Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

Visible work

cliffski

I was at a restaurant recently and mused on the topic of why we tip waiters in restaurants. You might think it’s because their salary is low, but I suspect not. The salary of the people in Malaysia who made the clothes you bought in the high street is likely lower, and yet nobody tips them. I notice actors at the end of plays take a bow, to much applause, yet the set designer, director and the sound engineer never does. I notice that you tip the taxi driver, but you never tip the train driver. You applaud the band, but never applaud the bands manager or sound engineer…
Why?

Because it’s a matter of visible work. Out of sight, out of mind. This is one of the phenomena that has helped justify widespread on-line piracy. You don’t see any work being done, so you feel no need to reward anyone. Intuitively we know a lot of work went into a movie, but we didn’t see it happen. Intuitively we know that 90% of the experience of Keira Knightley in a movie is down to casting, directors, lighting, sound, make-up, costume design, scriptwriters and marketing. Yet she is worth millions, and most of the people doing the invisible work probably earn the average wage.

It is all too easy to be vastly removed from the people doing the work that we take for granted and don’t see. I’d like to take a minute to remember that the tea i’ll drink today was probably picked and packed in india by people earning a pitiful wage. It was sent by sea to the UK on a ship built by people I’m oblivious to, steered by others, crewed by others, and unloaded at a port by others. There are probably thousands of people who work to ensure it gets to my cup, and I have physical contact with almost none of them. These days the shops themselves even want me to scan and pack my own tea, so the last vestige of contact with anyone associated with the product has been removed.

We live in an age where we are remote from the people involved in the production of what we consume. Over time, hopefully we will learn that just because you don’t see work being done, doesn’t mean work did not happen. And increasingly, people reading blogs like this will be in that same position. People often complain that everyone else doesn’t appreciate the work they do. It’s worth remembering that we can all be guilty of that ourselves.

In other news, I did code for the message handling today. It involved hundreds and hundreds of lines of hopefully stable bug-free code, testing and checking. You didn’t see me type it and test it and design it and check it, but I aasure you I did it anyway :D

15 thoughts on Visible work

  2. I think that saying that one won’t buy the game anyway does not give one the right to pirate it. I don’t think there can be any justification of piracy at all. As long as there are people downloading an illegal copy, it will be perceived as demand and the cycle will still continue.

    If one is using bittorrent technology, one is not merely just downloading, but uploading as well, contributing to the health of the torrent. Even if one’s intentions is to “check out the game before buying” or “just downloading because I won’t buy anyway”, one is inadvertently still helping those who wants to play but doesn’t want to pay.

    I do believe that copyright laws are in dire need of reform and still very much sided with the corporations at this point. But if there are developers/publishers (like Cliffski) who are gracious enough not to treat their paying customers as criminals, but allow them fair use of their products (multiple installs on multiple computers, etc), I would whole-heartedly want to support these guys. Even if I’m not buying their products (sorry, too many games on hand for me to get GSB just yet :P), I will not justify it by downloading.

    @archont: I don’t want to rain on your parade, but there are a lot of nice freewares (The Urquan Masters, for example) that does provide excellent gameplay. Also, I myself have bought tons of great games that will provide lots of entertainment for less than $10 on many digital distribution platforms, like Steam, GamersGate and Impulse, during their sales event. Eg: I picked up Titan Quest from Impulse during a sale for $4 once.

  3. Mentioning actress Keira Knightley made me thinking: What if game dev teams, or lone wolf coders, make themselves the main actors of their game? This won’t bring direct tips but could be a marketing trick. Does anybody remember a game which includes its creators as characters?

  4. hermitC:

    Have you ever seen a group picture of a dev team? Do they LOOK like space marines? No? Then don’t ask them to portray those noble, violent heroes.

    Also, game devs do not make themselves the characters of their own games because they would be LAUGHED AT UNTO INFINITY.

    And Cliffski: I drive a taxi. I don’t get paid an hourly wage at all. In point of fact, I lease the vehicle (and dispatch service) from the company, and make money from tips and metered fare. I also pay to fill up the tank, after every shift, and I wash the car, and vacuum it, and help with luggage (politely, I always ask if I can help), and I drive safely. Customers tip because they like that I didn’t get into an accident, because they like my personality, and/or because it’s the customary thing to do.

