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EA Games: The Human Story
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Nov 11, 2004 10:25 AM
from the programmers-have-to-sleep,-remember? dept.
from the programmers-have-to-sleep,-remember? dept.
An anonymous reader writes "An Electronic Arts employee spouse speaks out against company crunch time practices. From the post: "EA's bright and shiny new corporate trademark is "Challenge Everything." Where this applies is not exactly clear. Churning out one licensed football game after another doesn't sound like challenging much of anything to me; it sounds like a money farm. To any EA executive that happens to read this, I have a good challenge for you: how about safe and sane labor practices for the people on whose backs you walk for your millions?"
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Your Rights Online: EA Settles Overtime Lawsuit 54 comments
Heffenfeffer writes "Gamasutra reports that Electronic Arts is settling their class action suit with their programmers to the tune of $14.9 million. It also turns out that one of the named plaintiffs of said lawsuit was the spouse of the formerly anonymous blogger "ea_spouse" who wrote a scathing commentary on EA over a year ago which may have formed the basis of this suit."
[+]
EA Spouse Outed 104 comments
patio11 writes "EA Spouse, who sparked a revolution (or, at least, a wave of lawsuits and promises for improvement) in the game development industry with a blog post decrying labor practices at Electronics Arts, was outed as Erin Hoffman in a Mercury News article. She and then-fiance, now-husband Leander Hasty were plaintiffs in one of the lawsuits against EA and continue to develop games and be activists for better working conditions for game developers." From the article: "More than a year later, game developers have won settlements in three class-action lawsuits alleging EA created exhausting work schedules without paying overtime and successfully pressed employers to ease unrelenting workloads. And EA Spouse, whose true identity has been cloaked until now, is becoming a voice against America's culture of overwork."
[+]
Game Developer Now Offering Employees Overtime 75 comments
Via Joystiq comes a story from the European game development website Develop, saying that the UK developer Free Radical will be offering employees overtime for crunch mode sessions. "Steve Ellis of Free Radical says the days of 'bonuses that pay off your mortgage are long gone' and that they've 'decided to start paying people for the work that they do -- even when that work is outside their normal hours.' Ellis says that the industry as a whole will eventually go this way, but they prefer to do it sooner rather than later. Although there are so many companies who are guilty of not paying their employees for working extra hours, EA gets picked on more often than not because of the infamous EA Spouse saga."
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ea_spouse (Score:5, Informative)
EA's bright and shiny new corporate trademark is "Challenge Everything." Where this applies is not exactly clear. Churning out one licensed football game after another doesn't sound like challenging much of anything to me; it sounds like a money farm. To any EA executive that happens to read this, I have a good challenge for you: how about safe and sane labor practices for the people on whose backs you walk for your millions?
I am retaining some anonymity here because I have no illusions about what the consequences would be for my family if I was explicit. However, I also feel no impetus to shy away from sharing our story, because I know that it is too common to stick out among those of the thousands of engineers, artists, and designers that EA employs.
Our adventures with Electronic Arts began less than a year ago. The small game studio that my partner worked for collapsed as a result of foul play on the part of a big publisher -- another common story. Electronic Arts offered a job, the salary was right and the benefits were good, so my SO took it. I remember that they asked him in one of the interviews: "how do you feel about working long hours?" It's just a part of the game industry -- few studios can avoid a crunch as deadlines loom, so we thought nothing of it. When asked for specifics about what "working long hours" meant, the interviewers coughed and glossed on to the next question; now we know why.
Within weeks production had accelerated into a 'mild' crunch: eight hours six days a week. Not bad. Months remained until any real crunch would start, and the team was told that this "pre-crunch" was to prevent a big crunch toward the end; at this point any other need for a crunch seemed unlikely, as the project was dead on schedule. I don't know how many of the developers bought EA's explanation for the extended hours; we were new and naive so we did. 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.
Weeks passed. Again the producers had given a termination date on this crunch that again they failed. Throughout this period the project remained on schedule. The long hours started to take its toll on the team; people grew irritable and some started to get ill. People dropped out in droves for a couple of days at a time, but then the team seemed to reach equilibrium again and they plowed ahead. The managers stopped even talking about a day when the hours would go back to normal.
