I love the feeling of winning, but I’m not very good at celebrating my wins. When I hit a major milestone in my career or get a big opportunity, I tell my wife, maybe my mom, and that’s usually it. Someone might email me about it and I’ll politely thank them, then quickly divert the conversation to VHS board games – a conversation where everybody wins.
Something about winning makes me weirdly shy. I think there’s a part of me that’s like, “Don’t celebrate too loudly! Other people out there are not winning, and those people will think you’re a winner… of The World’s Biggest Jerk competition.” But I’m starting to realize that’s not true, as long as I’m not actively being a jerk about my accomplishments. Being part of a community means being there for others, and also, letting others be there for me, and I want to be part of more communities.
So, I’m telling YOU, and about 2000 of my closest friends and/or newsletter subscribers, about some recent triumphs. Here-a we go!
Triumph #1: Gwen and I won big at the public domain game jam! Cocoanut Hotel got the award for Best Digital Game. Honestly, I thought the award was going to be announced in February. When we didn’t hear anything, I totally forgot about the competition aspect of the jam. After everything Gwen went through, the fact that we not only finished the jam, but that we nabbed one of the main prizes, is very gratifying. I’m sure Groucho would be thrilled a Marx Brothers game won a top prize, then he’d be very upset he didn’t see a dime from it.
Triumph the Second: Clone Drone in the Hyperdome is nominated for Best XR/VR title at Gamescom Latam! The Brazilian show is a big deal in Latin America. The BIG Festival (the awards show within Gamescom Latam) is the largest indie games festival in the world, according to their website. We’re nominated this year alongside Animal Well, The Plucky Squire, and Manor Lords, so good company! I’ll have to keep my fingers crossed until May.
CDHD also got an Honorable Mention from the A MAZE festival in Germany and is a Gold Winner at the 2025 Nyx Game Awards! Yay! Go Day Job!!!
Triumph 3: No Way Home: This third one is definitely a “last, but not least” situation…
I grew up in the shadow of unions. Buffalo was once a strong manufacturing town (it’s part of “The Rust Belt”) with large union membership. My teachers throughout middle school and high school were proudly unionized. I remember my friends and I honking in support when they picketed outside the school. Sure, if they were picketing, they weren’t flunking us, but I liked (most of) my teachers and wanted to support them, even if I didn’t fully understand the intricacies of collective bargaining. Most importantly, my mom – who taught me that being a professional creative was a worthy life goal – is a union actress in SAG-AFTRA. She has a collection of free DVD movie screeners to prove it!
So ingrained in me, at a young age, was the idea that workers who can join a union should join a union. Being in the union meant you belonged. If you’re part of a professional community, you show up for your fellow workers.
After college, I came out to Los Angeles with the goal of becoming a screenwriter. It’s very difficult to become a union writer in Hollywood. To join the Writers Guild of America West, you need to acquire “24 units” of credits in three years. If you are the credited writer for a major motion picture, you get the full 24 units. Slam dunk. If you write the screenplay for a 30 minute sitcom, that’s a mere 8 units. And pity the story writer for a screenplay less than 30 minutes, who is given 3 measly units and told to like it.
I’m sure you will be shocked to learn, dear reader, that screenwriting jobs are difficult to come by. I became a working writer in Hollywood within my first year of moving to California. But the professional credits I acquired in my early years – video games, comic books, audio fiction, magazine articles, web animation – earned me a big fat zilcho units towards joining the WGA.
Over and over again, at parties and networking events, the fact that I wasn’t in the WGA made me feel like I didn’t belong. You might think that was me getting in my own head. To some extent, it was me imagining I was in a No Homers situation. However, I have accumulated many units of being insulted by WGA writers. I remember a podcast industry networking event where a guild writer I was talking to found out I wasn’t in the WGA. He immediately and literally turned his back on me, then crossed the room. I kid you not. The conversation was, “Are you WGA?” “No, I have written for games–” and he was gone mid-sentence. I was gobsmacked. There was another time a WGA writer randomly struck up a conversation with me and my sister at the DMV to pass the time. When he found out I was a writer, he tried to embarrass me about not being union in front of my sister. Class act, that guy!
WGA began to feel less like a union to me and more like an elite country club. That’s where the real writers in Hollywood were.
Ever since I became a full-time narrative designer several years ago, I’ve been following the discussion around industry unionization. For years, the CWA (Communication Workers of America) has helped individual studios unionize their workers. They were behind unionizing the World of Warcraft dev team and helped a team of game writers organize the first successful strike in game dev history. I would visit the CWA at their GDC (Game Developers Conference) booth. CWA reps would ask me about unionization. Year after year, I’d tell them I was a freelance contractor, so I was never in a position to unionize my studio. This is often the case with narrative designers. We’re usually not part of the core team of W-2 employees for whatever reason. As a writer and a game dev, I felt very un-unionable. I knew it wasn’t my fault, but I still felt a little less than, even as a game dev.
At this year’s GDC, there was an incredible announcement: a new challenger approaches! United Videogame Workers is a direct-join, industry-wide union for game developers organized with CWA. Like a Pokemon, UVW evolved from Game Workers Unite, a grassroots organization started in 2018 to advocate for developers who experience poor working conditions like crunch and pay inequity. More than a hundred UVW members marched through the halls of GDC this year, which is badass.
I signed up on-the-spot at GDC! As a professional video game worker for 20 years, there was no question about my qualifications. I’ll be receiving a card and welcome packet soon. My first orientation is next weekend. I already got a red CWA t-shirt with a fist logo on it, because every union’s logo has to be red with a fist logo. (Would you take a union seriously that was chartreuse with a rubber duck logo? Yeah, that’s what I thought.) But the most important “swag” I got from GDC this year is the feeling like I finally found a profession where I truly belong. It only took two decades, but I finally did it, ma!
Well, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going on my union mandated break. No, we haven’t won that concession. We haven’t done any collective bargaining yet, since the organization launched last month. But I won’t let that stop me from taking breaks!!!
🎲 Your Turn: Are you in a union? If so, what’s your union like? If you’re not, do you want to be in one? Reply to me with your thoughts or tell the whole world by clicking the orange button below.
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