Omniloft 2020
An HR hero saves the day. Academic fiction by Theo Stojanov.
On Friday, November 13 2020, a large group of Omniloft employees got news that their contracts were about to be terminated. Located in the former industrial district, in a remodelled textile factory, Omniloft is a large game development company known worldwide for its shooter and survival triple-A titles. It might have been the recent wave of Covid19 layoffs, or the ongoing outsourcing and downsizing, but early that morning over a hundred people climbed the stairs up to the rooftop terrace and barricaded themselves in protest. Outraged at the audacity, the HR fate spinners inside dialed 911 to report disorderly trespassing, when things took an unexpected turn.[1]
10 am
“911. What is your emergency?”
Denis Paquette was furious. He had been a senior human resources manager at Omniloft’s Montreal studio for nearly two decades, and had dismissed plenty of people in that period without a single unmanageable incident. This time around it was a fairly substantial number of testers, interns, and temps, but he had expected no opposition. “There are some people who locked themselves up on the roof and they will not leave” he raged at the operator. “We have asked them to go away and sent security to escort them out of the building, but they have barricaded the doors.”
“Do you believe anyone is in danger, monsieur?” asked the dispatcher, apparently failing to appreciate the urgency of the situation.
“You need to send people here now! We told them to leave but they rushed up the stairs and blocked the door,” continued Denis, “there’s about 30… 50…” “Over a hundred,” corrected Dahlia, his assistant. “There’s a 150 people on the roof and they need to leave. They have locked themselves on private property. I… We don’t know them, they don’t work here... anymore.”
HR assistants had been delivering termination notices throughout the week, designating Friday morning as the last day when everyone on the “let go” list would be allowed to come in one last time to drop off passkeys and pick up any personal belongings. Denis was taught to fire people on a Friday because, as HR lore counseled, there were fewer chances of uncomfortable interactions with the disappointed party. [2] That way, there was the whole weekend to “get over it” and start afresh on Monday. It was like a breakup. A little buffer time for the dumped side to accept that this setback is probably for the best, and to move on. Instead, everyone on the termination list showed up all at once and went straight to the roof, where they barricaded themseves. He was not used to being disobeyed. Anyone who got in or out of the building had at some point come through his office, and everyone wanted to make a good impression. The part-timers, especially, had learned to keep their complaints to themselves in the hopes of securing a future gig. Just as well, because he hated conflict. He had felt the winds of change in recent years.[3] Gender dynamics and representation requirements at the office put him in a delicate and unfamiliar position. He felt pressure from his new assistant Dahlia Hippolyte, MBA, promoted from intern within a year. She was intimidatingly well informed and opinionated. He wouldn’t have chosen her, it came from above. Suddenly, Denis had to pay more attention to who he hired, what he said at the office, and he preferred to delegate employment terminations to someone else.
Letting people go was no trivial affair, even with non-essentials. At Omniloft workers were not allowed to unionize, but even so, dismissal required building a solid case, a process that usually began months before someone was called in for a meeting. There was a specific structure to the procedure. Prior accomplishments were of little use to those marked for termination. Project managers were asked to identify various dissatisfactory elements of an employee’s performance, and to communicate a sense of urgency about points that needed improvement. If such methods did not apply, tighter deadlines usually did the trick. The problematic individuals were given unrealistic deadlines, which created the atmosphere of impending doom necessary for a proper removal from the position. That was enough to get the employee to perform optimally all the way up to their last workday. Restocking the workforce was effortless, with scores of aspiring candidates ready to report for duty at the next tweet from the HR department. Performance didn’t suffer, and all of the required legal boxes were ticked.
This situation, however, was different. There was the pandemic. Two large titles had just launched, and with the slowing down of the economy it was not likely that new projects would proceed in the usual manner. It was only natural to suspend non-essential departments. In an industry where the development of AAA titles took anywhere between 2 and 5 years, this hiatus would not make a big difference. What’s more, both Xbox and PlayStation had announced new consoles and VR headsets. It would be easier to hire new people who already possessed the necessary skills than to re-train ones already on payroll. New hires usually came from the vast pool of training schools clustered around Montreal’s gaming industry, and they were happy to work for low wages. Many would, in fact, commit hundreds of free overtime hours to their dream jobs in the videogames industry, in exchange for a chance to be a part of the next blockbuster release. In any case, given the bleak economic projections of the pandemic, the long-planned transition of game development operations to Southeast Asia would have to be accelerated. Canadian offices would, of course, remain in place, Denis comforted himself, but work would be limited to high-level story development and technical design, scripting, localization management. The Montreal office would coordinate worldwide production, with a small contingent of local tech support and game testers to justify the ongoing tax incentives granted by the provincial government.
