Former EA Chicago Employee Speaks Out 48
The closing of EA Chicago came as a bit of a surprise to everyone, including EA Chicago employees. Still dealing with the layoff, an anonymous EA Chicago employee laid out what it was like in the last days to 1up. He touched on the cold reaction to the closure from online readers, and the reality of EA expectations: "In Gibeau's memo, he cited the low chance of short term profitability as an overarching reason for shutting down EA Chicago. Our source claims the company simply had impractical expectations. 'I believe we were never given a fair shake. Fight Night was a huge success,' he said, but 'Def Jam was another story. The estimates for Def Jam's sales were extremely unrealistic for the game. Even if it had done well it would have never hit the unrealistic goals and projections that the marketing department made.'" Update: 11/12 21:31 GMT by Z : Corrected link. Additionally, the folks at Infinity Ward have now offered ex-EA Chicagoans the chance to work with them.
Story? (Score:2)
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http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3164291 [1up.com]
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Re:Story? (Score:5, Insightful)
One thing that got me is that he seems to solely blame the marketing department for Def Jam's failure, even though all the reviews of it seem to suggest that the game just plain sucked. Sure, marketing may have overhyped it, but that doesn't make them responsible for the technical issues that likely contributed heavily to poor sales.
It sucks that these people lost their jobs, and I sympathize with the fact that they're being lambasted for sucking all over the Internet, but on the other hand they made crappy games that sold poorly. On top of that, they worked for a company viewed as evil by most people who care about these things. So now, instead of being mocked for working for a lousy company on lousy games, they can now be mocked for formerly working for a lousy company and formerly working on lousy games.
My advice to this guy would be to step away from the Internet until the chatter dies down. If hearing that EA sucks and EA Chicago deserved to go down because they sucked is going to get him depressed, he should avoid the kinds of sites that are likely to say those things. This whole story will die down as soon as people like him stop contacting game sites to complain about it.
Re:Story? (Score:4, Informative)
I've worked at EA. Marketing doesn't just sell the game, they pick the damn features. They set the release date. Sometimes, they even dictate the technology you will use, if it means a back-of-the-box bulletpoint.
People seem to be stuck on the idea that EA is a game company. Wrong! Electronic Arts Inc. is a titanic marketing company, which has somehow rolled up some talented coders and artists, Katamari-style. The dev team can be super-skilled and still get bulldozed along with the rest of the crap-wad. If Def Jam sucks, I wouldn't be suprised if it's because the marketing department was desperate to shove it out the door in time for the MTV Music Awards, or Dr. Dre's new album.
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I can buy your argument, but the developers have to accept some level of responsibility, if only that they weren't smart enough. Maybe Marketing/Management was daft to think they could get someone talented enough to pull it off for what they pay, but that doesn't remove the fact that they made a crappy game.
That's the way I like to think, anyway. It at least leaves the door open for self-improvement.
Other links (Score:5, Informative)
A link would be helpful.... (Score:1, Redundant)
http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3164291 [1up.com]
Thought I would help.
MARKETING DEPARTMENT !!! (Score:2)
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you said it partner ! (Score:2)
Re:MARKETING DEPARTMENT !!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Since then, I've made it my personal crusade to call bullshit on Sales and Marketing. I got an accounting degree, but most of the people not smart enough to get a real business degree got a marketing degree.
While a necessary part of the business, I absolutely hate them.
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all BA people need to be required to have taken courses in any related field they are going to work in to. for example, a sales and marketing person to work in a software company need to be required to have taken software design courses, at least one, or prove that s/he unde
Money wasted in other ways... (Score:2)
That would be... (Score:1, Insightful)
at least there's a reason now... (Score:1)
Sweet Vengeance (Score:4, Insightful)
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If they were capable of putting in the amount of work necessary for a startup, do you think EA Chicago would still have died? It's a -hell- of a lot more work than EA, no matter how bad EA is. EA only takes 80 hours a week, a startup takes every last second that's available... And if you don't have enough available, you won't make it.