Now, it seems, is the "real" crunch, the one that the producers of this title so wisely prepared their team for by running them into the ground ahead of time. The current mandatory hours are 9am to 10pm -- seven days a week -- with the occasional Saturday evening off for good behavior (at 6:30pm). This averages out to an eighty-five hour work week. Complaints that these once more extended hours combined with the team's existing fatigue would result in a greater number of mistakes made and an even greater amount of wasted energy were ignored.
The stress is taking its toll. After a certain number of hours spent working the eyes start to lose focus; after a certain number of weeks with only one day off fatigue starts to accrue and accumulate exponentially. There is a reason why there are two days in a weekend -- bad things happen to one's physical, emotional, and mental health if these days are cut short. The team is rapidly beginning to introduce as many flaws as they are removing.
And the kicker: for the honor of this treatment EA salaried employees receive a) no overtime; b) no compensation time! ('comp' time is the equalization of time off for overtime -- any hours spent during a crunch accrue into days off a
Re:ea_spouse (Score:5, Informative)
EA isnt the only shop, but it is the "rolemodel" for American businesses who consider us Software Developers as the "crack" whores of industry.
This kind of BS wont quit unless the paying American public voices its opinions to the ones accountable for this abuse: EA Games HR dept and the Board of Directors.
All of the below information is posted on http://investor.ea.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=88189&p=ir
Buy 1 share of Electronic Arts (about $47). Once you do, you now own the company.
Contact VP of Human Resources "Rusty" Rueff Tel: (650) 628-1500 go to the operator, have them pass you on to Rusty.
- tell Rusty or his admin that you are a shareholder and that you demand an explanation for these business practices, and that you find this illegal abuse unacceptable. Then go to Rusty's Uberboss... the board.
***
Communication with the Board (per Electronic Arts)
If you would like to communicate with members of EA's Board of Directors (including members of the Audit, Compensation or Nominating and Governance Committees) please follow the instructions below:
To report concerns about accounting, internal auditing, securities laws and other related matters, please read on:
General Communications with EA's Board of Directors
Stockholders wishing to communicate with EA's Board of Directors as a whole, with a committee of the Board (such as the Audit, Compensation or Nominating and Governance Committees), or with an individual director may do so by sending an email to StockholderCommunications@EA.com or by sending a letter to EA's Corporate Secretary:
EA Corporate Secretary
Electronic Arts Inc.
209 Redwood Shores Pkwy.
Redwood City, CA 94065
Attn: Stockholder Communications
Enjoy your civil right to be pissed and do something. All it takes is a phone and an email address.
As an example - I have already taken these steps. We need only 100 more, and the board will hear us.
Parent
Re:WHAAAAAA! (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:WHAAAAAA! (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you even read the post or just glean your idea from skimming it?
What upsets is that someone complains about unfair labor practices and you cry out quit, stand in an unemployment line and label them a socialist. Just because there are a hundred other people that would take that job doesn't make the management's practices right. We work in an educated country and salary slavery is just as wrong as outright slavery.
I've worked those kinds of hours and I can honestly tell you it sucks. I continued on because I enjoyed my work, but it soon extracted its toll on my health and my family life. When I saw what it was doing to me, I left for a better job for less money but I work normal hours and have a life.
So before you start labeling people and puking in the unemployment line, think; there is a human side to a business and these types of work practices reflect bad managment and not a rise in socialism.
Parent
Re:ea_spouse (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Why Can They Do This??? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why most of the industry is young. Us 'older people' with families realize that they can't be in the gaming industry. I have a wife, kid, and another kid on the way. I'm not about to sacrifice my family so that I can work on video games. Sure, it was a dream of mine, but that's what the industry is about. Long hours, low pay, no pats on the back. If you don't like it, there is hundreds willing to take your spot.
Re:Why Can They Do This??? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's what got me. Classic Atari system, and then games on personal computers. I just had to get me some of that.
That lead into a computer science degree and then software jobs. But not a single one has been writing video games. There's been business systems, graphics, video, weather visualization, databases, knowledge management, embedded real-time, and a bunch of stuff in between. Enough experience to work on a game, but not one game, ever.
And after reading that article, I don't think I mind!
