We are continuing our exploration of working conditions in the video game industry. In the first part we’ve heard from a developer who worked for 100 hours a week. Today at NYLA podcast we are sharing the interview with a union organizer fighting for such practices to stop. “Games creation seems like this magical process that no one really understands. Really it is very close to a factory shop floor”, says Marijam Didžgalvytė, the chair of communications for Game Workers Unite (GWU), an organization that helps exploited workers and pro-union activists establish unions. Marijam, herself a fellow Lithuanian, who grew up playing videogames in local internet cafes ended up in London as an economic migrant of the 2008 global economic crisis. In 2018 she started writing about the video game industry. Around the same time GWU was starting to form in San Francisco and Marijam was quick to join their efforts. “For me to begin to work in a space that combined my two passions – gaming and class war – just seemed like a very natural thing”, she explains. We talk with Marijam about the importance of unionization, whether unions will change the content of the games and how the unapologetically leftist DNA of the movement can affect it’s image among the gamer community. Support NYLA podcast: https://patreon.com/nanookmultimedia