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Damo, one for your mates :
“The producers even set a deadline; they gave a specific date for the end of the crunch, which was still months away from the title’s shipping date, so it seemed safe. That date came and went. And went, and went. When the next news came it was not about a reprieve; it was another acceleration: twelve hours six days a week, 9am to 10pm.”
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Bitch Bitch Bitch
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And Christmas has been cancelled at EA Montreal.
‘apparently’
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and my mate said i should get a job with EA
hahahahha
I get to work at 9.30, I leave between 5.30 and 6.00.
I left once at 6.30 cos there was a submission made the next day…that was a late one.
I think I’ll stay here :) -
At a few of the games companies I worked for, crunch time was a killer. I have spoken to quite a few game developers over the years, swapping horror stories etc, and quite a few of us have seen young(ish) people collapse under the pressure of delivering the impossible under extreme deadlines. This might have something to do with getting no sunlight, exercise, healthy food etc, and overdosing on coffee and junk food.
It’s all part of the fun though. I remember reading an article somewhere ( I thought it was on Gamasutra, I did a quick search and couldn’t find it though ) about the games industry preferring orphans or something similar, as in it’s better if you have no family etc outside work.
Who said that making games was fun? ;)
Mal -
Bitch Bitch Bitch [/quote:85df05c9d1]
I don’t think it’s bitching at all. Game development is a labour of love and you should be willing to put in the extra hours to get the job done, but EA are exploiting their employees. It’s just bad management. -
is this the story with alot of games companies or just the big ones?
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I would say its a real corporate thing. All the big corporations, in any industry, usually pay well….but threat their employees like worker ants, if they leave, who cares, we will hire another.
Smaller companies threat their people like assets to the company, so they have a vested interest in how they are feeling/working. Yes, they work hard, but at least most of the time they do it out of a love for what they are doing and a respect for the company they work for!
Just my 2 cents….
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I would say its a real corporate thing. All the big corporations, in any industry, usually pay well….but threat their employees like worker ants, if they leave, who cares, we will hire another.[/quote:d932d5c62b] it’s many (but not all) games companies, both large and small (except mine, of course!)
recently heard a horror story of a well-known American developer whose first pass at the schedule had 6 months of crunch time scheduled in – 24 hr shifts, 7 days a week… every employee had to work min. of 16 hrs a day for that period
on another project in the same company, but in a different studio, they had 12 months of crunch (scheduled) – 12 hrs a day, 6 days a week
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As long as the company recognises and appreciates the effort their people put into the crunch then its cool. Many people in the industry, as said above, work such long hours out of a love for what they do and the sense of achievement they get for a job well done!
I just prefer smaller companies because there is more of a sense of working as part of a small elite group of people who you know and thrust and that makes it easier to work those long long hours with people who you know are just as dedicated and enthusiastic as you. When you work in a big corporation, from my experience anyway, people are like drones. Go into work, do your work, leave work…….it just hasn’t got the same…..atmosphere for creativity!
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I somehow don’t think I’d be feeling the same sense of achievement if i was working extreme periods of crunch time. The sense of acheivement would be well and truely drowned by the sense of pressure, stress, foreboding, unhealthiness, tiredness and many other negative emotions.
Once you start to feel unhappy in work you’re not going to care as much about the project.If I was being treated in a way like that, I wouldn’t be staying with the company for much longer, no matter what they pay.
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It dosn’t sound to me like EA were appreciating the work put in, that woman was fairly p****d off about the fact that they are very understaffed and overworked. The company is getting all the rewards while the employees just get grief.
I wouldn’t mind working overtime at all, but 12 hour days 6 days a week isnt right in fairness.
I think EA games are just all flash and no substance. Havn’t bought one since the very disapointing NHL 2001 and even that was cos i was hoping for an updated version of one of the best sports games on the megadrive, EA Hockey.
Jesus this is just turning into a rant, ill stop now.
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I heard about an overstressed Virgin employee in the US who cracked up, went out to the car park ( with everyone watching out of the windows ), got into his vehicle and tried to drive it through the front of the building a few times, before eventually driving off.
The story goes that he turned up for work a few days later, and no-one dared say anything to him ( he was also about 6 foot 4, and his car was the equivalent of an old ford escort which nearly did wheelies when he was driving around in it by himself. You could nearly imagine a car game based around this dude! ;) ).
Or the one about the boss at a company ( US again ) who, after a particularly bad crunch time coming up to Xmas, dressed up as Santa to give out christmas bonuses at the office party. Except that some of the envelopes had pink slips ( P45s ) in them instead of the bonus cheque.
Mal
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I heard about an overstressed Virgin employee in the US who cracked up, went out to the car park ( with everyone watching out of the windows ), got into his vehicle and tried to drive it through the front of the building a few times, before eventually driving off.[/quote:1f6a846de2]
That guy sounds like a legend. Cant believe they let him back in the building though!