Parent
Re:Why Can They Do This??? (Score:5, Interesting)
Someone I know has done some seriously cool OpenGL hacks* to Half-Life, getting it to use modern per-pixel shaders and suchlike, for instance. You can write a whole new renderer if you're so inclined, and still have some working netcode and so on to fall back on. Program AI with bots, or mess about enhancing existing coding, there's all sorts of stuff you can do. With Quakes 1 and 2, there's the entire engine source code available under the GPL - and it doesn't matter if you don't like FPS games, as I've seen driving, flight-sim and RTS games in Half-Life, for a start.
No, you don't get paid, but as a hobby it's brilliant fun. Plus if you do want to move into the games industry proper, even after reading the article, you can have a decent portfolio of work to demonstrate...
(* 'Hacks' in the old sense, not the pathetic see-through-walls multiplayer cheats variety...)
Parent
Video games are a great hook (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to admit video games are a great hook for the industry. The vast majority of good programmers I've known over the years were into gaming, and many got into the computer industry with dreams of writing games themselves.
One thing about learning to code those old systems is that you ran right on the metal with assembler or even machine code in some cases. Languages like C or C++ were just another way of expressing the same constructs a bit faster, allowing the experienced "metal coder" to turn out applications and tools that ran far better and faster than most people think reasonable.
With the never-ending crunch to support more users and data on shrinking hardware budgets, the hardcore techie still has work while the average programmer may take a couple years to find another job.
Of course the hardcore techie starts out being tough to manage, because what they really want to do often has little do do with the work that's actually to be done. But if you find a manager who can appease the hardcore techie while getting them to do the real work, you can end up with an extremely productive and cost-effective team -- especially if your "techies" have a knack for applying solutions from other problem spaces to the issues at hand.
Parent
Re:Why Can They Do This??? (Score:5, Interesting)
Because we do the same thing 100 times over. If game companies built a car, it would have four really cool looking wheels that went around in four different directions.
The games industry would benefit a lot from an injection of real software engineers, and a lot of us press for it where we can, but there's a long way to go. And unfortunately, the type of people willing to work the hours and deal with the crap for their "art" aren't 20 year veteran old codgers with families and houses. They're guys with something to prove, and willing to give it up to "break in to the industry"
Parent
Been There Done That (Score:5, Insightful)
Bad management, unrealistic schedules, artificial deadlines, I've seen it all while deathmarching. And the end product was always rushed out the door before it was ready..... so it was junk. The company killed a lot of previosly sucessful franchises by pushing junk, in order to meet financial obligations. There were controlled by their debt, not by any desire to produce a quality game.
Thankfully the company I worked for is now bankrupt, and hopefully dead.
Parent
Re:Been There Done That (Score:5, Interesting)
A friend of mine writes games for a living. He was recently told by his management that they needed him to work overtime[1] -- the project plan had allocated 150% of their available developer man hours to hit their (artificial) deadlines. Unfortunately, this is far from uncommon.
[1] The stupid thing is, the coders voluntarily worked overtime a lot of the time before the crunch because they enjoyed what they were doing. But when it came down to management insisting they did it every day, it just drained morale. They're all burned out, and none of them are putting any effort into the product any more. Everyone loses, yet they still do it, just as they did with their last failed project. And as they will do with their next one when this one fails.
Parent
Still there doing it ! (Score:5, Interesting)
The company I currently work at had us working nights and weekends to finish projects and during crunch (the last project had an 8 month crunch!) many team members were working around 70-80 hours a week. Unfortunately, successes under crunches like these tell upper management that it's a good thing to work employees under heavy hours and a high workload situations.
Due to lobbied labor laws that prevent salaried software engineers from receiving overtime pay, the industry has taken this as a "pay a set fee, work'em as hard as you can" attitude. If they double the hours worked, they halve their perceived cost per man hour.
Not surprisingly, burn out rate and job-hopping are really high in the games industry. Too bad it's pretty much the same at nearly all video game companies that I know. Mandatory nights and weekends leave little personal time for any software developers -- especially commuters or employees with families.
Oh well, at least the team I'm on has a big enough title that when the royalties come in, we'll make a decent wage per hour, but if you're on a smaller title or working without royalties, you might make less per hour than a Walmart manager if you go into video games programming.
