Hello everyone!Hopefully you've had the chance by now to watch yesterday's video about the fired Rockstar employees fighting back against what they claim to be unlawful dismissal designed to "decapitate" their union efforts at the studio ahead of the release of Grand Theft Auto VI.We've been really heartened to see how much interest our video has already seen, with it having crossed 100,000 views within just the first 24 hours.If you've been one of that number and have shared this with friends, left a comment, or even joined the Patreon to support the work after watching it, thank you so much. It's made a huge difference.
In terms of updates to the story itself, the Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain has today issued a legal claim against Rockstar, stating that the company "would do well to understand that private spaces such as trade union Discord servers have protections, and that their company’s contractual clauses do not supersede UK law".We'll be following this story as it progresses into the courtroom.In the meantime, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the format of yesterday's video and what we have planned going forwards. So if you're a patron, let's have a peek behind the curtain...
Okay, so as you may have already noticed, we branded and structured this video a little differently to our typical work. We've called this new format "PMG Reports" and it's designed to serve a different sort of purpose on our channel.You see, we may be many things at People Make Games, but we're very rarely quick. Now that's not necessarily a problem in of itself. We make longform documentaries, often with runtimes of over an hour, plus we have a tendency to tackle big, complicated stories which require a lot of reporting hours to truly pick apart and get right. These are all good reasons not to rush what we do.However, sometimes there's a story that deserves to be told right away, even as it's developing. We felt this way about the Rockstar firings.Although this story is potentially a long way from being concluded, with the legal claims having just been submitted, I think there's a need for aspects of what's happening here to be understood right now, today. Regardless of the final outcome in court, 34 people have lost their jobs and are currently reeling from the way in which that process (or lack of process) has been handled.
When we first heard that these workers intended to hold a demonstration outside the offices of Rockstar North in Edinburgh in order to rally support from their colleagues left behind and also, to share some of their stories publicly for the first time, we felt a responsibility to be there on the ground as it happened.Up until this point, much of the coverage has come from competing statements being sent out to the press from either Rockstar/Take Two or the IWGB. Very little has been heard from the workers themselves and certainly nothing on camera anyway.Typically, if we were to cover this story as we normally would, I'd have gone along to film on the day, but you wouldn't have seen any of that footage until a larger documentary was published later down the line, perhaps after the legal action had been fully resolved.But approaching this story in that way felt like it could be doing a disservice to the workers affected by these firings. Up until now, their voices have largely been drowned out by the more recent news that GTA 6 has been delayed until November next year, or by Rockstar's allegations that confidential information had been leaked prior to their dismissals.And so we wanted to give them a platform to share their experiences now, even at this very early stage and show the strength of feeling surrounding this planned demonstration up in Scotland. A typical PMG video just wouldn't be able to achieve that in time.
We needed a way of shooting something on the day that could then be edited and ready to go by early the next week. In order to do this, we decided to structure this more like a typical news report you might watch on the telly.I used a handheld mic and brought along a camera operator (thanks Richie!) with a setup that would allow us to shoot everything as it happened, with no need to switch between lenses, or microphones, or anything that could get in the way of our recording.I had the intro written before I arrived, but aside from that, everything else was shot during the demonstration in one go, as efficiently as we could manage. What you see in the final video is pretty close to the chronology of the day itself, as a result.There was no big script to contend with, or significant animation work that needed to be done in its aftermath. The plan was to get there and figure out the story we were telling as it happened and that's exactly what we did.The protest took place on the Thursday and then almost the entire thing was edited on Monday this week. We have never been able to turn something around so quickly on PMG, but I'm delighted with the results.
Don't get me wrong, this isn't replacing our typical longform structure in any way. But I do think it's a useful string to have in our bow going forward and could potentially open up a different kind of story to People Make Games if and when it makes sense to do so.When something requires a bit of shoe-leather journalism and would perhaps benefit from a quicker turnaround in order to help our audience understand what's happening while it's still timely and relevant, I can head out with a mic in hand and make sure that happens.It won't be something we force into our work either way, but it's a great option to have available to us. I suspect there are only a small number of stories this will really suit in our case, as video games don't always lend themselves to this kind of reporting style. But man, I'm thrilled to know we can do it and even more thrilled to know that so many of you have wanted to watch it.