Before anyone asks: no, I wasn't kidnapped and gruesomely murdered by a commando of exasperated GIG readers desperate to make me shut up. I escaped. Narrowly. And now that I'm back, I promise to be louder than ever. Starting with this new column, scheduled to run every other month (-ish) until death, the IRS, or a two-year trip around the world with Cindy Crawford do us part.

Its topic? Our lives as developers, how we got into this mess, and how we can make it better. Part factual essay, part editorial, part shadow-boxing. With a bit of a book review tossed in for good measure.

As many of you know, I'm a freelancer. Turns out I'm not the only one. While researching his recent book, Free Agent Nation (ISBN 0-446-52523-5), author Daniel Pink spent more than a year on the road talking to hundreds of them, all over the United States. What he found out is staggering: soloists, microbusinesses and temps now account for 33 million American workers. One out of four. And their numbers are growing fast.

Why? The reasons are as many and varied as the people who choose to forego the traditional employer-employee relationship. Some examples:

• First, the undeniable fact that for most people, the large organization is a stifling, suffocating prison, filled with pointless meetings, childish power struggles and poorly-ventilated cubicles.
• Second, the breakdown of the old social contract, in which individuals gave loyalty to a patriarchal company in exchange for long-term security: corporations stopped holding up their end of the bargain 20 years ago, and now individuals are dropping theirs.
• Third, thanks to advancing technology, going solo is now easier than ever before: with a good computer and a fast internet connection, just about anyone can do just about anything from just about anywhere. Putting a thousand miles between yourself and the insecure boss who used to look over your shoulder every fifteen minutes is only gravy.

Yet, in our hip and cool corner of the world, we are scared to death of the free agent system. We're willing to do anything to keep a team together, at all costs: stock options with claw-back clauses, Orwellian no-compete agreements, massages and foosball tables in the office, whatever it takes. We insist on permanent, full-time employment, and we're willing to pay for relocation, no matter how costly the office space or inconvenient the move, rather than hire a remote employee. (I still can't get over the job ad requiring developers to move to Iceland to code online-only games. Think about it for a minute. Astounding.)

And what do we get for all of this effort? Nothing. No, worse than nothing: not only does the industry still have one of the scariest turnover rates this side of the Cordless Bungee Jumpers of America, but those employees we manage to keep around are often bitter, exhausted and so disgusted with us that they leave game development altogether by the time they turn 30, never to come back.

Therefore, it is my contention (not quite disinterested, I'll admit) that we would all do much better in this business if we got rid of the 20th century corporate structure and opened the door wide to free agents of all trades. Or at least, that all of us who deserve to do better, would.

Here is a scary quote from Pink's book:

"Cornell University research found that on average Americans work 350 hours more per year than Europeans - and 70 hours more per year than even the Japanese, whose language contains a word, karoshi, that means 'death from overwork'".

Seventy hours a year. Two weeks of full-time work, piled on top of the famously excruciating Japanese work year. And that's the average American; I don't think I'll shock any of you by stating that game developers have it far worse.

And why is that? Because this extra work is never paid for. "Exempt employees" don't get a penny more for 70 hours a week than for 35, and unscrupulous bosses figure that whatever work they can squeeze out of mandatory unpaid overtime is money in their pockets. The employees can't do a thing about it: they comply, or they hit the street, and if they don't perform well enough, other recent high-school graduates are only too willing to take their place. Where the "Organization Man" gave loyalty in exchange for security, we give obedience out of fear.

However, in a free agent system, unpaid overwork (pun intended) is all but impossible. You can't bully a freelancer into working nights and weekends, because he's got other clients waiting and paying. A freelancer does not have a no-compete clause preventing him from working anywhere else in the business for years if he quits. A freelancer does not relocate for each assignment, and she does not owe the company thousands of dollars in relocation expenses if she is fired. A freelancer stays only as long as the job is fun and the conditions are good. And if a team includes freelancers who demand sane working conditions, the other employees will likely follow suit and benefit as well.

Sure, having to pay for all the work that gets done may drive some companies out of business. I say good riddance. The honest ones won't have to compete with a slave economy any more.

Why do games seemingly always go 50% over budget, come out a year late and ship with bugs that wipe out the customer's hard drive? It must have something to do with the fact that we keep driving our best people away. There's a reason why game company job ads always mention "a driving passion for games": people who don't have it, or those who do but have an equally driving passion for something else, would never endure the conditions we inflict upon ourselves.

