It jumped out at me too as a very unnecessary comparison. It reads like “sexual abuse is an exaggerated problem”, to be honest.
back
1 comments
Sounds like my comparison is being lost here. The abuse is worse in the following manner: game developers were (don't know if currently, but I did over and over) were required to sign 'feature contracts' where we would sign off with risk of financial penalty a feature set to add or modify a game. The game is a known sports or some reoccurring franchise, and this contract is signature required to land the contract, before seeing the code or assets one is modifying. The entire team of one to two dozen developers and artists sign individual contracts, with fantasy milestones crafted sight unseen for the materials we are 'contractually bound' to work with and deliver functioning, bullet proof code. Typically a game would suffer at least one person quitting, one person melting down, and the rest of the team picking up the slack. "Crunch time" was 9 to 12 months of 7 days a week. Literally insane. And meanwhile both the producer from EA/Sony/Satan as well as your in-house producer are pressing everyone daily to stay late, get in early, and deliver, deliver. The only way to describe it is a type of Stockholm Syndrome.
So, yes, in my opinion this is worse. This is pure insanity.
Luc: being raped by a gang is not workplace sexual abuse. I never made the comparison you see.
Many of the women in these latest scandals are saying they were raped, not simply harassed. I think that’s why your claim that the gaming industry is 100x worse is raising some criticism.
I think the poor reception by some is that the original statement comes off as a little dismissive of sexual abuse and the reason that many people are outraged over it. The individual cases and instances are usually considered to be symptoms of a larger pervasive issue with discrimination in the work place which prevents many from having an equal opportunity to compete.
To illustrate how some are reading it, one may read the above complaint as "working long hours at a desk job while people are literally having to choose between being sexually harassed or losing their job and potentially damaging their career's future with a harassment scandal". (Note I am not advocating anything here, just trying to demonstrate how it can feel condescending to have your plight diminshed by comparison)
Having friends within the game industry, I know how horrible it is to the workers that make games happen because I've seen the effects on the workers first hand. I think that a description of the abuse is quite effective without trying to compare it to another major workplace problem that many people face, as both can be a severe problem that need to be addressed; it's not a triage situation where one must be prioritized, especially when both problems more or less come from the same source; employers abusing their power to manipulate and control employees to further the employer's desires.
Eh, from abuse you can walk away, and defend yourself- from a severe burnout you never recover?
Im so sick of people declaring anything sexual related the horror of horrors, just because its the sacred trading good of one half of the species. I know victims of sexual abuse, and there lifes go on- just like everybody elses- yes, some therapy, yes some awkward moments when jokes backfire, but life goes on. They are not falling apart wrecks, they are successes.
I know burnout people- and life does not go on there. Some of them to be frank are near functional vegetables. Severe Burnout is worser. Yes, this is heresy. Everything sexual is holy and only the high priests may state what is of value and in what order. Trying to value-order subjective experiences is the mindset of a squirrel beneath a chest-nut tree anyway.
I'd argue the opposite - many times abuse isn't something you can just walk away from, because like burnout, the source of the problem comes from something you depend on, and that's part of why it's such a severe problem. In the case of work burnout, is not the same advice applicable? Just go somewhere else if the problem is that much trouble; plenty of places that offer good work for less stress.
I'm not here to say that one is worse or better than the other; not a point I'm interested in making or debating really as I don't see the value in competing over who has it worse, I see value in trying to help people regardless of the issue. I get that you're frustrated personally with the discrepancy and uneven handling of different serious problems, but just from my reading of this, it seems less like you're worried about the severity of abuse and more about how Western societies tend to treat harassment cases and sexuality, which is a different issue altogether than burnout and workplace harassment.
And I only say Western because I'm living abroad at the moment and I see what it's like where harassment isn't considered a real problem at all, and it results in some absolutely miserable people who have no choice in the matter as it's either deal with the harassment or give up a job in their field, which makes it near impossible to get back into it, especially in specialized industries where the higher-ups all know one another and complaining about harassment is grounds for rejecting an applicant. Trying to ignore it or leave it just results in you being penalized further for a problem someone else is causing.
Like I said before, I'm not sure that Workplace Burnout and Harassment in the workplace are two problems that need to be triaged; the source of the problem is the same, the effects are both debilitating, and the removal of both helps everyone. It's why I find your closing statement to be a strange conclusion to a post which more or less does exactly what the conclusion derides, unless I'm misunderstanding the latter part about the squirrel mindset, as I really don't understand that fully; though I take it to be saying that trying to order subjective experiences is not a reasonable task, which is pretty much what I said before. No need for triage here when both problems have the same source.