when people are thirty, thirty-five years old, and they want to
found a family and that they are in a work area that is so much unstable.
There are many who testify,
who have leave the industry, who have gone from video games to other industries,
often towards computer development, or in the animation or that kind of things
industries that are better organized, more structured, who say, well here
we left, we left simply because we just had a kid
or we just wanted to buy a house and we had no visibility on our jobs,
on our career. Careers in the video game industry is not taboo
but not far. It seems a bit stratospheric.
What is cool is mobility, it's agility, that sort of thing.
We rarely see a developer who can make a career
for 30 years in the same studio.
Unless it is obviously the name, the main developer of this studio or ect.
[NARRATOR] This agility is very fashionable right now. But it's often not for the benefit of the employees.
It is synonymous with precariousness for workers.
In most cases, at the peak of development of a game, the studios have a lot of workers.
Workers they will lay-off once the project is finished,
while waiting to start another one. According to the agency TargetCW, between 10% and 15% of
video game employees are not employees, but people under precarious contract.
They are often treated like employees but without the protections
and benefits that go with it. And if this agility for the benefit of employers is understandable
when we look at the complexity of video games creation, as we have seen, it also imbalances
enormously the balance of power between boss and employee.
And it is to the advantage of the company directors.
[KATHARINE] But the reason why it benefits the industry, I think, it's a bit obvious.
If you have workers who stay for just 5 years in the industry,
that's the average duration.
You have young people who are full of enthusiasm, that does not have a lot of work experience,
who believe that they are different, because they are young, they have dreams,
they have not seen the injustices, they always think that the boss is maybe their friend.
And so yes, it's a bit more difficult to organize.
So that's an advantage for the industry.
[NARRATOR] This young and precarious workforce, it is therefore easier to manage.
It is less prompt to unite to defend its interests. And this agility in fashion
in the video game business, it's something that can also be found in the movie business,
Where workers go from one film to another very regularly.
Except that here, on the other hand, the workers' rights are much better,
thanks to better working conditions that the very old unions in the sector won a long time ago.
Something that does not exist in the video game industry.
There is the "intermittent du spectacle" status in France, for example
that does not exist in the video game industry. An industry that is unable to keep
its talents and see its best elements living all the time..
[NICOLAS] There is an experience loss in studios because,
if these senior profiles go away,
they have all the expertise, all the know-how
and they do not transmit it to the junior profile or so rarely.
Especially since there is no instance
to accumulate this knowledge.
Unions can often be this kind of intermediaries,
which allows the industry to have good practices.
But all this knowledge, it is not institutionalized. And that creates a big deficit.
And every young person, every times, have everything to learn again.
And so, that contributes to the fact that the functioning of the industry stagnates.
This industry that stagnates and scares its talents, it reveals us
that the creation of video games is often an exhausting and very precarious process.
Working conditions that leave a lot of people on the sideway.
[KATHARIN] There are parts of my brain that I'm convinced are dead because of working conditions.
For example, we are here in my apartment. I work at home
because of this, because of my back, of my neck.
This is because in front of an desk, it became a bit difficult for me, I have to move a bit,
that's a bit difficult for me to work without good ergonomics. Because of the effects of work
in my industry. I have friends, artists, who have trouble using their arms and their eyes.
And I'm still angry because of that. Now my life is much more
peaceful because I'm working on my own pace. I work hard but I have more flexibility in my work.
Having a job that takes so much space in a person's life, it's not given to everyone.
There are people who have external constraints.
It's more difficult for example for a woman to stop working for a maternity leave
in a video game studio. It is something that is rarely done.
So it will disadvantage some people.
[NARRATOR] These difficult working conditions, which hurt sometimes the workers' bodies,
they prevent people already weakened in society to work in the video game industry.
The consequence is that the videogame industry is essentially a sector dominated by men.
According to the last SNJV studies, the french bosses' union of video games,
the industry would only count 14% of women in its workforce.
The Electronic Arts Spouse gate,
which was followed by the Rockstar Spouse by the way,
it also reveals that this exploitation of male employees,
it relies heavily on the exploitation of unpaid domestic work of women,
who have to look after the house and kids during the crunch periods of their husbands.
This is something that is described by researchers Greig de Peuter
and Nick Dyer-Witheford in a scientific article published in the Canada Journal of Communication.
All of this contributes to creating an ecosystem who quickly becomes hostile to women,
who find themselves facing very masculine corporate cultures.
[NICOLAS] Also a lack of supervision of the corporate culture. A lack of healthy corporate culture.
Which can shock, which can... We've seen it with
photomontages at Quantic Dream. It can hurt. And unfortunately
in some video game companies, there are company cultures that can
be borderline. And who do not necessarily pay attention to employees, to their
well-being, their desires.
And I think that typically the issues that have been raised at Quantic Dream,
it's something that exist in a lot of other studios. But since it's a bigger company,
since it was publicized, since people started to talk about it,
it became bigger. And I think it's important to talk about it
because not everybody is necessarily aware of how much it can be serious.
Often there are behaviors, some behaviors in companies
where in fact everyone finds it normal. And people do not realize that
it can be really heavy or inconvenient for some people. And the fact that there are
cases that are publicized, that there are people who have the courage to speak,
and who feel defended, it also helps to realize things that are wrong
and to improve them before it become serious.
