(opinions are my own and not EA's)<p>I've been at EA for about 1.5 years now and have never enjoyed working somewhere as much as this. Their devotion to D&I, their culture around management (and the thorough training each manager gets), career progression, and feedback, their flexibility for each individual (even given their size), how frequently we actually get to speak with SVP-level leadership to ask questions/voice opinions, their flexibility around WFH, and how everyone is pleasant to work with make it very easy to talk about how nice it is to work at EA. On top of all of that, benefits and pay are competitive (especially benefits).<p>EA's a big company, and I'm in EADP, which is an org that builds the back-end services for the games, rather than the games. But I've never been asked to work more than 8 hours in a day. Whenever I have chosen to work more, I've been specifically told by my manager or his that it's not required and that I can pick it up again tomorrow. They meant it.<p>I read this post before joining EA and was somewhat concerned, but was told by people I trust that it no longer applies. From my perspective, they're absolutely right.<p>As others mentioned, EA has undergone new leadership since this post was written. It was also nearly two decades ago. At this point, it's likely more of a good cautionary tale of how things can get than an accurate rendering of how things are.
This blog post is from 18 years ago so I'd be curious if any game developers can speak to the current state of affairs in the industry. It's always been notorious for overworking employees, but I'm not sure if it's to the same scale described here.
FWIW I was part of the class in the resulting class action lawsuit, and got a settlement check for about $30K in 2005<p>I also got a ~$5K settlement check from Google around 2012 due to the illegal Steve Jobs - Eric Schmidt anti-poaching agreement, another class action lawsuit
Good grief, this post is nearly old enough to vote.<p>EA has changed a lot in those years, mostly for the better. I spent 13 years there from 2005-2018 and it was a great place to work; the people were great, the problems were interesting, and the hours were normal.
I organized a softball game between my startup and EA in 1984 or so, as described in [1]. Trip Hawkins hit a monstrous home run. Our president hit into a double play.<p>The fact that they've even lasted this long is some kind of tribute. Trip's idea at the start was to build games like a movie studio: have outside companies take all the risk of building the thing, and just assign an in-house "producer" to help them.<p>If an EA employee said, "Hey, I want to build games myself!" he'd say, "OK, you can give up your stock options and your job security, and in exchange you can get all the royalties that a game developer gets." Most of them thought better of the idea.<p>So now, it's... what? They work employees like game developers but don't pay them like that? Why would you do that?<p>[1] <a href="https://www.albertcory.io/the-big-bucks" rel="nofollow">https://www.albertcory.io/the-big-bucks</a>
I see that "Vote with your feet" got downvoted in the thread, but it's true. I worked for another one of the large game studios in the US for a long time. The practices employed at the game studio were built around keeping people attached to their jobs because they love video games and loved the games we built. It was weaponized excessively.<p>Almost every town-hall, all-hands, etc was framed around the product and keeping players happy (we need to deliver this by this date so you have to crunch). The hiring pool was primarily people that played the games we developed and there was some psychological warefare going on that attempted to prevent attrition based on building what you loved.<p>The quote from the article is:
> No one works in the game industry unless they love what they do.<p>This is pretty true and can be very toxic in your "job". My advice: Don't love what you do for work THAT much. Keep a bit of a disconnect and live your life still. In the modern tech industry you can leave, you can find a job that treats you well, don't make your identity a "video game developer on X game" because that is a recipe for burnout.<p>The issues that stemmed from this are impossible to outline. People made subpar decisions, dealt with inhumane conditions and harassment, took lower pay, and at the end of the day has caused REAL harm in the industry (suicides, trauma, etc). We need to be better and hold these companies accountable from every aspect of not buying games, not working there, and attempt to make the industry better.<p>I left my stint at video games and went to a different company. The pay is better, the working conditions are better, my thoughts are not stifled because of internal politics.<p>The industry has changed quite a bit since 2004. During that time publishers were key and many times deadlines were set by the next "drop" for the publisher, but many of the problems with the industry have stayed around and video games are not worth it.
This was while John Riccitiello was running EA. I was there at the time and it was crazy how many people were being driven so hard. You may recognize his name now from the recent Unity/malware merger news, or maybe from calling developers who don’t extract maximum value through microtransactions “fucking idiots.”
