In this two part episode of NARA (ex-NYLA) podcast we are talking to people behind the movement – and why it should matter to all of us.

In its infancy, the gaming industry wasn‘t considered that big of a deal – a hobby for the recluse, if not for the kids. But its immense growth in such a short timespan brought an influx of new gamers and made old ones shift their perspective on what a gamer is.

As more people started playing games, demand grew. New technologies such as the smartphone became household items and new game studios started popping up.

But game development takes time. A lot of it. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, one of the most popular and influential games of this decade, took 6 years to develop. Programmer Jean Simonet, who was working on it at that time, started feeling severe stomach pains because in the final hours of development he pushed on at the expense of sleep. And Jean‘s story is not unique in this industry.

It‘s not hard to imagine the insatiable appetite of CEOs who are willing to drive their workforce into the ground just to turn a profit. But the closer you look, the clearer it becomes that the gaming industry today can be seen as a textbook example on how to exploit workers and draw little to no attention from the public while doing so.

“If the big companies like EA, Ubisoft, Rockstar suddenly said, ‘you‘re allowed to talk about your working conditions and there will be no retribution’, could you imagine the stories that people would tell?!” says Austin Kelmore, our guest for the first part of the episode.