    Waitstaff do not just take orders and bring food and refill drinks. They also clean tables (unless the restaurant provides bussers, in which case the waitstaff tip those people for helping), roll napkins, bundle silver, move dishes, and do a thousand other miscellaneous tasks around the restaurant, all for what is called ‘server’s minimum wage’ here in the US – it is HALF of the normal minimum wage, and they are taxed on their table receipts as though they were tipped..meaning that if you don’t tip, the server ends up paying for a portion of your meal. Customers tip them because they like the experience, the waiter or waitress, and/or because it’s the customary thing to do.

    As it’s intended to work, tipping is supposed to encourage courtesy, attentiveness, and a certain flair from the laborer whose performance wage the customer is paying. This is why cab drivers will spray you with gravel if you don’t leave a tip after they were charming, helpful, and drove safely through rush hour traffic. Not that I would EVER do such a thing.

    >_>

  5. I think there was some communist theory on workers being separated from their product and how it affects things, think they called it “alienation”.

    Also people doing visible work can’t get away with being lazy. The advantage of a job with low visibility, responsibility, being a little cog in the great machinery is because in the end it’s convenient in a certain way and laziness is human nature.

  6. Sorry Cliff yet I have to mostly disagree with you opening paragraph
    “I was at a restaurant recently and mused on the topic of why we tip waiters in restaurants. You might think it’s because their salary is low, but I suspect not.”
    I suspect it is, until recently the law allowed tips to make the wages up to the national minimum.

    “The salary of the people in Malaysia who made the clothes you bought in the high street is likely lower, and yet nobody tips them.”
    True I can not see them to give a tip, yet this is a matter of relativity. The living costs between the waiter and the clothes maker in different countries are vastly different.

    “I notice that you tip the taxi driver, but you never tip the train driver.”
    The taxi driver is self employed, yet the train driver is not. I tip a taxi driver when he has provided a good service which gets me to my direction using the shortest route whilst engaging in conversation. He does not get payed when he is sick yet the train driver does.

    “You applaud the band, but never applaud the bands manager or sound engineer…”
    Never is a strong word! I have applaud the sound manager in a concert before, yet how do people know who you are applauding, maybe as he is a sound engineer he can detect the direction of the flow of air in his direction and therefore know the praise is for him :)

  7. @Defenestrator47:

    Leisure Suit Larry does not look like a space marine to. And there are at least 7 sequels of this this game. Gordon Freeman is physicist and the main character of Half-Live. Two times.
    Sure, coders don’t look like tough warriors in most cases. But it could make an interesting game playing as pale geek wearing horn-rimmed glasses. Why not :)

  8. I agree with most of whats being said here. Its too often that we do things without a thought of all the effort that went into it. I have to say I like to think I know and can appreciate all the effort that goes into things. But when you mentioned tea cliff i hit myself. Tea being one of the delightful things i take for granted. Even with the PG tips box staring me straight in the face I still didn’t think about the tea-pickers living on the breadline. Just shows how easy it is.

    @HermitC
    Most of the characters in half life 1+2 were based from staff members. Apart from Gordon who was a mixture of several.

    http://leebyrne.deviantart.com/art/Who-Is-Gordon-Freeman-108409880
    http://leebyrne.deviantart.com/art/Half-Life-2-Character-Models-107714612

  9. Games do not need to be about space marines. Even if it’s a power trip they don’t need to be space marines, but even then, lots of games are not about power trips.