This was one of the posts selected for inclusion in Spolsky's <i>"The Best Software Writing"</i>, a book that I very much enjoyed and recommend.<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Best-Software-Writing-Selected-Introduced/dp/1590595009" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Best-Software-Writing-Selected-Introd...</a>
Funny story: I know one of the engineers who was on this exact team being written about who was still at EA years later. I asked him why he didn’t leave, and he said “I didn’t really mind. I got a settlement from the lawsuit and bought a nice car. Then I went back to work.”
When I interviewed at a medium sized game studio, mostly known for their graphically impressive engine, I asked to have another offer (different industry) matched. The recruiters response was that they couldn't do it, but they know I'll still choose them "because making games is cool".<p>Suffice to say I didn't take that offer. Studio tour was fun though.
I worked in the game industry for over twenty years as an engineer. Most of the time the work was fun, the projects were interesting and the money was okay. Eventually I needed more stability, better pay and work life balance, and I went into business software, a decision that I wish I had made earlier.
I think that the game industry has some issues that are very difficult to solve caused by various compounding factors, and for these reasons there will always be below market pay for engineers, crunch and studio closures/mass layoffs. The factors are 1)games are a creative endeavour subject to fashion. There is no guarantee that your star team that made Space War 1 will make hit sequel nor that people will be into space war games in 5 years. 2)project management is extremely hard when you have 200+ people across the world working on complex systems and a varying product description 3) the combination of uncertain delivery and high marketing spends required for a AAA title, and other hard dates like thanksgiving or a sports season beginning, means that crunch is almost guaranteed. 4)the cool factor of working in games means a supply of young people that can be taken advantage of. below market pay, unpaid OT and little structured career development.
In my time I saw project managers come from academia and from government or military contractors and none of them could tame the endemic issues that come with this industry.
Not all of these problems exist at all developers, there are bright spots and it’s possible to have a long and lucrative career. Just have your eyes open.
> When the next news came it was not about a reprieve; it was another acceleration: twelve hours six days a week, 9am to 10pm.<p>What amazes me is that there's someone out there who thinks that this type of "crunchs" would improve performance. Do they ever really improve actual performance ?<p>I have been in (non-videogame) software companies that did this (never as an employee though), and I literally saw people staring at their computer screens doing absolutely nothing. Not even browsing Facebook or whatever, just... staring. They would do that for the majority of the day. Probably sleeping with their eyes open.<p>I have the impression that adding hours like this is like adding manpower as in The Mythical Man-month way... it can only slow down the project, never speed it up.
"Press Reset" by Jason Schreier is a great look at the human side of the industry in general. The crunch, layoff, move to a new studio, repeat is all too common. EA was on a whole other level, though.
I used to work with a very experienced SE (something like 20+ years) who worked at EA a little after this article was written. Man I thought it was just a reddit bandwagon to hate on EA but hearing a first hand account of how his managers treated him and the rest of his team was jaw dropping. Manager walking back and forth with a bullhorn shouting about bugs that needed to be fixed at midnight on a Saturday, firing a (according to him) great dev weeks before his wife was going to have their child, the constant backstabbing politics, driving someone to suicide (though he felt very uncomfortable expanding on that).<p>Though reading this I can't help but wonder if there is a better model for releasing games to avoid crunch -- something like what minecraft did. Give access to an unfinished game, then do a rolling release and slowly make it better and better.
This is fairly old. I have no idea whether or not it still applies.<p>I have also found that discrete teams, within a company, can have radically different cultures.<p>That said, game development has long been known as a "labor of love," with emphasis on "<i>labor</i>."<p>In the 1980s(!). I was recruited by Sierra Online. Even though I thought it would be cool, I consulted enough game developers to get talked out of it.
I chat with people at EA Canada from time to time and the impression I get is that it's a very good place to work (the people always try to lure you there!) with none of the sort of brutal overtime issues expressed. It's commendable that EA would have steered the ship around from 2004 and ended these awful practices.
This is from 2004, and we know so much <i>more</i> about the games industry that stories of overworked QA testers and programmers seem utterly quaint. Every company in the business[0] is run by a yet-to-be-convicted sex offender or enabler of such. Activision is currently involved in one of the biggest equal-opportunity lawsuits in history, which is only eclipsed by the legal fight between US EEOC and California DFEH[1] over who gets to prosecute them and how far they should go in doing so.<p>At the time I assumed that this behavior was enabled by a high churn rate - i.e. companies hiring junior developers unaware of the awful practices of the games industry and wearing them down until they left. However, this turned out to be naive. That's the Amazon approach - and Amazon is actually going to start running out of people to churn through soon. The games industry <i>hasn't</i>.<p>What I can only assume now is that the games industry does <i>not</i> churn through developers as much as they mould them into paragons of toxicity. Anyone who <i>does</i> churn out is just a normal human being, and those who stay are either already toxic or get moulded by the system into being as such.<p>[0] Nintendo is an interesting case. Management has actually been pretty opposed to crunch time and confident in delaying games until they're ready. However, there has been reports of overworked <i>contractors</i> from time to time. No reports of sexual harassment, yet.<p>[1] At one point California tried to file an intervening motion on the US EEOC's settlement agreement, and the US EEOC responded by alleging conflicts-of-interest that would have dynamited both parties' cases.