But there is an environment which clearly is in favor of this kind of issues.
Video Game Workers are usually people with precarious contracts
who work on a lot of exhausting projects, in environments not always welcoming.
And all of this come from a kind of legal uncertainty,
especially in France, on the very definition of being a video game creator.
[ANAÏS] The video game industry is one of a kind, because it really has totally
exploded in 15 years, it took a lot of magnitude and even sometimes
it's hard to realize the money and the influence that is linked to this medium.
And the problem is that it has evolved so fast that we did not have much time to adapt.
I think for example legally. The video game has a status, even in France, that is a little fuzzy.
For a long time we did not really know if it was software development, if it was gambling.
For every law that exists, it's a different status.
We do not know exactly what it is.
The problem is that to unionize, etc..., it's difficult
to relate to things that exist already. So in fact you have to create them.
You have to start from scratch.
[NARRATOR] This legal definition which would allow to create adapted labor standards
to the specific problems of video games creation, this is what we call
a collective agreement. Basically, it's a text that defines the status of
workers in a professional branch and which is negotiated between organizations
representing employers and organizations representing employees.
It allows to develop work rules that are adapted to the sector's needs.
And the thing is, it does not exist in the video game industry.
The collective agreement that applies to the majority is SYNTEC.
So it's the collective agreement for developers.
More than 50% of the video game studios are under this collective agreement.
The problem is that it doesn't fit the needs of the industry.
Because IT developers are programming professions, software, this kind of things.
While in the video game, there are animation professions,
artists, etc... Graphic designers, this kind of things.
Which does not really fit in the SYNTEC collective agreement.
And, more importantly, video games workers never had their say
in the collective agreement that governs them. Which is a big problem.
We find ourselves in a rather lunar situation where they adhere and they comply with the standards
they did not negotiate collectively. Which is a democratic problem at this stage.
A labor democracy problem.
[NARRATOR] This legal blur is therefore an advantage for employers. It helps to maintain
low wages and statuses that weaken the power of the employees.
Alexis Colin, who worked at Eugen Systems, experienced it himself.
[ALEXIS] At Eugen, we were under SYNTHEC convention, like many studios.
One day I read it and my grandfather passed. He stops, he sees the salary grid. He was from metallurgy.
And he stops and he says: But it's incredibly low.
[NARRATOR] But these low wages, they do not come only from the SYNTEC convention.
They are also the consequence of the fierce competition which takes place on the job market.
Because, the video game industry looks cool, and many people want to work in it.
[ANAÏS] The problem is that I think that it was easy for me because I'm from a well-known school.
And it's always the same problem. It is that
it is very very difficult to enter the video game industry. When we do not have the network, when
we do not have the contacts or we do not have the good formation.
In fact there are many hires
but it's also very competitive because there are also many people who want to do these jobs.
We can see the consequences of that for example with wages or working conditions.
Many times employers can say: I will not necessarily pay well
because I know I will find someone else if that person leaves.
There is a lot of turnover In the enterprises. Many precarious contracts.
And that's also because companies know
they will always find someone behind.
[NICOLAS] Often, for equivalent positions in two different industries, for example, we take the job
of developer, for a developer position in a start-up,
it can be paid between 30 and 45k euros or more. And in the video game industry
on average it will be maybe 5000 € or 10,000 € less.
The reason is often because making video games is a passion. So it justifies to be less paid
to be less respected overall because you should have to consider yourself lucky
to be able to be in this industry.
But then, when we see all this, we can ask ourselves:
why nothing moved since the beginning?
Why have there been no negotiations that have resulted in an improvement of the situation?
And here, it is a deeper question which is raised.
A question about the ideology of the video game industry,
often shared between employers and employees.
An ideology that allows to maintain the status quo.
So my name is Mehdi Debbabi-Zourgani. I am a teacher in game-design school,
mainly on game-studies related topics. And I'm also working
as a freelancer in the video game industry, like a consulting,
especially in everything that's related to cultural logic.
So I think there are several things. It's first of all because video games are hype.
It's been a while since it's in fashion.
We are constantly hearing, and it is not entirely founded,
the fact that it's the cultural industry that bring back the largest amount of money now.
Which is in fact not quite true, if we dug this question. But I think
that it is the 1st element. It's in the spotlight, so inevitably there is that.
It goes together with the logic of competitiveness. Whether it's in the
political speeches, in the financial norm which also go beyond
the video game industry. Which says that you have to be reactive, you have to
produce quickly, be innovative, be a force of proposal in a sometime absurd manner.
The second element is that it's something that gradually became
established in the very culture of video games, and especially what we named, and unfortunately
I think continues to name the gamer culture. So the gamer culture is going to encompass as much
of the dimension that video gaming would only be a culture
about performance. Performance obviously not theatrical but performance which means
I'm better than you, I'm a better gamer because I have more knowledge
on the domain, I play more than you, I know more games than you, etc...
And I think that it also globalizes in... the same way as we could see,
in fraternities, or in hazing in medicine' schools,
there is something like that of the initiation rite
to say to oneself: it is necessary to be a real man, I'm here for the company, I'm doing it thoroughly
and in any ways, those games that make me dream for a while, they have to be done.