“What are they doing right now, monsieur? Is anyone in danger?” insisted the voice from the speakerphone. Denis was eager to put an end to this conversation: “It’s very dangerous! People can fall from up there, our insurance doesn’t cover it. And it’s a fire-hazard, some of them are smokers… And we don’t know if they are wearing masks and social distancing properly. Some of our employees go up there for their breaks, and the intruders have blocked the way out. Yes, they are putting everyone in danger!”
The emergency operator collected some more critical details and informed Denis that cars were on their way. He eased into his chair somewhat less agitated and sampled his cold espresso.
Denis had omitted to explain that the “intruders” were, until recently, Omniloft employees. His description of company personnel held against their will on the rooftop by an unidentified mob sounded to the dispatcher a lot like a hostage situation.
Over at the Groupe tactique d’intervention, Montreal’s tactical and specialized support unit, Major Claude Latendresse was on the verge of a desk job and unhappy about the world. Although he identified as an old-stock Quebecer and had never lived in the US, he had taken Trump’s loss personally and wanted to catch himself a purple-haired protester. There were lots of purple-haired folk in gaming these days, and there had not been a real high-profile hostage situation in nearly five years. This would be the perfect time to parade “Capitaine Hogg,” the grey armoured truck made for just this sort of scenario. The new police wagon was the pride and joy of the SWAT team, it had yet to be taken out on a real job.
12 pm
When Major Latendresse arrived on the scene there were already several police cars on site. Officers had cordoned off pedestrian traffic and created a safe perimeter. Two firetrucks and an ambulance were on standby. A few journalists and onlookers were snapping photos while doing their best to socially distance. One intrepid cameraman for a foreign YouTube channel was piloting a drone above the building.
Canadian coverage of the situation remained tactically sparse. In the event of an active shooter, something Montreal had witnessed several times, it was important to stay off social media and to avoid supplying attackers with any intelligence about police movements, or where people might be hiding. Major Latendresse ordered an expansion of the perimeter by one more block in all directions, and had agents track down the drone operator. Adrenaline was high.
As the first police cars began to arrive, it occurred to Denis that he might have to alert the people ‘upstairs’ about the situation. He had been hoping that the arrival of the cops would scare the intruders and they would simply disappear. Lucky for them if their last paycheque covers a misdemeanor fine, he snorted with contempt. Instead of disappearing, however, the mob on the roof had taken the foldable patio tables and jammed them against the entrances and emergency exits.
Cops meant journalists, and he hadn’t cleared the 911 call with Martine Gaumont, Omniloft’s Corporate Communications Officer. She was on Paris time, and usually not available on Fridays. “Dahlia, I need you to call Martine and tell her what’s going on,” he delegated. “What should I say, specifically?” she replied, savouring his mounting insecurity. “Tell her, er… that there might be some journalists asking questions. But… it’s under control…”
He was anything but sure about that.
A minute later, Martine’s imperious voice assailed him from the speakerphone: “C’est quoi ce spectacle? You might have chosen a better time to screw up, we just launched two major titles. We don’t need this kind of publicity. Bordel de merde, Paquette, put Dahlia back on.”
He shrank, feeling inconsequential. Surely, he hoped, someone in executive management would recognize that whatever he had done, it was for the good of the company. Had he not saved Omniloft a lot of money over the years through his efficient and flexible management of personnel?
Like most big game developers, Omniloft’s corporate philosophy relied on cultivating workers who were agile, creative, entrepreneurial, and productive[4]. In practical terms, this meant people who were responsible for their own training, sporadically available for short bursts of “crunch time,” and crucially, interested in self-promotion rather than collective gains.[5] This meant no labour unions or any such nonsense. A culture of meritocracy was encouraged,[6] but specific indicators of merit were elusive. Speed (higher) and pay scale (lower) were the only real variables that could be used to negotiate future employability. Omniloft had faced the threat of collective action several times, it was one of the reasons for the company’s planned relocation across the Pacific, at least as far as the “grunt work” on the creative side was concerned.
To shield itself from blowback, the company obliged employees to sign spectacularly draconian NDAs forbidding them from discussing projects for years ahead, even after termination. On the surface this sounded like a way to protect intellectual property, but it was also a strategy to conceal discontent within the ranks.
