An interview with new game developer Gardens, aiming to be the ani-Activision

[GreatBriTom]

Gardens is founded by veteran developers who have worked on projects including Journey, Marvel's Spider-Man, and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The studio's mission is to create a development environment that's sustainable for its workers. Gardens will be fully remote, offer 35-hour workweeks, unlimited paid time off, and full medical and vision benefits.

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"Crunch takes a real negative effect on a person's health, personal life, and relationships. So when we came together to make Gardens, we thought really hard about how we could do things differently," cofounder Chris Bell tells Inverse.

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"We support industry unionization and we hope all the people organizing and fighting for better wages and working conditions are successful, that their work can finally bring some much-needed change to the industry," Bell says. "If the day ever comes when our employees want to unionize, we would support them."

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Full story here.

 

[L Thammy]

First two quotes sound great. The third quote has me wondering if there might be a risk of them to changing their minds before a union is formed, but I don't know enough about the regulation around unions to know if there are obstacles towards forming one from the start. I guess it might be too small to need one.

 

[Caiusto]

Good luck for them. It always begins with magical words and dreams, once development starts is when things could go bad but 35h workweeks seems great.

Btw what is vision benefits? Is it related to ophthalmology? If so why is it not included in the medical benefits?

 

[FliX]

Thread locked for self-promotion.