Parent
Re:Why Can They Do This??? (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a simple rule that I like: if you (as a manager) call overtime, you will work the same hours. I worked on a project with a manager who did exactly that... not to bother us, but to be there just in case, to make us take a break from time to time, and to bring us breakfast after pulling an all-nighter. You can be sure this manager only called overtime if it was really necessary!
Parent
Re:Screw that (Score:5, Insightful)
There's always something they can be doing. If they've decided that a particular piece of a project is important enough that the employees should be there until 2am, then there is probably real work that the manager can be doing.
If there's nothing that's directly applicable to the project at hand, then the manager can be the guy that runs for takeout food and makes coffee.
When the Apollo capsule was being built by North American, there was only space inside for (at most) two guys to work. Climbing in and out through the hatch was time consuming and awkward. Further, the capsule was a very complicated piece of equipment and most of the assembly had to take place from the inside. Consequently, North American had a policy--if the guys in the capsule asked for anything, the nearest person was to run and get it for them. Doesn't matter if it's a company VP doing a tour on the shop floor. The assembly of the capsule was essential to the Apollo program and the success of the company, and if the guys working on the critical tasks said "jump"--no matter where they were on the org chart--anybody listening would say "how high?" Similarly, if something is important enough and time-critical enough for a software company to keep its coders at work for ninety hour weeks, management needs to be available to provide support at all hours for any purpose. If managers are unwilling to do so, then perhaps the project isn't quite the priority they say it is.
To be fair, if the employees want the manager to leave, then he should respect that. Also, if they're fixing something that's their own damn fault, then the manager probably isn't obligated to hang around for it. Otherwise, no excuses!
Parent
Speaking as another old programmer (Score:5, Insightful)
Fortunately I have a very well paying job as a web application developer working for the healthcare industry. It's stable, my customers love me, and I feel like I'm making a real difference in people's lives. So while it was flattering, I turned them all down.
My father once told me that the secret to happiness was either trying to make money from your hobby or work a real job that lets you support your hobby. I've chosen the latter and I have no regrets.
Parent
Re:Why Can They Do This??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Jeesh, no wonder so many games are buggy and late... shouldn't relying on inexperienced overworked programmers ultimatley be counterproductive?
Parent
Re:Why Can They Do This??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Make no mistake. The executives at EA care about one thing... profits.
Parent
Re:Why Can They Do This??? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Not surprised (Score:5, Interesting)
At the last interview I did for a game studio (which I, unfortunately, did not get the job for) they asked "Oh so you've heard the EA horror stories, haven't you"...Granted they were a much smaller developer for cell phone games and their crunch time wasn't nearly as long as the whole project, but apparently what EA is doing is more of the norm instead of the exception.
Which sometimes makes me rethink the whole notion I had when I was in elementary school saying "I wanna write video games when I grow up!" I enjoy living, and there's a point where you have to choose either to "live to work" or "work to live" - I prefer the latter.
I don't know what to say. (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess that makes me part of the problem. Reading this article woke me up a little... maybe I should be getting those things. I wonder how many programmers are in the situation of having little to no 'crunch time' and paid overtime and comp days? Especially paid overtime -- who gets that? Anyone?
Re:I don't know what to say. (Score:5, Interesting)
The key thing IMHO is that they need to work those longer hours in order to equal the productivity of a more experienced person. Pit a thirty-five-year-old seasoned programmer against most twenty-two-year-old fresh-out-of-college programmers, and that guy with thirteen years more experience will probably produce cleaner code, fewer bugs, and more features in less time than the younger programmer.
There are, obviously, brilliant exceptions to the rule on both sides :) However, in the main, working more hours does not mean more productivity. I have more respect for the guy that puts in his honest days' work and gets the job done, then goes home to his family, then for the person that works seventy-hour weeks to bring the project in due to their lack of competence.
That doesn't mean I don't value the crazy-hour-worker. It just means I value the seasoned veteran who knows how to get the job done quickly more because he's better at the job.
Parent
Simple problems,simple solutions (Score:5, Interesting)
B. Outsource the whiners to a country where, at least if they do whine, no one here will hear them. Also something many of us have lived through.
No, they aren't going to outsource management but thanks for the suggestion. In my experience, that's like throwing gasoline on a fire. You think the bastards in *this* country are greedy incompetants, wait till you see some of the lads and lasses Over There.