Video games has democratized in the 80s, and we must not forget that this is
the Reagan Thatcher era with the rise of neoliberalism, and all that goes with it,
the financialization of the world, etc. So it really grew in a period
which was a period conducive to the explosion of standards, to the liberalization
of societal values and also businesses, that kind of thing. And so, it's
normal that we find ourselves with the reflection of this period in the companies.
And the video game industry is not isolated from the rest of the world or whatever.
What we see in start-ups currently, what can be see for example in companies like Amazon
with abuses because you have to make more money, you have to ect.
The video game too was taken in these logics.
And what is noteworthy is that it's one of the biggest cultural industries
but it's the only one among the major cultural industries
who was formed, who really democratized right in this neo-liberalism.
There is a corporate ideology in the video game clearly. And yes it's an ideology
to which many people who work in this medium there adhere.
Because you must see that people who work in the game industry
are from a superior socioprofessional categorie in fact. They come from an upper-middle-class
and their values ​​are those from the meritocracy,
working harder to bring back more money, this kind of things.
The values which are common to the business leaders who manage them.
And so that is why it has not clashed for a long time. Because there was a clear connection,
between those who manage the studios and the employees.
They were friends! And they still are in the vast majority. There is just a small group
that really starts to raise some issues to say: maybe you should stop take us for fools.
[NARRATOR] And now, we immediately understand why the negotiations to create
a collective agreement are not working, why we advocate for the mobility and agility of working forces
at the benefits of employers.
Parasited by the neoliberal ideology,
video games refuse the constraining but protective frameworks of a more specific labor law.
The consequences: this culture of over-work is in fashion.
And even among the independent developers who work in small studios.
The Sundance award winner documentary Indie Game: The Movie, released in 2012,
is a good example of this reality.
The movie shows us the working reality of big names from the independant community like
Jonathan Blow or Edmund McMillen.
With their very hard working conditions, continuously crunching,
to their planetary success and financial wealth.
Except that the movie never criticized what it's showing to us.
And the consequences are catastrophic: the movie is a total celebration of overwork,
it makes self-destruction a cool thing, like it is the only condition to succeed in life.
And nowadays, a lot of people think that this is a very motivating documentary.
But it should be the opposite. Because in reality there is only a very small percentage
among people who work that hard that will be successful.
The vast majority will give up, often with hard physical and psychological consequences.
And this neoliberal ideology we talk about earlier, it is the source of these problems.
But its seduction capacity, which makes us believe it is possible to become rich and famous by hardwork,
it seems so powerful that it prevents any protest movement from happening.
[NICOLAS] There is a mythification of the glorious designer,
of the success story, of the game that will have a huge success, and that will bring back billions.
For example Notch, that brick back 2 billions with Minecraft
when I spoke with developers, it was clearly their goal.
And especially with Free 2 Play developers. Some of them told me:
we just want to make a ton of games, like 50 in 3 years,
with the hope that only one got the jackpot. But in the same time, to make these games, they burn themselves.
And statistically, we can see that most of them won't become Minecraft,
because there is only one Minecraft.
I think that we are so alienated that
people forget that they have a contract, they have a schedule, they have to leave.
When I said it didn't start yesterday,
I have a friend that was telling me about a company he used to work for. When he was leaving,
his work day was over, in late-afternoon, people were telling him: oh, have a lovely afternoon!
It's... something!
We have the same issues, we are witnessing the same evolutionary phenomena in our industry
than what we saw a century ago. And all those lies, those fantasies
in the 90's, when we heard that those new jobs, in completely new sectors, with the new technologies,
with the Internet, will be completely different. The working experience will change so much.
We're going to be free. But it's absolutely not the case.
We have the same problems, we are working too much, we're not earning enough money in our industry,
exactly like in the more traditional ones.
And facing this reality, this small group that raises its voice, like Nicolas Turcev said earlier,
it is the result, the consequence of this liberalisation of market and work.
The one that push its concept so far that it reveals itself in all its weaknesses.
This small group, it's the one we can see in the "gilets jaunes" movement,
in these protest movements we can see everywhere. Facing capitalism, which gives power
to a minority of people, to those who own the companies,
workers start to claim this power, they want more democracy in their work.
They question this idea of subordination, of vertical hierarchy
between an all-powerful employer and an obedient employee, which is not necessarily obvious.
This capitalist logic, when it goes with the deregulation that liberalism allows,
it creates the issues we are experiencing today.
Issues we can see almost everywhere. The video game industry is only a reflection
of an overall deterioration in the living conditions of the majority of workers in the western world.
In France, for example, the two "loi travail"
have considerably weakened the prud'hommes. These places where employees
could come to protest, in front of the justice, againt their bosses' abuses, they lost a big part of their power.
The journalist Olivier Cyran described this very well in a Twitter thread
where he showed that complaints to the labor courts dropped by nearly 20% in 2017.
The sign of further decline of counter-powers at the hands of workers.
[NOAH] There is also the whole global context, which is the capitalist economy that codifies
how are we going to produced games. We are talking about industry, it's not innocent.
The goal is to make products, sell them, make them again, sell them, etc...
So, there is a moment where the very reason why we are creating games is a financial one.
And the goal is to brick back money.
So this is something that will dictate the creative process in the biggest companies.
So everything is codified and created by that. And how is it translated?
It is translated with a heavy competition between all video games actors.