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> That guy sounds like a legend. Cant believe they let him back in the building though!
The security on game development buildings seems to be focused on keeping the employees inside, rather than who is entering the building ;)
Mal
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As for being understaffed…no. EA have huge dev teams.
They’re obviously just trying to get games out within an unfeasible time period. Making the teams even bigger make the project even more unmanageable. They just need to bite the bullet and say, it’ll be out in 18 months, not 12 and it’d be fine. -
publisher’s optium shelf window, particulary each November creates unbelievable pressures on dev teams every year, In the vast majority of cases, if you don’t make shelf by November you don’t have christmas – your title is a washout no matter how good, your marketing dollars go up in smoke and you lose any credibility you had.
As previously stated earlier in the thread , bad mangement is mostly to blame – the examples cited by Tony are so bad they must be true. But also remember that the global game development industry is now a magnet for every fast-buck merchant on the planet, the type of guys who read a couple of reports, assemble cash and teams and facilities and believe they can treat pepole like machines, churning out cloned product.
Also the old werewolf aspect of dev projects creeps in, where everything looks fine, dandy and understandable, well behaved at the begining of the project when there’s no pressures at the start of the cycle, everything and everyone acts like a gentleman.
By the end, when productivity and resource planning have gone wayward, things get hairy and unpredictable – the werewolf aspects surfaces and everyone gets scared and things start to get cut, people panic and unneccessary pressures are shouldered onto groups of individuals – not teams.IMHO and experience, corporate game development has manged to suck the fun out of making games, the people involved in day to day creation, are the only ones actually contributing fun now. Some great horror stories abound right throughout the industry and I’m sure EA as a corporate publisher has the potential to generate quite a few – new models of production as well as publishing are required if there is ever going to be a second age, or if tomorrow’s game developers are to revisit the buzzs of yesteryear. I met jonathan clarke, creator of ABUSE, the excellent and ground braking mac shareware game, some years ago at CGDC, he was sittin’ there having conquered the world with ABUSE and having blown it all again making Golgotha, which bankrupted him and his company crackdot com, blowing something like 6 mio dollars in the process -he was just a bright, regular guy, a ground breaking game developer who obviously new something about fun.
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One thing for definite is that at a small company you are less likely to take sick days.
This is one of the smallest companies (well it was – it has grown a bit) I’ve worked for and people dont many take days off cause they feel more important or relevant
I think Damo hit the nail on the head EA ar e very eager to keep up with demand for their titles and are will to make their teams expendable.
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Former EA employee also decides to share his experience with the company:
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I heard about an overstressed Virgin employee in the US who cracked up, went out to the car park ( with everyone watching out of the windows ), got into his vehicle and tried to drive it through the front of the building a few times, before eventually driving off.
The story goes that he turned up for work a few days later, and no-one dared say anything to him ( he was also about 6 foot 4, and his car was the equivalent of an old ford escort which nearly did wheelies when he was driving around in it by himself. You could nearly imagine a car game based around this dude! ).
[/quote:c23fa423eb]
I’m working on the fifth mission as we speak! My “game” is about a Sony employee though. It’s on the back of an envelope, it’s half obscured by a nasty stain that I think is something that came out of the dog but it’s already shaping up to be better than Sony’s lastest killer title “The Gotaway: Dim Morons” ;)It’s gonna rock!!! Really!!!!! IT IS!!!!!
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Former EA employee also decides to share his experience with the company:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/joestraitiff/ [/quote:59b5eac6f4]
Ronny, we might just see a huge outpouring of pent up frustration and anger on this one yet ;) Unfortunately (for the industry big guns that is) it seems it was only a matter of time before the floodgates broke on this one.These people don’t seem amused at all!
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EA workers readying class action lawsuit against EA:
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That was weird!!!! Might do the lotto this weekend ;)
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IGDA Calls for Massive Industry Reform
The International Game Developers Association has issued an open letter citing “horrible working conditions” and business practices that are “severely crippling the industry.” IGDA is making it their priority to better the quality of life for developers.
http://biz.gamedaily.com/features.asp?article_id=8357§ion=feature&email=
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Article about unionising (US centric…)
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/14/28
“EA employs 2,500 people inside the U.S. They boast that none of their employees are “represented by a union, guild or other collective bargaining association.” But really, why aren’t they?”
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But really, why aren’t they?”[/quote:c912163a18]
Perhaps because trade unions are the work of the devil? I won’t get into the detail, but in my opinion the industry really doesn’t need to turn to trade unions. They’ve had their day anyway. Most recently they nearly killed the NHL with their demands. No thank you. -
But the NHL has come back now better than ever. Go Leafs Go!!!
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