Moulding the Future of Remote Work for the Video Game Development Industry
This article is in reference to the dissertation study “From Paris to Berlin: Remote Working in the Video Game Industry” which can be read and downloaded from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341359844_From_Paris_to_Berlin_Project_Booklet
This year, 2020, is my graduate year. I will be graduating from a Video Game Design and Production after 3 years. This is the year that fate had decided I was to produce my dissertation. Fate has quite the sense of humour. During October long gone, I was choosing what it was to be about. There are already so many interesting issues and points to tackle in the video-game industry, ones with a plethora of research, and new conclusions to be made. There’s novel issues in video game policy, video game work culture, unionisation, the effects of games on the psyche, I could go on! Out of all of the options in the world, I would choose remote working.
No, I can’t see the future, at the time, in fact, I didn’t really think that remote working could be our very immediate future. Remote working was an emerging trend in the UK, and in the town I was studying in, the very digitally rich town of Dundee, people working from home, in open-plan offices, and in incubators and hubs was not a new concept. The fertile banks of the Tay’s tech and indie-game industry saw students graduate from the local Abertay with fledgling companies. They would go on developing success stories such as Puny Astronaught’s Skye and the more recent Archipelago by Konglomerate Games, a multi-award winning approach to breathing exercises for patients of cystic fibrosis. Due to the nature of these alumni-led teams, they often start, and sometimes continue, their journey into game development remotely.
This begins as a way for the students to work together outside of class time. With students living in different accommodation, they move their office online into software like Slack and Trello. They communicate, manage operations, socialise, and work on these game projects entirely remotely. The long-term appeal of this is the ability to work to the schedule and lifestyle of the individual without having to worry about the financial side. Instead of spending on office space and travel, potential funding can be focused on self-investment measures (like marketing) to give projects a jump-start. Remote working becomes a genuine strategy for early success in this way. If Dundee-based alumni can make it work, if wider companies in the UK can make it work, and if other industries can make it work, then to me, that’s worth investigating.
After reading several publications about remote working, I came to a realisation. When it came to the game industry, nobody was writing about it. At the time of researching there was very few resources for understanding how remote work effects the games industry, even though there were plenty of positive examples of how it lead to success . I start asking myself questions like “What are the key issues with remote working?” and “Is remote working precarious?”. The game industry as a whole is already busy with employment related issues, such as ‘crunch culture’ and lack of contract details for work benefits like sick-leave or maternity-leave. The ‘gig-like’ economy of remote work seemed to be another hurdle along the path. As remote work covers freelancing and home-working, concern over the nature of the work as a sustainable practice was apparent early on. My study recognises this hesitancy to adopt remote working as a scalable practice and, though it’s benefits are acknowledged, issues such as employee well-being and game industry employment policy (or lack thereof)became important reasons as to why people probably weren’t keen on its practices.
Sure, I found plenty of information about remote working, and I found plenty of information about game development. What was rare, was something that considered them both in the same breath (this was before mass-remote explosion). This is what inspired my research and my goal to produce a text that considers remote practice in a very real way for the game industry. I used learning that I had gained from wider industries, as well as industry case studies on game projects developed remotely. I conducted a mixed-data survey within the local industry, and I documented my own practice, from working on the remote project ‘Fishing Vessel of the Future’ for the Anstruther Fisheries Museum. Through study, research, and my own practices I have created a rudimentary, and introductory text into understanding remote working for game development from both sides of opinion (benefits VS risks/issues).
Now, of course, I’m sure multiple renowned industry figureheads are racing to produce published information and guidance on remote working in the game industry as it happens. It’ll be amazing to see how the industry learns after the mass-remote climate of the current times.
I fully believe, that just as times of crisis boosted the developments of medicine and engineering, our time of crisis will also boost what we understand of working from home. It is a time where personal well-being and the effects of isolation have never been so important on such a large scale. Mass-remote will produce experiences and new solutions to issues that have marinated in the world of remote work for 20 years or so. As people collaborate together, new challenges will make way for new triumph as companies weather the storm of the COVID-19 pandemic. New focus will be placed on addressing the precarious nature of remote work (the sustainability, the job security etc.) to protect employees both during and after this time.
Although remote practice has already begun, remote practice for the game industry still has a way to go in terms of the provision of learning for future generations. After normality resumes, we will see more evidence, research, and personal accounts on how remote work made our game industry employees feel. From this, we can better mould the industry in order to facilitate the lives of our staff. The game industry could potentially use new remote practice to better facilitate employees with children and families and employees who are carers and providers. It can create new importance on sick leave, health insurance, and remote well-being support for those with mental health issues, and combat the isolation and social distance inherent in remote work.
As new technology and software develops, spurred on by the demand of virtual collaboration solutions, remote working will flourish anew. We will see more change in remote practice in the next few years than it ever had done in the last 20. It is my hope that this change can be used for good, that we can learn from it, that it can be used to teach others, and that we can use it to address real issues in real working. The game development industry’s ability to adapt rapidly sees it ripe to absorb the experience of mass-remote. From this we could see the evolution of remote work and of the industry itself.