Simple solution? Don't do it. At one point in my career I was good enough at fomenting revolts that even the Indian and Russian contractors joined in. The key is to pick the part of the deathmarch where hanging management actually sounds like a reasonable solution. A few weeks of 12-hour days, seven days a week makes any way out welcome.
Rb
Mod Parent Up! (Score:5, Insightful)
Really. I'm a veteran of the coding wars, and yes, death marches are nothing new. The tactic of the perennially slipping deadline ("whoops, heh heh, crunch mode just got extended 2 weeks, sorry") is the telltale sign of incompetent software management. (My SO had a similar experience in the telecomm industry before the big crash.) A German shepherd could figure out what's happening to this organization.
The team involved has to revolt unanimously -- somewhere a manager needs to get seriously bitch-slapped with some slippage. I'm not talking about sabotage, mind you; let's stay professional, even though noone will ever die as a result of EA's bugs. But what about having an entire department or two calling in sick on the exact same day?
It's the crudest form of organized labor, but it works. Just like the "blue flu" that hits US cities when the policemen's union protests conditions. And the larger and more critical the department involved, the better.
Yes, there is the risk of an en masse firing. On the other hand, if this article is true, what is there for the engineers to lose? Paychecks are nice, but health and sanity are rather nifty too.
Parent
EA's response to this story... (Score:5, Funny)
Illegal (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why I left the states (Score:5, Interesting)
Now I live in the EU where it's mostly against the law to make me work more than 40 hours a week without paying me for it. Of course I still work probably 50-60 hour weeks. Atleast it's my choise now and if I want to slow down I can.
--Smutt
Let's unionize software engineers (Score:5, Insightful)
Think about it, if there are the screen actors unions and contruction worker unions, why can't there be Software Engineer Unions?
Maybe then we can make sure to work 40-hour weeks with extra pay. Maybe then will Project Managers put on themselves realistic expectations, maybe then will CEOs learn that software making is a profession as valuable as business management.
I lived through something like this myself during the first internet boom. I worked over-100-hour weeks every week of the year. I still remember having spent two new year eves working. All I had was two weeks of vacation a year which I had to take in one-week instances, and having provided a two-month advance notice.
I was not paid overtime, weekends, or holidays. I did it because I was young, naive, and trully excited about what I was doing, but when I think back I was definitelly exploited along with my fellow co-workers.
In the end I started my own company and moved to a country with better work practices. Let's only hope that those still toiling for the further advance of computer science get a better deal soon. Uninioze and I'll go back and join you. I know what you're going thru, and I will do all I can to support you.
Re:Let's unionize software engineers (Score:5, Insightful)
- Ridiculous working hours -- check
- No job security ("Like it or lump it") -- check
- Fear of reprisal ("they'll outsource it all to India") -- check
Listen, people, how the hell do you think we came to expect a weekend in the first place? Or health insurance? Or overtime? And yet every time I've seen someone suggest unionization of IT people here, there's a chorus of "unions are corrupt, and anyway I'm too good to need it".Corrupt unions: yep, they happen; they're just bunches of people, after all, and we know what people are like. But what makes you think you can automatically and always trust the people you're working for? If you can, great -- I'm not saying it can't happen. But in the immortal words of Karl Marx^WRonald Reagan, "Trust but verify": have someone on your side. Neither unions nor management are automatically saints or devils.
And as for too good to need it -- well, I trust what TFA said about the quality of the engineers at EA. They sound pretty damned good to me, and yet they're getting screwed over by their management for no reason except the profit of EA.
I'm sure that a hundred years ago there was some coal miner in Virginia saying, "A union is only gonna prop up the slackers, and anyhow the management'll just come in and bust heads anyway." With the benefit of hindsight we can shake our heads and wonder how the hell he could've put up with what he did -- yet we can't see that something similar is going on right now.
Parent
Been there. (Score:5, Informative)
This is why there are unions. (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider the difference between this and the Telco and gas industries:
During the winter, there is a MAJOR crunch time for those industries. It's not uncommon for telco employees to work 84 hours a week for a couple months. Why do they do it? One, it's MAJOR bling in a time when it's needed. Two, they know it's going to end. When the weather calms down and warms up, they all take thier vacation time and can relax. The money saved up allows them to do stuff that they missed while getting systems back up or filling tanks.