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Working crunch at EA may "only" take 80 hours of your week, but trust me, there's nothing left after that because the work is challenging. If you're pushing much over 80, your job
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My point was that as bad as EA is, starting your own business it harder! Even if they wanted to take all the same people and just start a project, they'd have to PAY all those people from something... You suggest Venture Capital, but that isn't m
Re:Sweet Vengeance (Score:4, Interesting)
I think there is a tendency among a lot of people to take this kind of thing personally. There's nothing personal about it. EA doesn't see this as laying off a certain number of employees; they see it as jettisoning an unprofitable part of the company. Nor should they see it any other way; we don't live in a socialist economic system, the whole point is to be profitable. It's not up to EA's board of directors or CEO to get to know every single employee and pledge to take care of their families forever, regardless of anything.
Employees, likewise, know there's always a risk of a layoff when they're hired. That's part of the bargain. In return, an employee is allowed to quit whenever he wants, with a reasonable expectation of finding another job in fairly short order. That's a freedom that people in many countries don't have.
I think this unnamed former employee is taking all of this a little too personally. Yeah, it sucks to get laid off - I've been through it too. But there was nothing personal in the firings and there is honestly probably nothing personal in the "cold" comments he's reading on the net either. All anybody on the outside knows is the games that this division put out, and that they're a part of a giant conglomerate that everybody hates as a matter of course. Those are what we have to judge this studio by. So how can he blame anyone for being harsh? People are just making a judgment based on the information they have. It's got nothing to do with him personally.
He feels bad now, but he'll get another job and forget all about this eventually. My being laid off sucked, and the job I got laid off from was probably the best I ever had, but it ended up advancing my career. I'm sure that I wouldn't be making the money I'm making now if I was still stuck at that job, and I likely wouldn't have a house or a wife. You never know how things are going to play out, and what's going to end up being the catalyst you need to take the next step in your life.
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May posters on this articl
How to kill innovation (Score:5, Insightful)
Innovation might be EA's mantra, but their actions are fighting against it. When you're working in the fields of innovation, for every spectacular success, there will be at least one spectacular failure. And probably many more than one. If you're not willing to accept those failures as the cost of innovation, then you have no business calling yourself an innovative company. EA just told every one of their developers "don't take a risk. Do it the safe way."
If you want to blame anyone, blame the management. With proper technique, they should have known well before final production which games would make it and which would flop. EA is obviously a company on the decline.
Brian
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Re:How to kill innovation (Score:5, Informative)
Look at Activision, 2K, Ubisoft, THQ and how many sequels and franchise spin offs they publish. THQ spits out endless terrible movie franchise titles, which are uniformly bad.
EA cranks out a million sports titles, but that's just their exclusive licenses. Every company has their franchises, and any company that could get their hands on EA's sports franchises would do exactly what EA is doing with them.
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If that sounds like fanboyism, look at some more "conservative" studios (which I think you could argue have innovated more than this EA department ever did): Bioware (pre-EA), Blizzard, Valve.
What do all these comp
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have no concept of game playability. You need to turn that concept into something quantifiable
for them. Odd? Testing and surveying seems to help with that. Are there marketing departments
out there in gameland doing this? I dunno. But anyway.
Innovation takes time! Valve produces Half-Life. A game that has lasted by
it sheer playability. Sure, there were other FPS games out there at the time, but
this was an improvement by lea
Welcome to the world of work (Score:3, Insightful)
At the same time when I hear these stories of development locations or developers being closed down and the subsequently whining by a few of them I can't help but think "welcome to the world of work". Seriously, gaming is a business like any other and regardless of realistic or unrealistic expectations, or just random unfairness stuff like this happens.
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The problem is that game development is a creative endeavor. Part of what makes a team work well is team chemistry, and it's not easy to go to a new place and instantly feel that chemistry. That's one of the problems with modern game development, because otherwise promising teams are axed merely by looking at the bottom line and ignoring the other factors that can't be put in terms of dollars and cents on the balance sh
Misleading Headline (Score:2)
Secondly, people need to remember that Infinity Ward is on the other side of the country. These people have families, their children go to neighborhood schools, they have homes. Some may be able to just pick up and leave, but for others, that may not
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Given that Def Jam: Icon was subpar by any measure, Infinity Ward is wise to hedge its bets. Clearly, some out-of-work EA Chiacgo staffers were better at what they did than others.
Getting laid off sucks, no doubt. (Been there, got the unemployment
EA Chicago had it coming (Score:2)
I think EA is trying to move towards more innovation, new franchises and smaller games, and EA Chicago simply didn't fit. They made mediocre sequels, so EA cut them and bought a few "real" development studios instead.
I'm sorry for the people who worked there, but I think for EA, it's the right thing to do.