ETAO Podcast, Episode 76.
Game Workers Unite is at the forefront of the effort to unionize the games industry—and according to Emma Kinema, the best way to do that is to treat it as an industry, organized under a single union rather than broken up by role or discipline. Why is that the way to go? How could the change improve game development, not to mention games themselves?
Emma is one of the most recognizable and convincing voices for the movement, and here she talks us through the conditions under which games get made, the history of labor and markets, and how we can use lessons from the latter to make the former better and more democratic.
The Game Workers Unite and CODA-CWA websites both have lots more information.
You can also follow Game Workers Unite, the Communications Workers of America, and CODE-CWA, as well as Emma herself, on Twitter.
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• That header image is from KIDS. That image of the skeleton in the bubble bath is from the Game Workers Unite GDC 2019 Zine.
• Here’s a piece about Game Workers Unite making common cause with the Communications Workers of America.
• Do check out the Game Workers Unite episode of the Humans Who Make Games podcast, as well as Emma’s episode of Your Geeky Gal Pal.
• You can find out more about the workings of co-op game studios—including Motion Twin, Pixel Pushers Union 512, Talespinners, Spek Work, Wild Blue Studios, The Glory Society, TESA, Black Flag, Make Big Things, and La Poule Noire—on the Game Workers Unite website.
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“All The People Say (Season 3)” by Holly Hyperion.
“Talking Union” from Talking Union by The Almanac Singers.
“The Commonwealth of Toil” by Ralph Chaplin, performed by Joe Glazer and Bill Friedland, from Songs of the Wobblies.
We’re on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Spotify, PocketCasts, Overcast, Breaker, PlayerFM, Podtail, and RadioPublic. You can also subscribe using good old-fashioned RSS.
Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.
Everybody's Talking at Once 