Would they work under crunch time, all the time? HELL NO. Thier job can't be done on extreme exhaustion. Would they work like that without compensation? Maybe for once in a long time, not for a couple months at a time.
Why do they get compensated so well? Unions and management that understands that running an employee hard for a short period is cheaper than wasting them for 9 other months, but they must be compensated.
They don't like the long hours, but they do welcome it. I consider what most of the software industry does to be on par with factories in third world countries. After all, if a guy making clothes doesn't like working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, he can always get another job. Can't he?
Re:This is why there are unions. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
we're a bunch of cowards (Score:5, Insightful)
People should unionize. Get something moving. Go on strike or something! Why do people keep up with such crap? Are we all just a bunch of sheep?
CEO Salary (Score:5, Informative)
If I could get EA CEO Larry Probst on the phone, there are a few things I would ask him. "What's your salary?"
According to Yahoo Finance [yahoo.com] it's a paultry $1.45 million. Course, with options he exercised about $23 million.
[Note: To anybody in a corporation, I highly recomend against looking up your CEO's salary. It's one of the most depressing things you could possibly do (my CEO makes in one hour what I make all year).]
3 words (and a little more) (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, it's a carrer choice.
I liked working as a field tech. Got to drive around, working on different people's problems. I loved helping people and getting to feel like a hero. I did not like the pay, or the, "Stay on site until it's done, but be here at 8:00 a.m. tomorrow" attitude. I quit after 1 year.
I liked working as a hosting admin. I dug servers, and working with the OS to do the developers bidding. I did NOT like getting paged constantly with servers issues that were beyond my control due to the crappy product. I quit after 2 years.
Now I am a programmer, and I currently like where I am. The whole time I have had a family to support, but I know if I am not happy at work, nobody is going to be happy at home. I bet the guy shoveling shit at the horsetrack doesn't like his job either, he should quit too. That's the great thing about America, you can just go get a new job. Sure you may have to give things up, but a job is all about choice.
You have to decide what is important to you. You will never be rich as a teacher, but be a teacher if it's what you love. You will never (I guess from this article) be rich as a game programmer, or have a life outside of work, but you get to do what you love. I play a lot of poker, and toyed with the idea of going pro, but after a very short try (kept my job, just played at the pro level for a few weeks), I really did not want to play poker.. at all! It became a job.. a job I wanted to quit.
So, pick a job you like. Some people LIKE having a job that is their life, some people like having a hobby that turns into a job. The whole of the job is equal to the sum of all it's parts.
I am a game prrogrammer. My thoughts on EA (Score:5, Insightful)
From my standpoint, EA represents all that is bad about the game industry. They stamp out sequels with no originality. If EA puts out something new, its because they bought the company that made it. And they offer the worst possible hours. They probably pay very well, but your pretty much working 2 full time jobs for that cash.
However, pretty much every game developer I have met, except the rankest newbies to the industry, are fully aware of how EA operates. And EA is hardly the only offender. I have some co-workers who worked for Acclaim, and the same kind of hours were expected.
Death march hours suck. Employers who schedule a project expecting every one to work death march hours are retarded. I personally would never take a job from EA, or any company I view as a human meat factory, unless the alternative was unemployment.
But EA and the rest are the status quo in the game industry. For all the companys faults, EA does know how to be profitiable. Small game studios will not be able to thrive until they can get their game to market without the help of one of the big publishers. That wont happen until services like valves 'Steam' are viable.
Happily though, my job kicks ass. I probably could make more money at EA, but at my job, I dont have to work a Death march schedule. I suspect my company will do quite well for its self in the long run for it.
END COMMUNICATION
Things like this make me glad... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me get this straight.... (Score:5, Funny)
I mean, just becasue she believes him doesn't mean we have to.
As a former EA coder, let me say.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I worked at EA Pacific (now part of EA LA) for 1.5 years as a lead programmer on Command & Conquer: Generals.
Those were, by far, the worst years of my professional life, and seriously damaged my mental health -- no joke. A year and a half later, I am still bitter.