2 pm
By 2pm Martine had called everyone on the Board and had appealed to her connections in the Canadian press to hold out until an official statement could be issued. The news of a hostage situation had also reached Montreal’s mayor Victoria Blumenthal-Duclos. Big game companies were the city’s emblematic employers, critically important businesses in the post-industrial knowledge economy. Where else could you get nearly double minimum wage just for sitting on your ass, playing videogames? Some even worked for free, aspiring to accumulate professional capital while contributing to a game that would be played by millions worldwide. An entire class of urban stay-at-home millennials were happy to intern “below scale” just to be a part of legendary AAA franchises. “Do what you love!” and similar slogans echoed throughout mainstream outlets in celebration of tech culture.[7] It was important to show that the tax incentives lavished on transnational corporations were good for the city, and a mass sacking gave the wrong message.
Provincial and municipal lawmakers and lobbyists had put in a lot of work, since the late 1990s, to promote a leading edge tech industry in Montreal. An entire ecosystem of training schools, small and large indie game developers, and university programs had sprung up thanks to public and private funding. The provincial government offered education grants to prospective game professionals, with the promise that upon graduation they will join a booming industry. Reality was less glamorous. Many of those on the roof had once daydreamed about earning a living from doing what they loved, just like in the ads. Sobered by student debt and broken dreams, their diminutive revolt was more of an existential statement than an attempt to get back into the industry.
3 pm
Paquette was frantically banging on a rooftop door, convinced that by now his own low six figure job was on the line. He was a midlife cliché. With a looming divorce and three teenage sons with whom he was unable to connect, the work was all that was left. He had to make a last-ditch effort to appear indispensable. “Ouvrez la porte, calisse, I just want to talk! Que voulez-vous anyways?” He leaned back, sweat beading on his forehead although it was a cold afternoon. It was getting darker earlier this time of year. “Ostie que chui tanné!” he cursed. Denis resumed banging on the door. He was acting out his frustrations through physical effort. It was pointless, but it made him feel like he was doing something. High cholesterol, extra helpings at catered lunches, and the lack of exercise were taking a toll. He sat down again, out of breath. A small group of assistants observed his despair with apathy. One was livestreaming on his phone, others were posting updates to social media in spite of the communications ban that was declared by the security services.
Denis had hoped that he might be able to work something out with the ringleaders, but no one identified as such. The mob on the roof had organized quickly and spontaneously earlier that week. Their tactics were inspired by Occupy, and just like that movement, the former Omniloft employees had no concrete objective other than a loose notion that a union might be a good idea, though they did not know what that implied, or how to form one. They had coordinated on Twitter to meet and to discuss collective action. Some friction with management was expected, and disobedience was also an option, but only as a last resort. The 911 call expedited events in that direction.
The game workers steadfastly ignored Denis’ alternating threats and pleas to open the door. They were hopeful that if they waited long enough, Omniloft would eventually cave to avoid a PR scandal. The bet was well placed.
3:33 pm
CCO Martine Gaumont had been busy. For nearly two hours she was on the phone with the press and with Omniloft’s legal team from Levinson, Collier & Vinogradov. The lawyers perceived a serious threat. Omniloft had recently put in a lot of resources into rebranding itself as a more inclusive workplace: “Strength through diversity” and the like.[8] It wasn’t like the company had stopped exploiting western males’ appetite for violence with its catalogue of first person shooters, survival horror, and epic conquest games, but now it was done with a socially equitable posture. It was an attempt to open up new markets within the affluent “first world,” and to reach demographics that had previously been neglected. A transnational corporation par excellence, Omniloft desperately needed to be seen as everyone’s ally. It was a difficult narrative to control. As a consequence of #metoo and hashtag activism, highly policed insider stories that had thus far remained in the shadows began to spill out.[9] It was a short transition from sexual harassment to workplace harassment. Due to growing social pressure, employers from the US no longer considered NDAs when settling matters of harassment or discrimination, and this was beginning to occur with increasing frequency in Canada. Attorney Bruce Vinogradov was already involved in three cases where NDAs had proven insufficient to contain harassment revelations from former employees. “Bruce, you’ve got to put this fire out” implored Martine over Zoom. “The culture wars are at the gates. We just shipped two major titles that should keep us afloat for the next six quarters. Du coup ceux misérables sur les barricades, they are going to burn us.”
In Montreal, CEO Gilles Belshaw weighed in: “You have to get to them quickly before they start talking to the press.” The lawyer turned to one of his aides to ascertain that nothing official had been published yet. “This is good,” he said. “That means they want to negotiate. Have they nominated a spokesperson?”
