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Are There Any Verified Game Companies That Treat Their Workers Well?
- Thread starter SOLDIER
- Start date
Pretty sure. People love to shit on EA but by most accounts it's a great place to work.
We should also take cultural differences into account. US and Japan employees will probably always work more per week than their European counterparts.
Depends where you work, right? EA is a huge company and all of its offices have different cultures. DICE LA, for example, is intensely anti-crunch. On the flip side, BioWare is crunching pretty hard right now, but plenty of people still love it there. Motive has had some cultural struggles. But in general I've heard lots of people from EA say lots of good things about working there these days, especially compared to 10 years ago.
The one thing EA doesn't get enough credit for is diversity - it's one of the rare big publishers that has women in studio leadership positions.
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Plenty of ones in that list that are better than many AAA games and far more memorable, yes.
Exactly. As mentioned here:
Ghost Story Games and Rockstar Games are both owned by Take-Two Interactive, yet appear to have very distinct work cultures. Even Firaxis, which still has some crunch to fulfill deadlines, seem to operate in a more relaxed environment, at least according to some current and former employees.
So it shouldn't be assumed that either the good or the bad examples are wholly representative of an entire publisher, there's bound to be considerable differences across studios.
That is down to the contracted company work is outsourced to. Not necessarily EA.
I mean you're literaly quoting me saying it depends on the studio just to say it depends on the studio :P
EA studios do crunch every now and then. Our design and QA teams have been staying late for a few weeks. Like I said earlier, crunch is one thing that impacts your quality of life at a studio but EA does try hard to provide a good experience in order to retain employees (in the way of bonuses, benefits, vacation, etc, the details are extensive on this). The big issue with R* is crazy forever crunch on top of (seemingly) not giving two shits about the employee.
Its different but not less hard. We introduce new features, characters, play modes and environments all the time and it can cause for a very chaotic experience because we do "new content every two weeks and new features every two months"
That involves bug finding, bug fixing, adding features to an engine not made to handle them, new systems to a game not made to have them as, more and more characters to test making balance increasingly harder, being able to manage creating new content while dangling bigger, future releases simultaneously etc etc, if managed improperly the two week/two month cadence could mean a lot of crunch. Luckily I think we do well there
Apparently they didn't have TLOU:R at a playable frame rate until they were six weeks out from launch and Corrine Yu was mentioning late nights to push the frame rate above 60fps.
ND are miracle workers for sure but I wonder how much toll it takes on them? Bruce Straley was creatively burnt out after back-to-back TLOU and then U4. Hopefully this is a wake up call to the industry.
I can confirm as a Mexican working for an American company that Crunch is really bad at least were I work. No social life at all on weekdays and in weekends is just rest for mental and physical draining. The pay is peanuts and no bonuses at all. You need to stay overtime even when you do not want to for fear to lose your job, as if finding one is not hard enough when colleagues sell them selves for less than the minimum wage, but this graphic is really eye opening. Just another day in an outsourcing company I guess.
Sorry to derail the thread.
That Sean Murray quote is great. Your whole team probably hated you at the end of your shitty crunch and then your game sucked anyway. Fuck you Sean
Let me address this really quick, since I see it a lot. One of the things that I've heard a lot when talking with colleagues who've been around for a long time is that EA tries really, really hard to keep you around. So, like, say your position becomes redundant, or your studio doesn't have a game to work on. They will see if there are other spots within EA you could fill and set up meet and greets and interviews with that team for you.
Remember how in my previous post, I said EA had an entire discipline that does something? The reason I can say that is because EA has processes to streamline its roles so that everyone with the same title works from more or less the same framework so that people can more easily move around the company when they need to or want to. Like, I'll bet the other posters from EA here can confirm that they also have DDs or QV guys at their studios and know exactly what those jobs are.
I mostly used your post as a jumping off point, since a lot of people seem to be generalizing things and taking everything at face value. It's particularly odd when applied to a company that owns 37 studios across the world, some of them with multiple locations too.
As for Rockstar, it's clear things aren't going to change anytime soon. Rockstar Spouse happened 8 years precisely in response to Rockstar San Diego's horrible working conditions during development of RDR. And here we are again.
