I've mentioned Xuan-Yuan Sword: Mists Beyond the Mountains before, but its Silk Road setting deserves more praise It goes from Francia to Venice, Damascus, Baghdad, Tashkent & Chang'An, following historical events of ~750 AD like the Abbasid revolution, the Battle of Talas, and Tang Dynasty crisis.

When they need to do this you know we are getting somewhere

what if the rate of profit has basically fallen to zero and the only venue left to invest masses of capital historically unprecedented in their scale is into bubbles? what if capitalism has now become a zero-sum game where the only way the few large capitals can grow is by absorbing smaller capitals

happy trans day of vengeance. happy trans sharia day

the stock market but the steeper the drop the louder megalovania plays

Our statement in solidarity with our fellow workers' ongoing protest against @rockstargames.com's gross union busting!

I love Chinese & Taiwanese Wuxia RPGs, not only for the cool martial arts setting but also for playing differently from Western & Japanese RPGs. I often get asked for recommendations. I had a big thread on Twitter, so here's a new one! Here's my favorites available in English (officially or not) 🧵

I'm creating a thread to share the readings I assigned to students for this week on labour organizing in the games industry. Click to expand! (1/7)

ok they deleted and reposted it for some reason but, reminder: this is a survey of GDC attendees only which self-selects for highly paid, senior devs and management which is to say: this is most likely what a result skewed _against_ unionization looks like right now

Interested in making it a reality? Since we're union with a direct-to-join model... you can! Read up on how to join here: uvw-cwa.org/membership

Great article from the CBC on Rockstar’s union busting in the UK and Canada, with quotes from CWA Canada president Carmel Smyth and from Game Workers Unite Montreal. Great to see this story still making waves and the Rockstar workers getting support from everywhere ❤️ www.cbc.ca/news/enterta...

I wonder if Rockstar leadership envisaged this kind of response when they decided to fire 30+ workers in a union?

WE WON! After 42 days of striking we have a tentative agreement in hand that protects our existing 4 day work week, establishes a minimum salary, and adds protections against AI replacing jobs at our workplace!

China dragging us kicking and screaming into a survivable future

The notion abusers need to resort to conspiracies and subterfuge is more comforting than the truth that many people will readily look the other way when confronted with sexual violence if doing otherwise would even slightly inconvenience them

nothing really new about the epstein stuff, but the part that has been surprising to me is really all the people who are not anywhere near any kind of proximity to that level of power, who nonetheless seem to have been very invested in promoting a maintaining of general denial about the truth

Re-reading GWU Montréal's guide to identifying union-busting tactics, as next week I'm teaching a class on labour in the games industry: medium.com/@gwumlit/ide... Been thinking about this slide in particular recently:

my most oldguy videogame take is that hardware sprite acceleration ruined game design

Rockstar devs protest signs are great

NEW: the IWGB has filed formal legal claims against Rockstar after it says the company refused to meet to discuss bringing back fired developers. "Rockstar has declined to meet with the IWGB, leading the union and barristers to issue formal legal claims on behalf of the Claimants."

a very very long time ago i was listening to a video game podcast that has long since stopped existing where a frustrated listener wrote in asking what “Guitar Hero Ennui” was because he misheard them talking about “Guitar Hero on Wii”

I went to meet the 'Rockstar 31', the developers who were suddenly fired from their work on GTA 6 for what the studio has described as gross misconduct. That's not what the workers call it though. They have another couple of words they prefer to use: union busting. www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9nO...

geoff,

“Rockstar continue to deflect from the real reason for these dismissals: they are afraid of hard working staff privately discussing exercising their rights for a fairer workplace and a collective voice.”

This story is infinitely more important than GTA getting delayed. Don't let me catch you moaning about waiting longer for a video game if you're not mad about why it happened.

Truly, one of the reasons things have crashed and burned so hard in the last twenty years is that the most evil people on the planet learned the majority of people only needed the thinnest veil of an excuse to deny what's obviously happening.

Oh they're afraid afraid.

"the revolt of the bosses" is a good way of framing the elite reaction to woke 1. what's particularly interesting is that this isn't a reaction to an attack on profits--it's a reaction to changes in workplace culture-- which is to say, the psychic wage of hierarchy

Overly-broad NDAs are widespread in the industry, and if companies are able to stick in court that they can interpret talking about your woking conditions as "leaking confidential information" that's an avenue they'll pursue to disrupt organizing.

Textbook case of an org committing to diversity in the environment of 2020 and then not being willing to actually listen to those diverse people when they dared to speak up.

we shall make no excuses for the terror

Who has the best Zohran crashout screenshots?

Funny how a management narrative about "misconduct" always magically appears right after organizing happens. Almost like it's an orchestrated strategy and not an organic workplace issue. A gaslighting attempt to reframe workers' exercising of their rights as what is "creating a toxic environment".

we did it, Zo

i cant wait for the crash outs dude

hope new yorkers are ready to keep mamdami accountable to his 2020 position

found a guy

Unless you genuinely contribute to something really fucking cool or good for humanity in some capacity, marrying yourself to your work is frankly stupid, and employers that expect their employees to care about the company past a paycheck are delusional.

what about trusting the *employees*

"This game was made completely by actual people in a union" would make me interested in a $100 price point game.

SAG-AFTRA stands in solidarity with the IWGB Game Workers Union exercising their right to organize following reports of union-busting at Rockstar. Our members’ union performances on Rockstar games are an integral part of the success and legacy of games like Grand Theft Auto.

This was great. From Christopher Marlowe to Dorothy Thompson's "Who Goes Nazi?" Come for the Faust, stay for the antifascism. "Mephisto" (based on the Klaus Mann character) needs to become common parlance.

check out "the fever" by wallace shawn www.wischik.com/lu/senses/fe...

"the actor who plays Dr. Sturgis on Young Sheldon"??? Excuse me, he is the voice of the dinosaur in Toy Story

Some people often worry that unionizing can come with the risk of retaliation. That even though it's illegal, they'll get away with it. Guess what? They were gonna do all of that shit to all of you anyway, while telling you that the union will just sow division. It doesn't. It sows defense.

At the workplace we unionized it made an equal seat at the table a mandatory benefit for workers, from workload to severance. You cannot believe how fast things can change when you stand together, wall to wall, department to department. When the workers say no, when your lawyers say no, it's a no.

Brianna’s fake apology for her pivot to trying to be the trans Candace Owens is just a recession indicator. She probably thinks it’s harming her grifting options.

Game workers of Toronto unite! Take a break from making games by playing games at the UVW Toronto meetup on Friday November, 14th at FreePlay Retro Arcade Bar. Admission is free (just check in at the door), first drink is on us! www.eventbrite.com/e/united-vid...

Of course: to a company it's always workplace misconduct to organize a union. Hope everyone affected gets justice.