And to succeed in this market, knowing that game was more and more expensive to create,
the players expectations grow linearly too,
and finally, what do we do when we can't hire more people because it's not profitable?
We rely on the workers.
Facing these issues, nowadays there is a resistance that organize itself. Because, there are many people
that want to reshape an economy for the people, and does not want people serving the economy anymore.
[ALEXIS] The idea: defeating capitalism, I like it a lot.
Because, it is a rough way to say: you have to take into account the workers,
the people who work and people with experience.
Because capitalism is the system in which someone possess a company while it is not his job.
I mean, it is his job to possess and manage a company, but it is not his job to create games.
And I think that very often there is a problem in the video game companies:
there is someone who has all the powers.
Who can go beyond everyone, who can say to the game-designer: "I don't like your game-design".
But there are people with ten years worth of experience
after 5 years studying this topic to know if it's good or not. So defeating capitalism...
it depends what come after,
but it can already remove people with too much power in video game companies.
Personally, I believe it would be a great way to organize the companies.
The fact that there would be several people, or even every workers who decide together
what we do, how, etc... I think it would work better yeah,
better than the organisation we can see in some studios nowadays.
[NARRATOR ] This power in the hands of those who own the companies
is more and more questioned. Because it is saw as less effective than a more democratic system
where decisions are made together.
Nowadays, we have proofs, for example, that make us think that crunch isn't effective
in the video game development process. In an article published by the International Game
Developers Association and written by Evan Robinson, we can learn that in a week
exceeding 40 hours of work, the loss of productivity because of the employees' exhaustion
is way stronger than the productivity gains obtained by working more.
So, we can say that in the long as in the sort term, crunch reduces productivity instead of improving it.
And yet we continue to crunch in a large amount of studios.
Something we could probably avoid if the decision
to crunch was decided together, in a balanced debate.
[ANAÏS] We're never really effective when we work 10 hours a day.
And I think that it is clearly possible to make great games while keeping
good working conditions for employees. And I even believe that
a video game development where we take care of employees and their well-being
is going to be far more interesting and effective than a game where everything is made at the last minute,
where nothing is properly plan, where schedule are always moving, ...
But beside this debate about capitalism, there is also
what we can do right now to regulate the industry.
Issues like the collective agreement which we already talked about.
The SNJV, which gather the french bosses in the video game industry, revealed in 2016 for example
that 11% of the companies in France what attached to the collective agreement of the toy sector.
5% of the audiovisual one, 3% of the animation one,
and even some of iron and steel or metallurgy ones. The rest being attached to the SYNTEC agreement.
A situation which doesn't make sense at all. And the craziest in all that,
is the fact that this idea to create a real collective agreement for the industry,
it has already been debated 10 years ago, as Nicolas Turcev told me.
[NICOLAS] In 2007, several people sat down to try to create
a collective agreement for the video game industry. So, a collective agreement is a text
that defines the workers rights for each sector.
So the video games industry didn't have one.
Around the table, there were the CFDT, INSA, and the video games bosses, represented
by the association Capital Games, which is the video game parisians bosses association.
So they talked for a while.
At the beginning, everything was alright. It was all about minor details.
But finally it didn't work out. Bosses left the discussion when they had to
really talk about, for example, copyright. What developers could earn,
do we give them a percentage?
About working hours also for example, this kind of things. Topics that are very important.
Topics that regulate the daily work for a worker in the video game industry.
And it didn't work out and there isn't any new tentative since then because
in the union side, video games workers are not really unionised,
so nobody really push for it to happen.
And in the bosses side, it won't be at their benefits
to have a collective agreement right now.
As Nicolas Turcev says it, it is with the unionisation of a vast majority of workers
that a major change will be possible. And the thing is that
this idea is more and more discussed among video games workers.
[ALEXIS] Personally, I had the idea to unionize with the STJV first of all with the idea that we had to gather.
And, in fact, we were already doing it
when we were drinking beers with co-workers.
Drinking beers first.Then drinking beers while talking about how to solve problems.
Then we are like: there is a structure for this, it's called a union.
So we look what unions are already there. We realize that there is none.
So we decide to do it. And very rapidly, we are working on a lot of cases,
because people need it in fact. They learn that there is a video game union.
They decide to go speak about there issues,
issues they would have otherwise never talk about.
And now we have a union that work really well
just because, yeah, the need is here.
We have a co-worker that is exhausted, we have a co-workers that have been laid off, one that is harassed,
and we have to do something about it.
So I think we have to be there to help each other. Alone we can't do much.
But together we realize that it works much better. We can ask for things.
It's not a shame, not everyone is laid off, the company doesn't sink.
We can come together, we have some leverage, and we can say: there is
this issue and this issue and we think we shoud do this to solve it. And there it is.
Alone, you can't do this. But together, yeah it works.
[NARRATOR] This solidarity that we can see more and more often, it doesn't stop to the STJV in France.
Its creation in september 2017 made the idea very popular. During the Game Developer Conference
in march 2018 in San Francisco, several game developers
united to create Game Workers Unite, an association advocating for workers rights.
And which is advocating since several months in favour of unionisation in the video game industry.
In the STJV, the creation of this american group has been seen as very encouraging.
There were a lot of people that seemed to be enthusiast
with the creation of the STJV in France.