EA expects outrageous working hours, on the order of 80-100 hour weeks, for months on end. If you desire to have absolutely, positively, no life whatsoever outside of work, and are willing to completely sacrifice your mental and physical health to be able to write games -- then by all means, go for it. (This is only partly a facetious comment, as I know people who are willing to make that sacrifice.)
Let's add to that the complete moral bankruptcy of the production staff. I was recruited there by a former friend (emphasis on former) to help revive the C&C franchise.... former versions had been fun, tongue-in-cheek wargames, but outrageous in many ways and clearly divorced from reality. The new version kind of stumbled around for a while... until shortly after Sept 11 2001, when suddenly the game shifted to be all about middle-eastern terrorism. The game was later promoted with the tagline, "Leaders in the modern world need to have a command of words... words like "Scud Missile", "Carpet Bombing", etc." (I asked m management who hired the sociopaths for our ad campaign, but somehow they didn't listen to me.) Oh, and then there was the mission in the game where your objective was to play the terrorist side, and use their anthrax-spewing tanks to kill 200 civilians (!). (This mission had to be cut at the last minute after the European offices rejected it as being certain to get a "Mature" rating. Yes, I had tried pointing out the... unsavory... nature of the mission months earlier.)
As soon as the product shipped, I quit, as did most of the development team. (That is, the ones who weren't fired for refusing to work 80-hour weeks, or for insisting on taking Christmas off. No, I am not making this up.) In hindsight, I should have quit much earlier; I only stayed on because I wanted my name in the credits, in case I wanted to work on other games in the future (thinking it would be good on my resume). The joke is on me, as there's really no way I ever want to work in that industy again.
While I was there, Fortune magazine listed EA as one of their top companies to work for. This was a particularly bad joke to everyone in our office, except that it wasn't very funny. When the CEO of EA sent an email to everyone in the company stating how proud he was of this, I forwarded it to my wife, who responded directly to him, stating that he should be ashamed, as she had hardly seen me for months, and the working conditions were abysmal. He (or more likely, one of his minions) responded that "sacrifices were necessary" to make great games. Sheez.
Shortly after I left EA, I happened to meet someone who has just started at EA-Maxis. I tried to diplomatically warn him that things could get unpleasant, but he reassured me that he knew what he was doing. One year later, he contacted me asking if my current employer was looking for help, as he had to quit -- similar conditions had destroyed his life (and cost him a girlfriend, as well).
Take this for what you will, but I cannot emphasize strongly enough: EA is, perhaps, an acceptable place for crazed workaholics in upper management... but for any other position in the company, no, no, no, no no.....
Re:What Type Of Story Is This? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:What Type Of Story Is This? (Score:5, Informative)
45-50 hours, maybe. But >80 hour workweeks are usually seen only at startups where if a major deadline is missed, the company fails. And in those cases, the people put up with it because there's usually more than just a wage involved--working long hours at a startup can make you millions in the end.
Established companies pushing their staff that hard is not only morally wrong, it's bad business. Sure, EA makes a lot of money, but how much more could they make if they didn't have such high turnover?
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Re:Game Quality (Score:5, Insightful)
In fairness to EA, though, the window for shipping annual sports games is a lot tighter than for a new FPS. People will buy Doom 3 or HL 2 in one year or the next, but you can't sell NHL 2003 in 2004. (OK, scratch that one -- you can't sell NBA Live 2003 in 2004.)
On the other hand, the question of whether these workloads speed the development process anyway is a valid one.
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Re:Game Quality (Score:5, Insightful)
As you work more hours, the mistakes rise. A company would be better off getting 40 or 50 great hours instead of 80 or 90 mediocre to poor hours.
This also may burn out the people who have been there longer, so a lot of the team might be younger and more inexperienced.
Also, if this keeps up long enough, I wonder if the peons might consider unionizing. I have seen the abuse of unions, and it is not pretty. When a union gets too powerful, bad thing happen. But, obviously, in a case like this, a disposable work force means that management makes bad things happen.
But here are a couple of practical idea:
1) Contact the Department of Labor. They have investigators who look into such things. I know -- I have a relative who does this for a living.
2) Take a job coding a database, or become a sysadmin, or so anything else. Maybe a little less money, a little less glamor, but you actually get to know those people who live in your house. Then, you can code games in your spare time (spare time - what a concept), where you can enjoy it at your own pace.