Also, It's quite interesting to read what you and Septimus Prime are sharing too! :)
That has been covered before, especially around the time Amy Hennig gave an interview about her career and work on AAAs:
If you're interested in knowing more, the whole talk with Amy (2 episodes) is very much worth listening.
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OP
OP
Scope creep is the enemy of good project management and leads to crunch. Just speculating, but based on how long his games take to develop and his meandering vision I imagine he introduces a lot of scope creep late in the game on his teams. Could be wrong though.
Project management is really hard and most importantly you need someone to say NO to scope creep or pivoting too late or else you end up in a crunch. Yes the game may be better if you add X feature the last month of development, but before you know it X has caused ripple effects in A, B and C and now those teams working on A, B, and C that were done now have to crunch hard to fix all the bugs and issues X brought about. It happens in any product development cycle, not exclusive to games, and the good managers don't allow it. There is a point where "good enough" is actually fine and you save the ideas for future iterations (a la Super Mario Galaxy 2). Someone just has to have the balls to say No.
IIRC 11bit Studios (Anomaly, This War Of Mine, Frostpunk) are generally anti-crunch. Which makes sense considering it was started at least in part by ex CDP RED people. They mention in the Anomaly postmortem that they had only one crunch period during the final week. Not sure if they manged to avoid it with their later projects, but in this job offer they jokingly added as a sidenote "WARNING! Once we even had crunch happen. It lasted 7 days, never 4get [ * ]". So maybe they actually did, although the current ones don't have that (that being said: they lack any jokes at all rather than that specific one).
I've heard EA has always been very good for a while now and considering I'm not that huge on their games, at least they treat their employees well.
Yeah this is an interesting correlation. Nothing that looks too triple A which isn't a bad thing. I think this just shows what comes with Triple A considering they're more ambitious than these titles.
I can see it now #crunchgate .Not to demean this or anything but it's pretty apparent that what this would be referred to.
It's Motion Twin! Developers of Dead Cells! I think the Disco Elysium folk also have a similar system.
Edit: Beaten so hard.
Oh I didnt mean to imply that I thought it was less hard, just that it seems like such longer term projects would need great process to be viable in the long run.
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I posted this on another thread on this exact topic, so I'll share this.
Crunch happens, and will always happen, sometimes you just don't see it in the main working team. I would say that my current project is "crunch-free" in that all my employees come in around 9 to 10am and leave by 5 or 6 - some earlier. This was enforced by the fact that our actual working office was above another business that needed to shut their doors by 6 - now when we moved, this was just carried over and we in the management side have never advocated for people to stay longer.
So what does that mean for the production, since we are "crunch-free" and what most would label as humane? Well we're 8 months behind, and likely going to push 12 months behind our original deadline. I am working 12 hour days in the studio trying to make up for all the deficiencies in our own production since we can't afford to expand the team, while taking on multiple side jobs to be able to fund my own life and not take much out of the studio in terms of a personal salary. I am an emotional and financial wreck, but this is the price I choose to pay to keep my employees happy and unburdened, while still working towards my own personal dream of seeing this game through launch.
The point is, there will always be a cost somewhere. The bulk of the main narrative is on the toll projects like these take on employees and the risks they take when working for studios (big and small) - but people tend to forget that management and publishers are people too. They all have responsibilities and answer to others, and everyone has to choose between good, cheap, or fast - there is no exception. Scope management is key, but that doesn't just define the game, it defines the viability of the game and future projects for the company.
I see a lot of people saying: "just make the games smaller" or "just launch later" but a lot of those people are the same people that say a game isn't worth X, Y, or Z because the graphics are not as nice, the play time is less than 40 hours, the story isn't as long, there aren't enough features, or that there isn't enough of something - and when people do push launch windows... that's entire months of salaries and studio expenses that now have to be factored into the financial viability of a product. And in the case of some very large profile projects, this can mean the difference between a studio being shuttered or funded for a second project.
Game development as an industry is still very young. Working conditions and value in marketplace is still trying to find some sort equilibrium that would actually make sense. The fact is, right now the market refuses to pay for what games actually cost and in the interest of profits publishers and developers have turned to either working themselves to death or other revenue producing schemes (MTX, DLCs). Does this need to change - fuck yes. But the change needs to come from all sides - production, publishing, and the consumer.