When the Discord had been made, I think we were, in the STJV, the firsts to witness it.
Because people were looking for people who had already done that.
I joined the Game Workers Unite discord
maybe 3 days after its creation. There were already hundreds of people in it.
The amount of little unions linked to
Game Workers Unite it's rather impressive. They are everywhere.
I remember... on all the American continent, in Europe, in Germany, in England, Spain, Canada, Mexico.
I remember when I went in the Discord, there were people
that were sending each other Arabic videos, spanish ones.
There were Argentinian. It look like it was a very global need.
Game Workers Unite, I think it's great that it was created.
There are everywhere. In America, in England, I believe they are even in Germany now.
It's crazy how they spread. It is really cool to see.
It looks like the Video Game International of Labor Unions
and that is really really cool.
[NARRATOR] According to the IGDA, 56% of video games employees in North America would actually
be in favour of the creation of an union to defend their interests. And it's understandable.
To unite to create a group of representatives that could serve as intermediary
between workers and their employers to defend the workers' interests
it has already show its effectiveness in history.
(PAID VACATIONS)
And nowadays, it would seems like it is no longer by saying that crunch is bad that things will improve.
It is rather by setting up legislation and a real strong counter-power
for game developers that things will improve.
[KATHARINE] I think that we have to have the material power. We can complain, we can grumble on Twitter,
we can write think-pieces, we can advocate for diversity,
we can say that we have to be kinder to our co-workers, that we have to not be sexist, that we have to...
But change come with material power. Every year, there is a crunch scandal. For 20 years.
And I saw people saying: Oh but we're going to change this and that.
We can write articles, we can make studies, we already did all that. And nothing changed.
Because we didn't have the material power. The real material power that we can
really use to change things in our work
and in our working conditions, it is our work, itself.
We can stop working for example, we can go on strike. I mean, it's very basic stuff like that.
[NARRATOR] Facing this idea growing between workers, facing those unions that are raising,
some studios executives know what is at stake. They know the power they can loose here.
Marcin Iwinski and Adam Badowski, two executives from CD Projekt Red,
makers of The Witcher, said anti-unions stuffs
in a recent interview in the french newspaper Le Monde, for example.
All of that while CD Projekt Red is known for its hard working conditions.
[NICOLAS] Unions in the video games industry, I would say that it's not too early.
It's been a while since workers should have been unionised.
They have to have something to talk together, to structure themselves.
Because they had nothing. They just had their staff delegate in their companies,
perhaps their few union delegates. Bosses, like they are used to,
have their associations, their unions. We have to have a counter-power.
There must be debate. It's rather simple. And for this debate to happen,
people must be able to express themselves, must have a platform. So I am very positive about unions.
It can only be good for the industry. It's the beginning for the moment.
But slowly, it's happening.
There is contacts happening between countries...
Everyone was thinking about it. I was thinking about it.
There also was an effervescence with Macron becoming president,
and the bad changes for workers rights that he brings with him.
We are aware that things like the CDI Projet will hit us very hard.
Because it's perfectly adapted to our industry.
This is such a huge risk. We have already a lot of precarious contracts in our industry.
We don't need a super-legal way of doing it.
So yeah. When we saw this, and the fact that the industry in this state,
with the amount of dark stories we can hear...
It's already a big mess with workers rights in a lot of places.
So yeah, it was necessary that unionisation happen.
It's funny the conjunction there is between the two movements.
When there is an attack, there is a counter attack. So there is an attack on workers rights.
The counter attack is as violent.
And the fact that the STJV is born in this pre-post-Macron period it is not random.
Video games workers are citizen like every other persons. And they acquire an awareness.
And I think there has been a sort of political understanding, a political awareness
these last years with the different political movement we've witnessed
which echoed with the young, the young that is going to work in the video games industry.
And workers rights are also
globally not respected anymore in the big western country.
So it's a part of this global movement.
The attack is global. The counter attack will also be global.
[NARRATORR] This counter attack which express itself in the streets, in working places, on Internet,
it questions power. Who holds it, and why?
This questioning that raises issues about vertical hierarchy in companies as in the political life,
it's everywhere now. Henceforth, we can see it, alternatives bloom everywhere.
Places, companies, that are trying to create with different process, together,
without boss, without leader. These initiatives, they are multiplying everywhere.
And especially in the video game industry.
Because a company without boss, it's possible, it exists, and it even works.
To better understand how, I went to Bordeaux, no to meet Alain Juppé the mayor,
but to ask questions to Motion Twin, the cooperative behind the game Dead Cells.
How did they go from the little independant studio they were to the planetary success
of their last game, rewarded at the 2018 Game Awards, even though their studio
is a model of horizontal hierarchy? It is that I wanted to understand.
My name is Sébastien Bénard. I am game-designer and developer at Motion Twin.
I'm here since almost the beginning and I deal with ingame balance,
programming, and particles also. It's everything that explodes on-screen,
that makes flashes, everything that makes flashes on-screen I'm responsible for.
So we are a SCOP, which is a Cooperative Workers' Production Company.
Generally it's bigger companies. It's companies that encounter difficulties,
that fall back into the workers' hands.
So it's designed for this kind of situations. It's rather uncommon for companies in our size.
So, in Motion Twin it's rather simple because there is 3 kind of equality.
We have the decision, everyone has a vote, so a voice we can say in all the decisions.