4:51
For a frantic half hour, the Montreal boardroom was a steamy cauldron of tension and confusion. No one was social distancing. Masks were properly worn mostly by the younger staff. Others had them casually hanging from one ear. The CEO, Gilles Belshaw, had no mask whatsoever. He made up for it with a bowtie large enough to serve the purpose. He was less vexed with the current situation than with having been dragged out of the sauna at the club for such nonsense. Couldn’t they just annul the employment termination and keep everyone on for another year? What kind of precedent would that set?
Denis had to do something desperately brilliant, or he was finished. His thoughts were racing. At 49, he had recently conceded that the gaming industry was a young man’s game. “A young person’s,” he corrected his inner monologue.[10] Dahlia was already ingratiating herself with the higher-ups. He couldn’t compete with the assertive young black woman, and with his narrow specialization there weren’t many opportunities out there. A degree in Film Studies and a one-year management certificate from twenty years ago weren’t worth much in today’s job market. He was hungry. He hadn’t had a break in about eight hours. Desperation made him feel strangely alive.
At that instant, with piercing clarity, he had the answer.
5:00
“A hoax” he said out loud, interrupting a long exchange about a possible compensation strategy. Everyone glared at him as if he was out of his mind. Belshaw was about to call security, when Denis briskly walked around the table to the presentation board. “A fucking hoax, people. We sell it to the press as a hoax, and at the same time we deal with the gang upstairs one by one. I have all of their phone numbers on my desk together with their employment records. I fired them just this morning, remember? We call them individually, negotiate some kind of settlement or an eventual rehire, strike a deal on a case by case. And Dahlia, place an order for 200 sandwiches from Chez Guillaume, would you? They must be starving!”
From the boardroom screen Martine’s tense aquiline features transitioned into a something resembling interest. She immediately understood the implications of Denis’ suggestion. Omniloft was a gaming company, playfulness was supposed to be a part of its corporate DNA. Of course, a hoax was the perfect explanation. For the game-playing public worldwide, this situation could be recast as a good old-fashioned practical joke. In recent publicity the company had already been emphasising the lighter side of work: loft parties, catered 5 à 7s, open bar. Why not an elaborate hoax, a Friday the Thirteenth inside joke from one of the funnest workplaces on earth? Even if in poor taste, this was welcome comic relief set against the social trauma of the pandemic. It wouldn’t be the first time “creatives” playfully subverted the system! This new spin would generate both street cred and free publicity.
One by one, members of the rooftop crowd began receiving personalized text messages. “We’ve heard you. Let’s talk.” Administrators and besieged employees got busy negotiating and munching on gourmet subs. An hour later the roof was vacated.
The Omniloft incident was never considered a strike, and the company successfully avoided yet another inept attempt at unionizing. “It’s a complicated system, we’re in the middle of a cycle,” management apologised amicably, “a union is a great idea, but not during the pandemic. The current structure keeps us competitive, but when the market changes so will we,” they pledged.
10 pm
That evening Major Claude Latendresse went home disappointed. He cracked open a beer, sat in front of the screen, and loaded Stealth Ops: Echelon 5 on his Xbox. It was an Omniloft production about international terrorism and tactical hostage rescue.
Discussion
A “hoax” is a roadblock to further questioning. The public message: “nothing serious to see here folks, move along.” For a long time, the videogame industry has enjoyed light treatment from the press, from politicians, and from the public. The pleasure principle undergirding the contemporary experience of media consumption inhibits critical engagement with anything that stands in its way. The industry has not been taken very seriously but, as Ian Williams argues, it ought to be. Globally, video games have exceeded both the movie and the music industries in revenue and in public reach, particularly with the expansion of mobile platforms. Montreal has turned gaming into a cornerstone of its creative industries ecosystem.
Trouble in ‘funland’ has surfaced here and there over the years, with increasing frequency as we draw closer to the present, but public reaction has been weak and frequently confused about the nature of the problem. Canadian neoliberal commentator Peter Nowak, for instance, expresses the common opinion that those who do not like the work conditions should simply quit and start their own ventures. Nowak’s alternative to unions, the small business venture, is meaningless when considering the amount of time and money required by a substantial workforce to complete a triple-A title. An indie studio simply cannot pull it off. This objectivist view of creative work as something solely driven by self-interest fails to appreciate the large-scale mechanics of industrialized production. Specifically, the problem with meritocracy in the context of large game development is that the sheer scale of the exercise involves multiple levels of oversight which are far from optimized. While we may embrace meritocracy as an abstract ideal that rewards achievement, the assessors of achievement are not always suited to the task. Predominantly MBA-trained and bottom-line-minded, the bloated middle management that Williams describes is hardly in a position to appreciate, evaluate, oversee, plan for, or reward creative work. It would certainly be more equitable to recruit a lead artist or developer from the work floor and induct them into management than the other way around.
