Patreon Show February 2025 - Embedding with a video games union
Added 2025-02-26 15:41:02 +0000 UTCHey everyone,
This Patreon Show was recorded during a recent trip to Irvine, California where I was filming the very first parts of a documentary that could take upwards of a year to complete! That's because this story is still ongoing and we intend to cover the whole thing.
Anyway, if you could please lend me your very best drum roll, I suppose we're about to announce this doc for the very first time? Ahem. Here goes...
We're going to be following the recently-formed WoWGG union, which represents workers across the entire World of Warcraft team at Blizzard Entertainment, as they look to make history and successfully bargain a new contract for its members.
We've wanted to follow a union through this process for years now and WoWGG felt like the perfect story for us to tell given the legacy of the World of Warcraft team, the likely ripple effects the success (or failure) of this bargaining could end up having on the wider US games industry and also, what this union means for a Blizzard which is still reeling from a now-settled lawsuit alleging widespread misconduct and discrimination within the studio and the ensuing acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft.
As you'll hear in the video, we're still very early on in the process, with bargaining currently underway, but we've already filmed some great stuff that lays out where the union stands as of right now and where the biggest battles are likely to be fought this year.
We've recruited Alex Van Aken, formerly of Game Informer, to help us out with the filming for this project and I asked him to join me for this Patreon Show to chat about what we're up to. You can check out his work over at Viewport!
Also, he brought a drone with him to film some establishing shots, which is a PMG first and I found the whole process extremely exciting.