There is equal working time, everyone works the same amount of hours.
We quantify it. We have a kind of calendar
where everyone write their hours. So if there is excess, it is compensated.
We try to equalize for the year. And the third thing is the salary.
Everyone, every partner in Motion Twin has the same salary.
It means a part of what we called the Motion Twin minimum wage,
that is to say the Motion Twin guaranted salary,
which have been submitted to a vote. Everyone agreed
depending on the cost of living in Bordeaux, what is our internal minimum wage.
And the 2nd part which is the profit, so it's profit sharing, participation, dividend,
which are a specific to SCOP there. And which are basically profit sharing.
For example, this year, the game worked really well, people received money in return
because they receive a portion of the company profit.
And all of that is submitted to a strict equality. Which means that everyone, for example
I have been there for 17 years, people have been there for a year or even for some months,
or people for 3 or 4 years, everyone get the same share.
So by the end of the year everyone obtain the same thing.
The only exception is, but I think it's normal, it's when people are still in test period.
We have people that just arrived, that aren't partner yet.
During the test period, they have a part of the profit-sharing, but not as much. After,
when the test period is over, when they become partner, they have the 100% equality statut like everyone else.
[NARRATOR] At Motion Twin, equality is the key. Everyone receive the same
profit-share, and the discussion is the key to every decision.
The power doesn't belong to an individual, but is shared between every workers.
[SEBASTIEN] Each person has some responsabilities
there are developers, designers,
marketing people, ect. So everyone has a defined role.
The difference is in the decision of someone. If, for example,
I deal with game design, on game-design everyone in the company
can tell me his opinion, son point of view, or a criticism,
or advice, something like that. So, there are defined roles,
there is a structure and a kind of hierarchy depending on the topic.
Someone who is more of an expert in a topic will be prevalent. He will be the lead, in some sort.
On the other hand it's more open in a way where
you can participate in all sort of conversations. If I have an opinion about a matter of
accountability or about the building or about programming, if I have
a suggestion or a criticism, I can talk directly
to the person and we solve the issue together.
[NARRATOR] Motion Twin is a good example of a democratic organization of labour that works.
But, obviously, this is not perfect. The team told me that they did crunch
on very short periods of time. Especially for the console release
of Dead Cells, because of the console makers' deadlines.
The money pressure is also real.
And Motion Twin was on the verge of closure before the release of Dead Cells.
But, these limits are explainable, and their origins could be found in the global economic context,
as Noah Young told me.
[NOAH] You have a capitalist company that is going to... Globally, you have one company that will uses
every means possible and necessary to be the most productive possible, sell more,
crush its competition, etc...
The cooperative won't uses the same methods.
But the risk is that by acting like that
is that it dies. So it's purposeless.
So sometime it has to adopt the same kind of behaviours to be able to compete with the first one.
In fact, it is this global context that imposes
reactions in a structure that wants to... in fact we can never, as long as the system
is globally capitalist, we can't escape it. Even with the best will in the world.
It's not possible. We are governed by this thing. It's only a global change
that will allow new work logics.
So, if everything isn't perfect at Motion Twin, it is, however, I believe,
in this kind of attempts that the wisdom of the future relies. It's in the experiences
that are seeking to emancipate themselves from our current system where we can found ideas for the future.
[SEBASTIEN] We tried different things on all the Motion Twin years.
We tried to grow. We grew until we reached 20 people. We had different
models, with cells, which allow to divide the company
in sub-group, which were egalitarian between them. A rather complex system.
We tried a lot of things. And finally, we realize with Dead Cells,
it was the first time everyone was focused on a single project.
Everyone was on the same page.
And everyone was able to communicate. Which means that basically everyone was heard.
And I think that we can do it bigger.
it requires a real structure, a real logic, something complex.
With 10 persons, nowadays we are 8 but we don't intend to grow bigger than 10, I think this is
something that is sustainable without too much work.
And it's ok for us because we don't want to talk for hours about rules and structure.
So it's a good compromise between the size of the projects we want to realize,
games we want to do, and a team size that remains human.
Something where we can talk, everyone knows everyone.
[NARRATOR] While returning to Paris, I couldn't help myself but thinking
that this cooperative organisation looked like a very good idea.
And yes, it's hard to imagine the making of an Assassin's Creed
in the same democratic structure than Motion Twin, obviously.
Because thousands of persons on 3 different continents
had to work together to finished the game.
But, in the same time, I wonder: is it a problem?
Do we really need those big companies like Ubisoft?
Can we not be satisfied with smaller games, more humane one?
Can we not be satisfied with handcrafted games
made by small teams like Motion Twin?
It's a complicated question, but one that deserves to be ask.
Maybe the reality is that in a future where companies would become more democratic,
this future wouldn't be able to have Red Dead Redemption 3.
I'm not sure about it. But it seems possible.
And, in the same time, I'm not sure this is really a problem.
Recently, for example, it's Minit, a video game published by Devolver,
that had my interest, especially because of the way it has been produced.
It is a super cool adventure / exploration game,
very funny with a twist in its rules that make him a very fresh take on the genre.
And it has been made by 4 people.
A small studio, but with a strong work ethic that is very different from the rest of the industry.
