Tipping Point

Gaming Execs are killing video games.

At the start of last week, my wife and I were out running errands. I was driving and she was scrolling away on her phone, regaling me with news, scuttlebutt and general informative nuggets which is common when we are out and about. 

Suddenly she let out a chuckle. 

Now you should know my wife has several very expressive chuckles, ranging from ‘that's funny’, or ‘hub did a dad joke’ to one I like to call ‘eye rolls so hard she sees her own brain’. This chuckle? Well that was clearly the last one on that list.

She then proceeded to tell me about a news story that had just dropped and had been sent to her by our friend Daniel. (Thanks Daniel btw!) The story was about video games, and tipping, and how some guy who used to run a games studio had come out and said that tipping in video games would be a good thing. That person's name was Mike Ybarra.

Now I don’t know Mike Ybarra. I know of him of course, his years at Xbox and then a few at Blizzard had him in the periphery of my awareness but as I said, I don't know him. Probably a really nice guy, passionate gamer going by his social media feed (apart from that time when he was at Blizzard and demanded people come back to the office to work for 3 days a week, even though many had moved far away from SoCal, and cut profit sharing bonuses after profits went up during the pandemic.)

This isn’t about Mike Ybarra as a person, this is not an attack piece on him in any way, shape or form. 

Here is the tweet in question:

Now of course, lots of people had lots of reactions to this tweet (just like the one you are reading here) because opinions are like arseholes, and everyone has one.

So as this idea is out there in the world, let's delve more into how this might work?

First up, who would benefit from the tip? 

Does it go solely to the dev team? Or should it just go to the designers? Are QA considered part of the dev team for all the work they do making sure all glitches are found? Does it go to the entire company that the dev team is part of because HR, finance, admin support etc. might not have made the game but without them the game wouldn't be made. Without marketing, PR and community management then the game wouldn't be out there getting covered so should they get a cut too? Hmm, not an easy question to answer, is it?

Let's take it a step further:

If the dev team is part of a much larger company like Ubisoft, Xbox or Take 2, then should the tip go to that company and be distributed to everyone on the credits? 

Should the C Suite be rewarded for a game they in all certainty had zero creative input on? 

OH WAIT! THEY ALREADY DO!

We are currently in an age where rampant, unchecked capitalism has led to top exec pay and bonuses reaching a hundred times what their staff’s average salary is. These are people who aren't beholden to their employees or god forbid the consumers who are their lifeblood. These are people who serve two masters, themselves and their shareholders and let's not kid ourselves here, the shareholders aren't some retired couple in Oregon who have a small stock portfolio designed to supplement their shitty pension and if they are lucky a 401k. The shareholders we are talking about are the large, faceless, parasitic Wall Street investment companies designed to suck as much profit out of their investment to pass on to their already filthy rich clients. 

If you want to read a cautionary tale, then try this one by Daniel Bessner about the effect these same parasites have had on Hollywood:

https://harpers.org/archive/2024/05/the-life-and-death-of-hollywood-daniel-bessner/

The parallels are there for all to see. Where Hollywood goes, so does the games industry.

Allright, back to the tipping:

So, for arguments sake, let's imagine that tipping game makers becomes the norm. Will it be considered a bonus for all the hard work the dev teams put into making the game? 

I'm sure that's exactly how it will be positioned…. at first.

Then I guarantee things will change.

The first change I can see happening is that performance related bonuses will go out of the window (assuming they still exist), because y’know ‘if the games are good then the tips will be the bonus, right?’

Then as more and more people tip on the better games, salaries will go down because the tips will make up the shortfall and because y’know ‘if the games are good then the tips will give you more money than you would have made with the original salary, right?’

Finally, this crazy imagination of mine has the games industry devolving into a gig economy, with workers bidding against each other via an app for the chance to work on a game for basic wage and tips.

Now that last one is super far-fetched isn't it? It could never happen in games. Could it?

This is a time of great instability in the games industry, consolidation is the word of the decade, where people like Lars Wingefors, (who is angling to be the biggest arsehole in gaming now that Bobby Kotick has fucked off) backed by funding so dubious it would make Donald Trump proud, goes on a shopping spree of studios and IP, ruining most of them in the process. Then his funding collapses and wonderful studios like Volition get shut down, thousands of people lose their jobs, games either get canceled or become putrid, designed by focus group/marketing bullet points piles of steaming shit (hello Saints Row reboot) and then he has to fire sale off whichever studios are left. It’s a fucking tragedy with very real consequences for those thousands of people affected, but of course minimal blowback for our boy Lars. He’s still in a job, still raking in the cash while others worry how they will pay their rent, medical bills or put food on the table.

So here is some advice to gaming execs past, present and future:

Do you really want your people to be rewarded when they make a great game that sells a shit ton?

Then pay them a living wage, incentivize them, let them work from home more often than not. The world is changing, studies show that people who don't have to deal with a commute are generally happier and more productive. One of the few upsides of the pandemic is that we got to work from home. Don’t fuck with that. Also, it means those expensive and mostly pointless offices/campuses you insist on renting/building can be got rid of, saving your company money and increasing the bottom line. Sell that shit to people who can turn it into housing or a park or something.

How about you don't shitcan staff to streamline expenses so you can sell out to a VC group?

When I worked in house at various devs and publishers between 1995 and 2010, it was a simpler time. People made the games, worked hard, got paid a good salary for it. The game shipped, there was a party, bonuses, some more work on post launch patches, expansions (DLC to anyone under 30) and then the team moved on to the next game. The only major turnover was if people wanted to find a new challenge or got offered a better gig (or if they were crap at their job). People had careers in video games. 

They were happy. (Note: Happy workers make for productive workers.)

They felt they had job security. (Note: Most workers with job security make for productive workers.)

There's a book I used to read with my late mum when I was a child called ‘The Water Babies’ by Charles Kingsley. It was written in 1892 and is a story that holds a special place in my heart.

There's a character in it called Mrs Doasyouwouldbedoneby who exists to teach children to be better, to treat others as they would like to be treated. I think it should be required reading for every C Suite exec in every company in every country on Earth. It might make things a lot better for everyone.