Unfortunately, even the good guys who would like nothing better than to treat their people well are forced (or think they are forced) to impose obnoxious employment contracts. They figure: if the bad guys enforce no-compete clauses, we won't be able to recruit their experienced staff down the road, so we have to protect ourselves from losing ours. Or: we need to keep our good people, so we'll take back their stock options if they leave; this way, they'll have something to think about before taking jobs with the big boys who poach our teams by offering salaries we can't match.

This defensive strategy invariably backfires. Companies end up with unproductive, disgruntled employees who stick around only because they can't legally get out, or because they keep waiting for that ever-elusive IPO to turn their stock options into gold. Work relations deteriorate. Productivity goes down the drain.

It doesn't have to be this way. In Silicon Valley, Pink says, programmers now routinely spend a year working at each of a bunch of companies, building a portfolio of stock options. Sure, they leave as soon as they're unhappy, but it also means that they are happy and productive for their entire stay at a company. Not such a bad deal for all involved. A free agent system provides the same benefits: a freelancer signs on for projects he's interested in and gives his best, because the next assignment may depend on a recommendation from the client. And if he's really happy, he'll sign on for another project with the same company; most freelancers (this one included) spend most of their time working with a small group of regular clients, year after year. All that is needed to keep a stable of free agents happy is an endless supply of cool projects, and if there's one thing that we know how to churn out, that has to be it!

Other benefits of hiring free agents:

• Too much time in one job dulls the skills. When you hire a free agent, you can always pick the one best suited to the task at hand.
• Projects involving remote developers must be organized better, leading to more predictable results.
• Free agents tend to become fiercely loyal to each other. Pink mentions networks of "corporate alumni", i.e., people who used to work together and who keep referring each other to good clients. Find one good freelancer, and you find a whole mess of them.
• Less office space to pay for.
• Free agency implies flexibility. Free agents who work out of home offices spend less time in traffic, have more leeway to deal with the vagaries of life (a sick child, furniture deliveries, etc.) and can organize their work days in a manner that is most efficient for them. The result is better productivity and fewer non-vacation days off.

The final irony: by foregoing a formal employment relationship, employers gain all the benefits of the stability they try to impose with legal documents, without the drawbacks.

Free agency is also a great deal, monetary-wise, for the free agent herself.

The longer an employee stays in the same company, the less his or her salary reflects actual contribution. The reason is that, while responsibilities can change drastically (i.e., a tester becoming a junior programmer, then an associate producer, possibly within a single year), many game development studios grant raises once a year, and base those on a percentage of current base salary. So, if a person is hired at $30,000 a year to work as a junior artist, and the company's policy is to give raises of no more than 10% a year, she won't make more than $36,300 two years from now even if she is now a lead on a huge project.

The result: the better you are, the faster the discrepancy between your salary and your worth grows. The only way to rectify the situation is to find a job at another company, which will gladly pay you what you are worth now because they are buying your skills now. The slackers, of course, stay put, and your old company goes south.

For a free agent, each project is a new job, whether it lasts three weeks or three years. Rates are set according to what is to be done, and if the deal is unsatisfactory, there are always other clients elsewhere.

Of course, free agency isn't for everyone. The hard core of a company needs stability. (Although the exact definition of a "hard core" can be surprisingly flexible; Pink describes a free agent network including, of all people, chief financial officers.) Some people need the consistency of a regular job. Investors are likely to frown upon companies that don't have some sort of long-term agreement with their key people. And some teams work so well together that they should do it on a permanent basis.

But, overall, in a market where companies are chronically understaffed, any way to recruit quality people for a project is a good one. Even if it has to be started all over again for the next one.

And it's a lot more fun than trying to come up with the perfect no-compete clause.

BIO
François Dominic Laramée has plagued the game industry for almost a decade, finagling his way into a variety of short-lived jobs as studio head, producer, designer and programmer, until he ran out of luck and was forced to become a (mostly starving) freelancer three years ago. He is in no way responsible for the success of the more than 20 console, PC, online and board games for which he claims unwarranted credit, and should never have been allowed to edit Charles River Media's upcoming book "Game Design Methods" or to publish his insane ramblings in over 35 articles and book chapters. Visit his mediocre web site, http://pages.infinit.net/idjy, at your own risk
 

Editor's notes: The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily the opinions held by the publishers. And Free Agent Nation is available on Amazon.com by clicking here. And that's not an opinion.