As Jan Willem Nijman, one of the game makers, wrote it:
These games, made without crunch, by small humane team, are increasingly valued
in a certain sphere of the development of independent games.
Jan Willem Nijman made a Twitter thread listing a whole bunch of games made like that.
So, there is a real solidarity that is taken place among developers. By unionisation,
by debate, etc... But between all that, players have also their role to play.
[NOAH] And so yeah, of course players have their role to play. I won't speak about
boycott because I don't believe in this idea of Dollar voting.
I mean the production will be done anyway. It will never happen...
There won't be enough people educated to be able to block a video game production,
and I don't think it's very interesting. On the other hand, to relay everything,
to defend the employees. It always makes me sad when I see the players
defending employers in these situations. It's the employees that make the games.
So taking the defence of employers is useless.
And in some cases we're going to loose people with talents.
It will come from small acts of solidarity in the beginning.
The awareness, maybe also... I had a friend
that shared with me this anecdote about a game called Warframe. And so in this game,
I believe it was a Kotaku articles, he explained to me:
ah, you see, they spoke about it. And, in fact, it was fans themselves
that had contacted the workers in the company and had said to them:
"Listen, you released your update very quickly, take it easy." It is kind of crazy but
it's interesting to see that players can also inject
this reality principle, this awareness. Because by saying that, what are they saying?
It's like, ok, we continue to give you our money and our confidence,
it all goes together. But take care of you. If we say it more clearly
if you are doing a burnout, and stop working for years, or even if you kill youself
because you work too hard, in a very selfish way of thinking
the video games, we won't have them anymore. So you have to see if it's a positive solidarity or something else.
But I think it's small elements like that in which I believe more.
It's awareness in schools;
it's talks as much as we can do between individuals, ...
But it has been the case. We shared the pot for Eugen.
We gather something like 10,000€. Which really helped the employees to get back on their foot,
to know they will be able to eat at the end of the month and to pay their rent,
which is pretty convenient. And so, yeah,
this kind of support, financial one, speaking with other people about those issues.
Once again, this is all about education, communication, and helping each other.
If, as an employee, I know that I have like a thousand players that will be like:
"Yeah, we agree with you, you should be paid more, you should make less hours,
and everything, because we love what you do in your studio, and we know that is you"
suddenly it's a really helpful you know.
It won't even be dollar voting. It's: we, as employee,
we have the popular support. So if we have the support of our customers, of those
that buy our games, it works.
[NARRATOR] In fact, if we look closely, we realize that the workers,
they have the advantage of the number in all that. They have many more interests in common than they realize.
By uniting, they can defend their interests together,
in front of their bosses' interests, that are clearly not the same.
That's how they will be able to create a more humane industry, capable of keeping experience,
to retain the workers and preserve the creative energy of its forces,
to leave some space for more vulnerable people, weakened by society.
Like that, we will be able to have a real diversty in the kind of people that make games.
And all of that, it can only allow us to come up with better,
more varied and original games, made with heart and solidarity.
[ANAÏS] Video games, like every creative medium, have a lot of benefits in having teams
with a lot of various profiles. Because when brainstorming ideas, having
a lot of different persons who have a lot of different experiences, who have different opinions
it makes for richer discussion. And it creates a more creative working environment.
And so it's really important.
It's inevitable that the content of the games are going to be poorer.
Because it is our culture now. And we can't have almost 100% of the people in our society
consuming a culture made by, I don't know, a population
that represents 5%.
I think that working in the video game industry changed a big thing for me,
it's that now when I watch the joueur du grenier, when I watch his videos
that I saw before working in the video game industry, when he says:
"What were the developers thinking about?",
I think that they were thinking about the hours they will not be able to use to finish the game properly.
And it saddens me a lot to be in the production constraints, to see people with expectations,
to witness players' feedback that say: "This thing in your game in shitty!"
And I'm like: "Yeah, I know!
When I did it six months ago, I saw it was shitty.
I wanted to fix it. I couldn't."
But beside all that, in France, we're lucky to have stronger workers' rights.
And what the STJV can ask from bosses is to respect french workers' rights.
Which is not respected in a certain amount of studios.
I know for example a studio
where employees where hired as sole proprietorship
while asking them to come everyday as employees with regular contracts, which is completely illegal.
That kind of things. Unpaid extra hours of work, obviously, which are completely illegal.
Staff delegate elections that aren't made.
That kind of things. Very basic stuff, that is already
inside the french labor law. Respecting that or respecting the SYNTEC collective agreement.
that applies to a lot of video games workers.
This is especially what Eugen Systems workers were asking. Workers who went on strike during a month.
They were just asking to be paid as they should have been according to their collective agreement.
Which is not too much to ask when we think about it.
But it's already there where it's possible to make some progress very quickly.
Because if there is a collective force that says it's ready to act
if it isn't respected, some changes can happen very fast.
There is no other way in fact. Solidarity is the thing that makes a difference.
And more people join us, the strongest we become.
If someone call us, we can say to someone who is completely lost
who has urgent questions, who has been summoned by his boss, and who doesn't know what to do,
more workers are unionised and the easier it becomes to be able to tell him:
here, you have people in your company you can talk to,
they will be able to help you, etc...
And even moral support sometimes. Because sometimes it's hard
and we go drinking beers with co-workers, etc...
Drinking beers, spending a night on the phone, ...
