Outside of monetary topics (gambling, mtx) EA is actually a very decent company and employer. Basically the antithesis of CDPR.EA...good?
Glad to see a major publisher and one of their devs be proactive about this.
Outside of monetary topics (gambling, mtx) EA is actually a very decent company and employer. Basically the antithesis of CDPR.EA...good?
Glad to see a major publisher and one of their devs be proactive about this.
And when it comes to making a piece of art (if you want to look at games as such, as I do), there is always something to polish, correct and improve.
Time does not equal passion is my favorite quote from the article...so true. When a company mandates overtime like Rockstar you inevitably have a bunch of people at work just for the sake of being seen rather than actually being productive...as was brought out in Jason Schreier's Kotaku story.
That can lead to self induced crunch, which is not a place you want to be in, as it can also lead to burning out. :(
Doing the extra hours is "easy" at first, one can do it easily for a few months. It is the rest of your life that starts suffering, and due to that, your work starts suffering too. This is usually noticed when it is too late. One might think they are contributing more and more, in man hours yea sure, but it is the quality of their work that starts going down after a while due to being overworked. And you may end up stuck in a long-lasting period of tiredness, which may be more difficult to get out of than it sounds.
They have 99 employees on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/criterion-games/Should've said, "Getting rid of 90% of your staff and scrapping all projects you're working on does wonders."
They have 99 employees on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/criterion-games/
Do you think they used to be 1000?
Sacrificing oneself for the sake of art is fine and all if you're the only one who sacrifice and you didn't drag a company of unwilling people along with you.It's hardly a hot take. There's no denying that the kind of pressure a studio like rockstar and naught dog faces with their newest games is completely different than the pressure a studio currently only (as far as we know) working on smaller parts of bigger projects that aren't their own. But my take on crunch is a little bit different than most here on Era. It's not pretty and sometimes it's excessive, but I've always been used to extra-work and work out-of-hours, in school, college and my work. And when it comes to making a piece of art (if you want to look at games as such, as I do), there is always something to polish, correct and improve.
DICE makes AAA games regularly and they aren't normally crunching either. There was that thread about it happening during the Battlefront 2 controversy to quickly strip out the lootbox stuff, but that's an extreme case.It's hardly a hot take. There's no denying that the kind of pressure a studio like rockstar and naught dog faces with their newest games is completely different than the pressure a studio currently only (as far as we know) working on smaller parts of bigger projects that aren't their own. But my take on crunch is a little bit different than most here on Era. It's not pretty and sometimes it's excessive, but I've always been used to extra-work and work out-of-hours, in school, college and my work. And when it comes to making a piece of art (if you want to look at games as such, as I do), there is always something to polish, correct and improve.
Definitely the last developer I'd expect to hear this from but still refreshing to see.
They are saying the demonizing of those that want to work normal hours is wrong. Of course if you really want to work more hours it should be ok but it shouldn't be expected and should be kept at a healthy level
It's a hybrid. We use a lot of agile processes, but at the end of the day, our MVPs have to be pretty much the whole game, so it's hard to avoid more upfront, waterfall style planning.As a software developer outside of video games, how does development planning usually go in the gaming biz? Is it usually agile (scrum, etc) or more of a waterfall approach? Really curious.
Peter principle probably.
Wow, this is so insightful, thanks for posting. I'm a wiser man now.