Crunch happens, and will always happen, sometimes you just don't see it in the main working team. I would say that my current project is "crunch-free" in that all my employees come in around 9 to 10am and leave by 5 or 6 - some earlier. This was enforced by the fact that our actual working office was above another business that needed to shut their doors by 6 - now when we moved, this was just carried over and we in the management side have never advocated for people to stay longer.
So what does that mean for the production, since we are "crunch-free" and what most would label as humane? Well we're 8 months behind, and likely going to push 12 months behind our original deadline. I am working 12 hour days in the studio trying to make up for all the deficiencies in our own production since we can't afford to expand the team, while taking on multiple side jobs to be able to fund my own life and not take much out of the studio in terms of a personal salary. I am an emotional and financial wreck, but this is the price I choose to pay to keep my employees happy and unburdened, while still working towards my own personal dream of seeing this game through launch.
The point is, there will always be a cost somewhere. The bulk of the main narrative is on the toll projects like these take on employees and the risks they take when working for studios (big and small) - but people tend to forget that management and publishers are people too. They all have responsibilities and answer to others, and everyone has to choose between good, cheap, or fast - there is no exception. Scope management is key, but that doesn't just define the game, it defines the viability of the game and future projects for the company.
I see a lot of people saying: "just make the games smaller" or "just launch later" but a lot of those people are the same people that say a game isn't worth X, Y, or Z because the graphics are not as nice, the play time is less than 40 hours, the story isn't as long, there aren't enough features, or that there isn't enough of something - and when people do push launch windows... that's entire months of salaries and studio expenses that now have to be factored into the financial viability of a product. And in the case of some very large profile projects, this can mean the difference between a studio being shuttered or funded for a second project.
Game development as an industry is still very young. Working conditions and value in marketplace is still trying to find some sort equilibrium that would actually make sense. The fact is, right now the market refuses to pay for what games actually cost and in the interest of profits publishers and developers have turned to either working themselves to death or other revenue producing schemes (MTX, DLCs). Does this need to change - fuck yes. But the change needs to come from all sides - production, publishing, and the consumer.
My son loves that games and dinosaurs, I think he is going to be a paleontologist or geologist when he grows up
There is a certain degree of irony to see that a studio that gamers like to villify so much as the EVILLL of video gaming world, like EA and Ubisoft, turn out to be a great place to work. While the studios that gamers like to praise as the GODS of video gaming world, like Rockstar, Naughty Dogs, and CD Projeckt turn out to be quite a place that leans so heavily on crunch culture that makes life hell for their employees.
https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/z1ymu/people_who_work_in_an_office_in_japan_is_it_as/
https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/1au2vx/what_is_your_opinion_of_japans_work_culture/
https://www.raconteur.net/business-innovation/japan-work-culture
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-39981997
Edit: Oh, quoted wrong person. Here's some examples of Japanese work culture being bad.
Plus regarding Nintendo, didn't the late Iwata reduced his salary back then when the 3DS was underperforming? Remember reading that one of the reasons was that, they didn't wanted to fire anybody, because that would also lower the morale of the remaining employees.
You can get a taste of Japanese work culture by working at the US branch of a Japanese company.
It's not something I'd recommend or would ever do again.
It's not something I'd recommend or would ever do again.
Can say from experience, Nintendo of America treats its employees very well. The company is very conservative, but the culture is great, benefits are great ... it helps that they're centered around other tech giants like Microsoft and Google who also treat their employees very well. I'm not sure how well Nintend of of Japan treats its employees, but if it's anything like NoA then it's looking good for them.
People in this thread also need to realize that WHEN people worked somewhere is just as important as WHERE they worked, it's great to hear EA is an incredible place to work though as they employee a ton of people.
The place I'd besmirch doesn't exist anymore so not much point really, but I'd never work for Sega again that's for sure.
I know lots of mid-sized companies here in Australia that seem like lovely places in terms of work/crunch culture though, like Defiant who make Hand of Fate.
The place I'd besmirch doesn't exist anymore so not much point really, but I'd never work for Sega again that's for sure.
I know lots of mid-sized companies here in Australia that seem like lovely places in terms of work/crunch culture though, like Defiant who make Hand of Fate.
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