Players frequently turn a blind eye to the realities of the industry which, in turn, is reluctant to change its dysfunctional model by shrinking its managerial class, as Amber A’Lee Frost proposes. Workplace abuses, principally inflicted on creative workers by project managers, are described in a growing number of research papers and all point to one and the same problem: big game workers need unions, perhaps even government oversight in cases where public funds are liberally doled out.[11] For the rooftop crowd, the trouble in ‘funland’ was that no one really knew what an effective creative workers’ union should look like in the globally interconnected 21st century.[12]
[1] An entirely different reality unfolded elsewhere in Montreal on Nov. 13th, 2020, when allegedly a prank caller “swatted” the creators of Rainbow Six: Siege. The present text is a speculative experiment aiming to rehearse academic theories about organizational management in the creative industries as fictionalized re-enactments. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
[2] See Karl, Katherine A., and Barry W. Hancock. “Expert Advice on Employment Termination Practices: How Expert Is It?” Public Personnel Management 28, no. 1 (March 1999): 51–62. https://doi.org/10.1177/009102609902800105.
[3] See Mukherjee, Souvik. VideoGames and Postcolonialism: Empire plays back. Springer, 2017.
[4] See Chen, Julie Yujie, and Ping Sun. “Temporal Arbitrage, the Fragmented Rush, and Opportunistic Behaviors: The Labor Politics of Time in the Platform Economy” New Media and Society, 2020; Gregg, Melissa. Counterproductive: Time Management in the Knowledge Economy. Durham: Duke University Press, 2018; Irani, Lilly Chasing Innovation: Making Entrepreneurial Citizens in Modern India, Princeton, 2019; Boltanski, Lic and Eve Chiapello The New Spirit of Capitalism, Translated by Gregory Eliott, London: Verso, 2007.
[5] “Canadian Business” contributor Peter Nowak does not like unions. He feels the proper response to worker discontent is individual entrepreneurialism, a common neoliberal view that does not understand large-scale operations involving many parties from variety of backgrounds in a democracy.
[6] See Donnellon, Anne, and Deborah M. Kolb. “Constructive for whom? The fate of diversity disputes in organizations.” Journal of Social Issues 50, no. 1 (1994): 139-155.
[7] See Tokumitsu, Miya. Do what you love: And other lies about success & happiness. Simon and Schuster, 2015.
[8] See Weststar, Johanna, Victoria O’Meara, Chandell Gosse, and Marie-Josée Legault (2017). Citizenship at work. Diversity among videogame developers, 2004-2015 (International Game developers association DSS series). International Game Developers Association.
[9] See Weston, Maureen. “Buying Secrecy: Non-Disclosure Agreements, Arbitration, and Professional Ethics in the #MeToo Era.” University of Illinois Law Review, Forthcoming; and Prasad, Vasundhara. “If anyone is listening, #MeToo: Breaking the culture of silence around sexual abuse through regulating non-disclosure agreements and secret settlements.” Boston College Law Review 59 (2018): 2507.
[10] Alongside sexism and racism, ageism seems to be an endemic and largely understudied characteristic of videogame work. For an introductory look at issue, see De Schutter, Bob, and Vero Vanden Abeele. “Towards a gerontoludic manifesto.” Anthropology & Aging 36, no. 2 (2015): 112-120. For the most part, ageism in academic literature has been discussed from a representation standpoint rather than from organizational creative industries and management perspectives: Williams, D., Martins, N., & Consalvo, M. (2009). The virtual census: Representations of gender, race and age in video games. New Media & Society, 11(5), 815-834.
[11] See Ruffino, Paolo, and Jamie Woodcock. “Game workers and the empire: unionisation in the UK video game industry.” Games and Culture (2020). For a social-sciences perspective see Legault, Marie-Josée, Johanna Weststar, and Laurence To. “A union for videogame developers?.” First Person Scholar (2017).
[12] See Legault, Marie-Josée, Johanna Weststar, and Laurence To. “A union for videogame developers?.” First Person Scholar (2017), also Ruffino, Paolo, and Jamie Woodcock. "Game workers and the empire: unionisation in the UK video game industry." Games and Culture (2020).
Disclaimer: This is a work of academic fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner unless directly referenced. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental and speculative.