  10. @Liam..
    waiters are employed by the restaurant.. if their wages are now (as they damn well should be) legally protected, why continue to tip? and why not tip the train driver as they’re not self-employed .. waiters aren’t. oh, i presume that since wages were brought to legal minimums tips are now expected to be smaller..?

    personally, if i were to tip – it’d be to those people who i really want to do a good job. like the self-employed mechanic who services my motorbike, or the surgeon, etc etc. but this isn’t the case. tips go to low-skilled people whos performance doesn’t actually matter that much (relatively).

    the traditions of who gets tips (hotel staff for carrying cases? are they not employed by the hotel to do this??) are really messed up, and (to me – non-american) seem primarily based on retribution. (spraying gravel, bad service next time, bags damaged as you checkout). professionals don’t have these retribution options as they tend to have licenses/reputations they care about.

    and that’s even before getting into this “tipping a percentage of the bill” tradition. i can feel the argument coming – “large bills mean large groups, which is more work”. well, my counter argument is that whether my meal cost $10 or $100, for essentially the same service why should i be expected to spend more purely because i ordered the old bottle of wine instead of the plonk?

  11. I think people are likely to be arguing at cross purposes about the tipping thing, because how that works varies greatly between countries like the UK (where Cliffski lives) and the USA (where most of this blog’s readers probably live).

    In the USA, restaurant tipping is expected even if there’s been nothing very special about the service or the food, because it is normal, and frequently even LEGAL, for waitstaff to be paid much less than a living wage. It’s also readily arguable that the US minimum wage doesn’t cut it as a living wage:
    http://blakefallconroy.com/18.html

    I’m in Australia; here, tipping in restaurants is common but not obligatory, especially if the food and/or service were not so great. Tipping other service workers is a similar deal.

    I think the living-wage concept is an important one, because it cuts through the defective arguments about what’s fair and what isn’t when you’re thinking about the people in impoverished nations who make consumer goods for the Western world. In China, for instance, a living wage may be little more than a thousand US dollars a year, and there are SOME factories where workers are paid considerably more than that.

    There are plenty of factories, though, where workers are paid a great deal less. There are countless Chinese factory workers who are literal indentured servants:
    http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0478116/
    It’s the same old scam; provide workers with food and board, start new workers with some sort of bogus “loan” (to set up their exciting new job, of course!) that they have to pay off, and forbid them most of the freedoms which Western factory workers take for granted, on pain of instant dismissal (without, of course, cancelling their debt).

    These workers are not much better off than actual slaves.

    If you want to avoid buying goods that have been made by near-slave-labour, then either become a tiresome patriot and only buy locally made products, or embrace your inner hippie and insist on “fair trade certified” products.

    Note, however, that all fair trade certification is not the same. Some fair-trade stamps indicate what you’d expect them to – workers paid a living wage, allowed weekends off, free to associate with whoever they like, allowed access to medical treatment, allowed to form a union, not working the first five years just to pay off a “placement fee” – but others do not.

    Companies can get the popular “Rainforest Alliance” stamp, for instance…
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainforest_Alliance
    …for products that are only made in a marginally more ethical way than the very worst ones.

  12. Yup, worth repeating that in the UK, tipping is very different. I think waiters salaries tend to be a lot higher in the UK than the US, and it’s not assumed that everyone leaves a tip. I tend to leave a good tip in my favorite pub for a pub lunch, but that’s not that common for average pub food.

  13. Okay guys, I was JOKING about the space marines riff. Perhaps I should’ve used lots of smilies and put a ‘j/k’ on the end.

    Yeesh.

  14. I can definatley see what you are saying. When people can’t physicaly “see” something they act as if it doesn’t exsist.

    Piracy is a great example, I have a lot of friends who frown upon socialism because it makes it possible for people to freeride on other tax-payers and not doing any work (according to them, reality is far more complex), yet they expect to have every single piece of digital work for free. They pirate everything without a single thought of buying it if they don’t get anything in return (online MP, they don’t bother to chip consoles, etc.).

    Personally, I think Socialism is better than piracy (as political systems). I would rather have people ‘free ride’ on the rich so they can have decent health care and living, than to have people freeride on people like Cliffski (and perhaps myself in the future) just to have free entertainment.

    It’s a gross oversimplification, of course. But hope I got my message through.

    Let’s take this a little further. While we are speaking about tips and so.

    In fact, piracy is like forcing people who makes digital works for a living to rely only on donations and tips. Anyone would think it is unfair if someone came to their place of work, stripped them of their rights to fair wage and gave them a tip yar instead, yet many people expect this from others.

    Just my two cents. I tend to write a lot when I get an excuse to write about piracy :)

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