The reason that companies work people 80 hours a week is that they CAN. If everybody refused to work these hours, it would hurt. You might get fired. But if EA had such a huge turnover of staff that they could not finish ANY project, they might change their ways.
Just my $0.02. From an engineer who works a fair amount of 40-hour-weeks.
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Re:George Broussard of 3d realms' take on this (Score:5, Insightful)
so I hope the spouse's question about the CEO's pay was rhetorical, since it must be disclosed by EA. He makes $1.45 million per year, but last year alone he made $22 million through stock option sales.
The CEO and most everyone else seems to do nothing but sell his stock at every opportunity. They have more insider activity than most huge companies. Interesting.
My advice: if you don't agree with EA practices, dont buy any of their products. Hit them where it hurts, and if they lay people off, you're doing those workers a favor anyhow.
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Practical advise (Score:5, Insightful)
That's practical advise, in a sense, because if their "brand" turns sour (like Gator), then EA shareholders are in trouble.
The impracticallity is that most of the market are too young to care or be informed about labour practices.
If EA is really breaking the law, then a lawyer should approach any EA employees for the purporses of a class action suit. That would get their attention, and maybe there'd be some real change.
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Re:George Broussard of 3d realms' take on this (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, I can see where this fails, the money. But surely there must be a way to change the current development? The game market seems bigger than ever, do people really only care for the huuge games made by EA & co?
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Re:George Broussard of 3d realms' take on this (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe that the problem smaller studios face can be overcome with some lateral thinking. The problem is two-fold: production costs and marketing costs are too high to allow indies to compete on equal footing with the big boys. The solution, then, is to not compete on equal footing.
Don't: Try to copy a game that took 60 people 3 years to create.
Do: Draw from an existing genre, but come up with a unique twist -- something meaty that doesn't exist elsewhere.
Don't: Compete with larger productions on the same style of graphics.
Do: Come up with a unique look; it's easier to wow people with a fresh style. (Though Monolith is not a small studio, Tron 2.0 was the opposite of the hyper-realism trend, and set itself apart on appearance, among other things.)
Don't: Try to out-advertise Activision, Microsoft, or Infogr- er- Atari. A small studio's meager advertising budget should be used towards development.
Do: Make as much use of word-of-mouth marketing as is humanly possible. It's easier to connect with your individual players because... well... there are fewer of them.
Don't: Re-invent the wheel. id Software must create its own 3D engine from scratch; you don't (necessarily) have to.
Do: Make as much use of middleware as possible. You don't need to be an artist to create skycubes [pandromeda.com]. You don't need to know DirectX or OpenGL intimately to create [conitec.net] an [ogre3d.org] engine [garagegames.com]. You don't need to write your audio [fmod.org] engine [un4seen.com] from scratch.
And I deeply believe better games would be coming out of a smaller and more laid back studio...
I like the cut of your jib [rose-hulman.edu]. I hope you're right.
________________________
Inago Rage [dejobaan.com] - A first-person shooter where you fight in arenas of your own creation.
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Re:WTF?!?! (Score:5, Informative)
Typically, "Exempt" refers to "professions" such as lawyer, doctor, and engineer. It can also apply to "management." A software coder without the word "engineer" in their title might be able to be considered non-exempt. The only way to know for sure is to contact the department of labor: http://www.dol.gov/ [dol.gov].
They may be a bit slow to answer their phones, but keep trying!
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Re:WTF?!?! (Score:5, Insightful)
1. So that 100 people can get 40 hour per week jobs rather than having 50 people work 80 hours per week.
2. So that other people don't end up supporting you on long term disability after your 80 hour work weeks lead to you having a stroke.
3. So that employers can't abuse people every time the job market is tight.
4. To make it more difficult for employers to engage in fraudulent practices of hiring salaried employees with the intention of working them far more hours than would reasonably be expected.
If you don't want to work those hours, then work for someone else!
When jobs are plentiful and working for "someone else" is an option, companies don't tend to behave that way.
I don't need some pointy-haired beuracrat telling me how to live my life.
How do you know that you don't? John Hinckley doesn't think that he belongs in a mental hospital, but that he believes that doesn't make it true.
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Re:I value time with my family way too much... (Score:5, Funny)
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