Yeah, spending nights on the phone...
We are the perfect example of a young industry, a new one,
a high-tech industry, of intellectual work,
but we are starting to unionise, to be unionised. It's really...
I think it shows that if we are able to unionise why not the others industries. I think that, if there is a lesson
for the world to learn, in our very hard times,
it's that even young people working in the video games industry are starting to unionise. What does it say?
It's not the Macron' start-up Nation.
"Yeah, we're going to create start-up and it will be cool..."
I mean, no! We want to get paid. We want to work less and earn more please.
Because we want what our parents had. We want a good retirement.
We want secure job. We don't want this shitty start-up nation.
This is it, mostly. It's making a more human working environment.
To be able to control our working ours. Yeah, that's it.
To give more power to employees. Because people want to work.
I mean, we are there because of passion, so they say,
so let passionate people doing what they're good at.
Because there is extremely skilled people in this industry.
And I think that the more liberty you give them, the cooler the things they make will be.
That's it.
Every person who wants to make video games, go for it because
it is a great job. And don't forget that you are not alone. There are many people here.
You must not forget that what we do are real jobs,
they have value. And our work, we know how to do it,
so we have the right to ask for a good salary. Because our work is worth something.
It isn't nothing.
And I think that a lot of co-workers don't fully realise their work's value.
And that they simply deserve better.
Being passionate is a thing we hear all the time.
"There are thousands people that want to do your job and we are lucky to be here."
But we have to see it otherwise. I mean, we are passionate.
Which means that we are very involved. we are good at it, and we are worth something.
And so we can be paid for it. It doesn't mean that we have to accept everything.
On the contrary. We should be able to say: here,
we are good at our job, we are very involved into it, maybe more than
if it was a day job.
So yeah, why couldn't it be more valuable, really?
[NARRATOR] Nowadays, the video games industry is a a machine that destroys all too often
those who make it works. By this over-work culture, by the too many men in it,
it scares away the workers, it scares off the experienced profiles
and it exhausts its creative forces. In the long run, it is obvious that
this system is harmful. He is humanly unsustainable.
So, if we want this industry to be able to mature, to create better games,
it seems obvious that it must deeply transform itself.
To achieve this, we will have to use our solidarity, everywhere. That can be the STJV,
that can be Women in Games, or the Inclusive Gathering for Video Games.
It is by this kind of process, by the awareness of the common interests that are shared
between video games workers, that things will be able to change.
By trying to get more leverage against employers.
The workers, after decades of abuses, are rising again.
This fight is very often weakened by neoliberal ideology that glorifies over-work.
Yet it is through this fight, by getting stronger together,
that a better tomorrow may come.
Because, I often heard, during my interviews, that working conditions,
it depended on the companies in which you worked. But that's the problem.
We should be able to create an ecosystem in which working conditions do not rely on
companies or bosses. But a system in which there are always good, everywhere.
Of course, there are personalities, individuals, how they get along with each other on a very personal level.
We have to take it into account, and some are very happy at studios like Quantic Dream.
But that's not the point. The point is about systems,
structures and boundaries in which those individuals live. Boundaries that must be better thought.
to limit abuses, to equalize powers, to allow debate, to allow mutual understanding,
to make it easier to work together.
We can't reduce the working conditions issue by talking about personal experiences,
by talking about people that just don't get along together in a specific work environment.
It's not a question about people. It's a political question, about society. And I think that with a healthier industry,
everyone will end up by winning something. Players of course, because
they'll have better game, with much more variety, made with human values.
And the workers, workers who will finally be happy to go to work.
Noah Young, who burn himself at his beginning as a video game worker,
is nowadays experiencing something like that.
[NOAH] Yeah, a cool experience, where I work now, it's really great.
Permanent contract, interesting projects, real interaction with the community. And, I would say that
this is the positive side of video games. It's when you can create a game, read
players' feedback, adapt, make something that they like,
make something that you like. It's invaluable. Well, I mean, of course it is,
it's the value of my work. But yeah no, that's really something particular.
And that's why I got in the video games industry in the first place.
I made something back when I was 15. A flash game and everything.
An online game. And there was this interaction. I was making my game,
I was really bad you know. I made ugly things with Flash,
AS2 back in the days, with cache objects, it made absolutely no sens
for a programmer perspective. But there was this process. Making a small thing, getting feedback,
and that stays with me. And I think that it's this precise moment when I thought yeah,
I want to work in the video games industry.
And that is nice to see that there are companies where you can find this feeling.
[NARRATOR] The idea with this video is to defend the possibility that this feeling
described by Noah, we should be able to find it far more often while going to work.
And it's hard to guess if this will be happening in the near future.
What we know already, it's how video games are made nowadays.
Abuses and dominant practices of the industry, now you know them.
If you are a creator or a gamer, I hope that this documentary gave you keys to understand
the situation. And maybe, most of all, the wish to act collectively against all that.
Because, if alone, it seems impossible, together,
with solidarity, everything is possible. And video games are not alone
in this fight. Today, I firmly believe that video games exist in its relation to the world.
That is what I try to show with Game Spectrum.
That video games are linked to our world.
And that it can be a part in the making of these struggles, of this shifting society.
I sincerely believe that the world of video games can be a part of the changes to come.
This production has been financed with the help of 400 tippers.
Big thank to them.