1. A union needs to avoid the mistakes made by the auto industry so as not to repeat them. The auto unions are partly to blame for the fall of american car makers and I wouldn’t want to see good, honest game companies fall because of a union walkout.

2. A union shouldn’t create a private society that prohibits those wanting to get into the industry. Having ‘industry veterans’ direct the union might cause an even tighter closed society instead of one that helps guide and support.

3. What is the true purpose of the union? What problem(s) is it trying to solve? This mission statement needs to be clearly defined or it could serve only to support greed.

4. Will the union provide guidance for novice and veteran developers to transition over to console game development?

5. I’ve often wondered if ‘agents’ or ‘coaches’ are the better avenue. Hollywood actors/directors/producers/etc have them. Sports athletes have them. True, they also have the Actor’s Guild in Hollywood. My big concern would be securing continuous work when game companies have RIFs during a depressed economy.

I actually spent a long time weighing the roundtable vs. panel issue. I went with the panel in the end because I felt it had more of a chance of the session getting accepted. The subject being controversial and my lack of public speaking experience hurt the submission and having the confirmed support of an IGDA exec lent the panel more weight.

Ideally I would have liked both (and perhaps I should have submitted for both). I do agree, the roundtable is absolutely the best venue for an open discussion. The panel would have been more exploratory and aimed to balance the various viewpoints, but a roundtable is where productive talks would have occured.

Once I went with the panel, I had to make sure employees were represented, hence the “industry veterans”. And I did reserve a slot for a union person (although I hadn’t filled it by the submission deadline, probably another mistake); I wanted to target a successful union in another industry, like the WGA. Perhaps you could point me to one of those unions “that are currently trying to persuade the games industry”. I only know of BECTU (and maybe IATSE at a real stretch).

The country specific issues will always be there. It’s actually one of the major barriers for an industry union since our workforce isn’t as concentrated into region (like the movie industry for example). And one can’t even lump the EU countries into one since they all have different labor laws. But yes, an EU employment law expert would also have been useful.

(I was just throwing out problems I could see that might explain the rejection)

But, since they’ve so far not been completely convincing at acting honestly and openly on the topic, I’d question why on earth this should be a panel session? I can probably name a dozen people who’d be at GDC who could cry BS on a lot of things that that panel would say, but if they’re stuck in an audience, their voices are muffled.

Surely, if the point is to get “discussion” out into the “industry at large”, then it absolutely has to be a roundtable. You can’t go around controlling/filtering the conversation (the primary purpose of a panel as opposed to a roundtable) and simultaneously claim to be an open discusison, IMHO.

I’d also be concerned about how you manage to keep it relevant to anyone except USA residents, given the differences in anti-union laws and employment in EU, for instance? In particular, I woudl suggest you need at least one EU Employment Law expert to sit there and point out what employee rights are “standard” by law in the EU; it makes an interesting reference point in the conversation about unions.