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Motivated by the goal of understanding the labour conditions of workers in the videogame industry and their participatory power to create decent work, Not All Fun and Games is a critical examination of a global entertainment juggernaut with revenues that top film, television, and music production combined. Jobs in the industry are heralded as the vanguard of the new economy, governments offer lucrative tax credits to lure game studios to their regions, and game developers often express commitment and passion for their work. Yet, the industry is also known for its toxic workplaces. To understand these disparities and gain insight into twenty-first-century labour conditions, Marie-Josée Legault and Johanna Weststar have carried out a comprehensive mixed-methods study of the North American industry over the past fifteen years. They combine detailed survey data from thousands of game developers with over one hundred qualitative interviews to systematically reveal labour issues such as precarity, lack of workforce diversity, unpredictable schedules, unpaid overtime, low unionization rates, worker burnout, and significant pay inequality. Updating the theoretical concept of citizenship at work, the authors connect these labour issues to a fundamental lack of voice and representation in the workplace. They determine that videogame workers and others in contemporary project-based work environments lack agency in regulating their work and lack fundamental protections. Not All Fun and Games comprehensively documents conditions in the North American industry and highlights ways to counter workers' lack of voice and representation in their workplaces to better create healthy, equitable, and inclusive workplaces.

A long-term study of videogame developers reveals that they face challenging working conditions and wish for unionisation, although they remain mostly non-unionised. In the broad corpus of literature on propensity to unionise, scholars often offer different explanations of feeble propensity among precarious workers in low-skilled jobs, on the one hand, and those in knowledge work, on the other. We contend that this neglects a larger shared context of increasing financialisation of organisations that has a deterrent effect on intentions to unionise. The effect of financialisation on workers' representation of interests is less studied than the process of financialisation itself and its effect on worsening working conditions. Yet financial stakeholders are now important labour relations actors even while not formally present in the system. We draw on literature on propensity to unionise and new actors in labour relations to include the effect of financialisation and challenge the dichotomous explanation of propensity to unionise that opposes low-skilled jobs to knowledge work.

Though dissatisfied with some management practices and working conditions, like most high-tech knowledge workers, videogame developers remain reluctant towards unionization. This article examines the factors of collective action among developers as an example, using data gathered from an international survey and interviews. We conclude that developers meet some conditions conducive to collective action but face many obstacles as well, both to collective action and to unionization proper. This does not lead us to share the belief of a decline in collective action, but rather raises the issue of conflating union action and collective action. Our study reveals how unsuited the general North American trade union system is to their situation, as it is to project-based environments and knowledge workers in general.

As the global economy undergoes a major transformation, the inadequacy of labour relations theories dating back to Fordism, especially the systemic analysis model (Dunlop, 1958) and the strategic model (Kochan, Katz and McKersie, 1986), in which only three actors—union, employer and State—share the stage is becoming increasingly obvious. A good example is provided by companies offering information technology services to businesses, where new means of regulation emerge and illustrate the need to incorporate new actors and new issues if we are to account for its contemporary complexity. A survey of 88 professionals has revealed regulation practices that call into question the traditional boundaries of the industrial relations system from two points of view: that of the three main actors, by bringing the customer and work teams onto the stage, and that of the distinction between the contexts and the system itself.

Using Kelly's mobilisation theory (1998) to assess their propensity to collective action, this article examines where videogame developers stand regarding the representation of their interests. These workers are good examples of knowledge work in project-based organisations. If Kelly's model allows in general for projections of unionisation in a given sector, we find this is not the case here. Rather, our study leads us to observe how much the labour market has changed since the elaboration of Kelly's model, and how much these workers' needs differ from the options laid out by traditional unions' action as presented by Kelly. This group fulfills two conditions leading to collective action: it has identified shared working problems across the industry and it primarily attributes the responsibility of these to the management. Still, three important conditions hinder any coalition movement under Kelly's model. For one, the group is divided on whether to define its interest in collective or individual terms. It is also divided regarding the degree of injustice or illegitimacy of the situations that they face. Moreover, when these workers make a cost/benefit analysis regarding collective action, any traditional enterprise-based certification and unionisation project poses many challenges. Therefore, Kelly's model would not predict mobilization. However, in place of unionization, videogame developers practice their own types of collective action that allow them to come to terms with the constraints of their environment. This brings us to conclude that Kelly's mobilization theory needs to be re-examined such that collective action is not limited to traditional union action. Adapted from the source document.

