Manifesto

We, the artists, the programmers, the designers, the testers, the writers, the animators — we have the worst kept secret in the history of secrets. We are in love with what we do. There is no other way to clearly define why what we do matters to us. It is love. It is joy.

It is seeing your creation inhabited by the people you hoped would enjoy it, and the wonderment in their eyes as they do so. There is nothing else like it.

The industry we exist within does not love making games. Business cannot be in love.

We're told that the market has changed.

We're told that the conditions that allowed us to grow this team were temporary.

We're told that we can only use contracts, not salaries, and there are no guarantees.

It's just how it works, right?

The revenue, the profits, the chaos, the stress — we have tolerated it, because we believe, deep down, the work is worth it. The work has always been worth it.

We make games because we love the process of creative collaboration. The people.

The moment when the thing you're building stops being a collection of code and graybox and comes alive.

Every single game that ships is a miracle. Every one.

Every game that has ever mattered to you, only exists because people cared enough to show up, day in, day out, and build something against all odds — against the flood of titles on every platform, against the budgets that were never enough, against the timelines that were never real. None of it happens because it must happen. It happens because people chose it.

The people are what matters. Not the IP, not the release numbers, not the Average Daily Active Revenue. Games are not utilities. They exist for consumption. They are not perpetual. Every good story has an ebb and a flow, so why do we treat the people like they are fungible and everything will work out fine. We know from experience that it never works that way. The collaborative spirit and ethos of art cannot be reduced to a cell in a spreadsheet.

This manifesto is not a rallying cry, though I hope it resonates with you.

It is not a union membership drive, though I hope it encourages you to organize locally, where it matters most.

What this manifesto is, is a line in the sand. It stands as a call to the peers around you that we have had enough.

We have seen enough — enough closures, enough layoffs timed to quarterly earnings, enough credits stripped and careers discarded and institutional knowledge scattered to the wind — that the problems are no longer ambiguous. We can name them. We can trace them to their roots. We see them time and again. We are fed up. We are going to do something about it.

We are ready, more than we have ever been, for change.