Sometimes Jessica Gonzalez can still hear the eerie theme music for one of the Call of Duty video games. When she gets older, the soundtrack will play on a loop in her mind.
Ms. Gonzalez spent months working 14-hour overnight shifts at the Los Angeles office of the video game developer as a quality assurance tester.
Ms. Gonzalez said that it was a problem because she felt like she was pouring from an empty cup.
Ms. Gonzalez and other Q.A. testers were calledcrunching because of the long stretches of intense work before a game's release. Employees are often given shifts of up to 14 hours each day, with only one or two days off each month, all in the name of meeting a deadline to ship the title to players.
Discontent over working conditions at video game companies has been growing for years, driven by anger about the crunch periods experienced by Ms. Gonzalez, as well as by poor pay, temporary contracts and sexual harassment in the workplace.
It would have been unimaginable a few years ago for some game workers to consider unionization. Their interest has been fueled partly by low unemployment rates, which have led workers to believe they have more leverage over their employers, as well as a lawsuit last year that thrust the problems with sexual misconduct and gender discrimination out into the open.
Quality assurance workers at a subsidiary of Activision will vote on whether to unionize on Monday. The Game Workers Alliance would be the first union at a major North American video game publisher. It would be a symbolic victory for organizers who think gaming industry workers are ready for unions.
It will be the spark that ignites the rest of the industry, according to Ms. Gonzalez. Ms. Gonzalez worked for the Communications Workers of America, the union that has been helping Raven organize.
The Q.A. workers can unionize without all of their coworkers taking part, but that's been challenged by the company. Everyone in the studio should have a say in the decision, said a spokesman for the company.
Workers in the gaming industry are often told that conditions can be bad because they are making money playing games. While working on Call of Duty: Cold War, a former employee of the Q.A. division of the company clicked through the game for up to 14 hours straight while chugging energy drinks to stay alert.
He said that if you only eat food for a year on end, you will start to hate it.
It is common for game workers in Australia and the United Kingdom to be unionized. In North America, unions haven't caught on with game studios.
A group of game developers formed an organization called Game Workers Unite in order to encourage unionization efforts in various cities. Dozens of workers at Riot Games walked out in protest of the company's handling of lawsuits accusing it of having a sexist and toxic culture. Female employees won $100 million in a gender discrimination settlement. Large game studios have faced lawsuits.
The first gaming union in North America was formed by workers at Vodeo Games. Outside the Game Awards in Los Angeles, a bunch of picketers drummed up attention for the Game Workers of Southern California, a rapidly growing labor group.
The contract workers at the studio said they would form a union. An employee at Nintendo filed a charge with the National Labor Relations Board, accusing the company of firing them because they joined or supported a labor organization.
Nintendo's treatment of its employees, particularly Q.A. workers, who are often on temporary contracts and demoted to the bottom of the totem pole at development studios, caused many to feel like second-class citizens.
Nintendo said in a statement that it was committed to providing a welcoming and supportive work environment and that an employee had been fired for leaking confidential information.
It all adds up to an environment in which gaming employees are more willing to speak out about perceived injustices and more curious about collective organizing than ever before, especially as they watch labor campaigns at companies like Amazon and Starbucks.
Johanna Weststar, an associate professor at Western University in Ontario who studies labor, said that this time is one of real experimentation, where game workers are exploring their options in what seems to be quite an open-minded way.
Professor Weststar said that part of the interest in activism in gaming was due to campaigns led by unions like C.W.A., which have found the gaming industry to be a massive, untapped market.
Professor Weststar said that it will be more telling when a larger studio with a more stable work force unionizes.
The workers walked out of work in protest after the company ended their contracts. After the workers announced their intent to unionize in January, the company that is being acquired by Microsoft said it would not recognize the group.
The company said it would split the Q.A. workers into different departments. More than 1,000 temporary Q.A. contractors will be converted to full-time status and will get a pay raise to $20 an hour. The unionizing workers wouldn't be affected because federal labor law prevented them from inducing workers to vote against a union by increasing their pay or benefits. This assertion was rejected by C.W.A.
The N.L.R.B. was told that the Raven studio workers should be allowed to vote because they were no longer a bargaining unit. Workers were told to mail in their ballots after the board rejected their claims. The workers will unionize if a majority are in favor.
Workers will be watching closely. They say they are seeing the benefits of being able to pressure their employer to improve.
Jiji Saari said that the things happened because of how hard they have been pushing and how much pressure there has been on upper management.
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