Using Kelly's mobilisation theory (1998) to assess their propensity to collective action, this article examines where videogame developers stand regarding the representation of their interests. These workers are good examples of knowledge work in project-based organisations. If Kelly's model allows in general for projections of unionisation in a given sector, we find this is not the case here. Rather, our study leads us to observe how much the labour market has changed since the elaboration of Kelly's model, and how much these workers' needs differ from the options laid out by traditional unions' action as presented by Kelly.

Women are under-represented among software developers, in spite of several political programs and Initiatives promoting employment equity in these sectors, in North America and European Union as well. Young girls' educational choices can partly explain this absence, but just partly. These women are leaving their jobs in much larger proportions than their male counterparts, while in this sector we notice a labour shortage. Work and personal life balance contributes to understanding the situation. Project management produces exclusion effect on women that can be accounted for by a flexibility requirement, entailing unlimited, unplanned and unpaid overtime. In this article, we argue that the professionalization model followed by project managers induces a professional ethos that promotes complying with such requirements and de facto promotes the exclusion effect more than acting as a buffer against it. Adapted from the source document.

This article is part of a broader effort to take a fresh look at citizenship at work in the contemporary world of work. The authors draw on Bosniak's social theory of citizenship to study two groups of workers (videogame developers and performance artists) whose occupations embody similar characteristics: knowledge work which is highly qualified, mobile and organized by project. With knowledge work growing in importance in developed countries, we must account for the fact that the knowledge worker is not the same economically dependent subject as the industrial citizen, whose skills were easily replaceable. While industrial organizations are built on dividing the conception and execution of work, knowledge work mobilizes the whole of the worker, rather than mobilizing only his/her manpower, in a creative process of innovation that takes place in a very competitive labour market where the creative contribution of the worker is a decisive asset. The authors study the contemporary representation gap among knowledge workers and the ways they participate in the regulation of their work, both locally and on a social scale. They draw on two case studies of project-based environments where highly qualified workers are constantly swapping fixed-term contracts, instead of enjoying stable open-ended contracts. Faced with collective problems and issues, they develop original means to participate in regulating their work that do not involve unions. Discussion of findings highlights the emergence not only of new modes of representation, but also of a new citizen at work, who is seeking different rights and benefits than those of the industrial citizen of the Fordist era and, furthermore, in an area that goes beyond that of the employer organization. Adapted from the source document.

This article is part of a broader effort to take a fresh look at citizenship at work in the contemporary world of work. The authors draw on Bosniak's social theory of citizenship to study two groups of workers (videogame developers and performance artists) whose occupations embody similar characteristics: knowledge work which is highly qualified, mobile and organized by project. With knowledge work growing in importance in developed countries, we must account for the fact that the knowledge worker is not the same economically dependent subject as the industrial citizen, whose skills were easily replaceable. While industrial organizations are built on dividing the conception and execution of work, knowledge work mobilizes the whole of the worker, rather than mobilizing only his/her manpower, in a creative process of innovation that takes place in a very competitive labour market where the creative contribution of the worker is a decisive asset.

Since the 1980s, & especially since the 1990s, European & North American researchers have been examining what is referred to as a \"crisis\" in the labour movement. This \"crisis\" contrasts with the unity & representative power that seemed to characterize organized labour up until the late 1970s. Local trade unions & union confederations seem to be having more & more difficulty recognizing & aggregating common interests. This situation is closely linked to the emergence of new factors contributing to the segmentation of labour, which in turn may have the effect of segmenting unionized workers. Some of the sources of segmentation stem from human resource management decisions: promoting flexibility, increasing the number of atypical workers, introducing variable forms of compensation, & the consequent disparities in status & pay. Other sources of segmentation originate in the workers themselves or are appropriated & promoted by them. Under human rights charters & the case law that results from them, some categories of workers or target groups demonstrate specific interests that are distinct from those of the larger group of unionized workers to which they belong, sometimes to the point of contesting what are regarded as important gains for the union or certain union choices based on majority votes. Two relevant target groups are women hired through affirmative action programs & employees paid according to two-tier wage systems, known as \"orphan clauses\" in Quebec. This article attempts to show how the demands made by these two target groups are sometimes so distinct from those of the majority in the local union that they affect solidarity & lead to conflicts. References. Adapted from the source document.