Doubt much has changed in the industry as a whole, although maybe the identity of the worst offenders has shifted around as the shame spotlight has moved around over the years.
Why does game dev take so long? I assume most of the physics, game dynamics etc are standardized. Artwork, building a story, designing the game etc sure require work per game. I ask as a noob, not expressing an opinion at all.
EA perpetuates practices that hurt customers, too.<p>I used to unapologetically pirate video games and only within the past two years have I finally come full circle and begun purchasing games, both new titles and older ones I had played in the past but never paid for until now. Steam has been the tool of choice for this reconciliation process.<p>As a result, some of the hardships that paying customers encounter have become apparent to me only recently. I was aware, in a peripheral sense, that some singleplayer games required an Internet connection to run. But this never mattered to me because the pirates patch that stuff out.<p>Lo and behold, I'm sitting in a hotel last night trying to play Mass Effect Legendary Edition, and the thing refuses to function because I'm not connected to the Internet. I was astounded. This has never happened to me before. Why am I subject to this as a customer? If I steal the game, I receive a product without this glaring defect (I believe the defect has a name: "Origin").<p>Missteps and antipatterns like this are rife within the games publishing industry so it's no surprise that employees are treated even worse than customers.<p>I must admit I do not understand the industry, but I don't see why competent studios like Blizzard/BioWare/Id could not simply self-publish their games. What exactly does EA add to the equation? Seems like it would not be a particularly monumental task to cut them out.
> Their devotion to D&I<p>I worked for a competitor and this is single-handedly the most frustrating thing I had to deal with honestly.<p>Not because it’s not a noble objective, but because it was weaponised by a minority of people to control the studio in various ways, it was bullying in its purest form and extremely toxic - the environment felt really hostile, like saying something even moderately wrong would lead to an incursion. Saying anything against that behaviour meant you were somehow anti-feminist or misogynist or racist, even defending yourself. They were the arbiters of what D&I means and they can do no wrong.<p>To give you an example of what I mean: during the start of the pandemic the managing director of the studio said “we don’t know if this virus will be nothing, or the next Spanish flu, so we should take all necessary precaution in the worst case” - he was dragged publicly by our internal D&I delegation about the sheer racism of saying “Spanish” flu.<p>So, I treat <i>strong</i> D&I initiatives as a red flag, personally.<p>But I agree that EA is considered one of the better employers in the industry, even if the games are aggressively monetised, it seems that they try to take care of employees.
The gaming industry is weird. The industry "forces you" to use pirated games.<p>1. I have a PS3, and I tried to use the Playstation Store, I didn't pirate anything, despite the PS3 Store being slow as hell.
But Sony basically closed the PS3 Store (you have to put money in your wallet on your computer and make purchases on your PS3). This makes the purchase a much more complex act.
I will sell the PS3 or unlock it.<p>2. Mobile gaming today is gambling, focusing on sick people, addicts, and you're "an idiot" if you don't do this.<p>3. To buy 100% of some games, you need thousands of dollars.<p>4. Many important fixes are from the community such as Resident Evil Crack which fixes stuttering or slow GTA JSON parser.<p>Look, if GTA or Resident Evil isn't important enough for the industry to be careful about... the industry is broken in the roots.<p>In the end, pirated games are better than most legally purchased games.
Under capitalism, the nature of the relationship between productive employees and the employer is exploitative (while simultaneously being mutually beneficial). It is in the employer's interest to extract as much surplus value from the employee as possible.<p>"Consider the human"-type messages do not appeal to CEOs, and if they did, he would ultimately be replaced because dehumanization is baked into the core of the system.
at this point it feels like its immoral to not pirate AAA games. its kinda like buying products that contain palm oil.
see <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_oil#Social_and_environmental_impacts" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_oil#Social_and_environmen...</a>