This is exactly the issue. By the time you get through post, deliver the show, and they finally pick an airdate after dithering about, it’s already often been a year since you wrapped the writers room. Then they take forever to collect all their data.
Ben Siemon@benjaminjs.bsky.social · 11h agoStudios and networks have become overly cautious and no longer will invest in another season until they have all the data from season 1, which is an even worse problem when it comes to animation because animation can take around a year to produce! It leads to giant gaps and declining viewership.
![“We really started mobilizing as one Blizzard unit in [the] last couple of months, and I think that really helped put the pressure on,” Paul Cox, senior game designer on World of Warcraft, told Aftermath.
"I feel like the company dragged its feet and did a lot of posturing and wasting time until the very, very last moment."
Prior to spring of this year, the WoW team, which unionized in 2024, had gotten the lion's share of bargaining time. Other units found themselves stuck in the mud. Higher-ups were effectively stalling the whole process—unfortunately nothing new for unionized workers under Microsoft’s umbrella.
"For this whole year of bargaining on the Diablo side—and I imagine on the rest of the units as well—we received so few [bargaining] dates, but we kind of had the understanding that whatever WoW was able to win would at least influence and set the floor for the rest of our units,” Diablo senior environment artist Mahreen Fatima told Aftermath. “We adopted this messaging about how WoW's wins are our wins, so we should be out there mobilizing with them. But truly, I feel like the company dragged its feet and did a lot of posturing and wasting time until the very, very last moment this last month to finally be able to say, 'OK, yes, we are willing to extend this contract to everyone.' We really did not have any indication that we could get this done until last month."](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:5gdejlhcswjbzraadoltdpps/bafkreih6u6gzajbd63dovnmlnc43z5g6i35d3n735rrdkopipyjopkl72e)
