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Comment by joemazerino | Hacker News Reader

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The union isn't officially launched yet, the talk is at 15:30 Pacific (six hours from now). Even if you can directly tie the quality of AAA games to if the workers who make them are unionized or not, I think it's a little premature to dismiss these efforts.

If anything, parent should make the opposite argument. AAA games are shit and been for some time, hopefully unions could make people focus on quality rather than just trying to keep their job after shipping the last game.

But jokes aside, quality of AAA games is probably because money runs the development of those today, unlikely to change in the short-term.

Sturgeon's law: 90% of everything is crap.

Most AAA games are, and have always been crap. But we only remember the rare gems from yesteryear that weren't crap. 5 years from now you'll look fondly on the games from 2025 because a couple will have stuck with you and you'll have long since dropped the rest.

That doesn't mean there haven't been shifts in the industry.

Microtransactions, skyrocketing budgets, etc. Games in the 90s weren't selling you a skin for $10 or getting A-list actors to do the voices.

Games in the 90's had expansion packs and a few did have A list actors:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111727/?ref_=fn_all_ttl_1

Expansion packs aren't anything close to today's microtransactions.

I would not term Mark Hamill an A-list actor. Harrison Ford would be.

so we're blaming programmers and artists for decisions made by product?

No?

Walk me through the leap here?

Agreed. However, that has nothing to do with this news. Poor quality in games is what you get when you have investors that care more about a new Fortnite clone raking in money via micro transactions versus a quality game made by good workers.

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