[HN Gopher] EA: The Human Story (2004) ___________________________________________________________________ EA: The Human Story (2004) Author : antiverse Score : 160 points Date : 2022-07-15 14:59 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (ea-spouse.livejournal.com) (TXT) w3m dump (ea-spouse.livejournal.com) | kache_ wrote: | Vote with your feet | | Quit your job | | Seriously.. | chubot wrote: | FWIW I was part of the class in the resulting class action | lawsuit, and got a settlement check for about $30K in 2005 | | I also got a ~$5K settlement check from Google around 2012 due to | the illegal Steve Jobs - Eric Schmidt anti-poaching agreement, | another class action lawsuit | wanderingmoose wrote: | I was part of both as well. | | I don't condone any of EA's behavior at the time, but the | lawsuit benefited the lawyers way more than the artists and | developers. I wish there was a resolution to the situation that | allowed EALA to continue as a major studio. The talent there | was amazing. Some of the blue sky projects that never made it | to production were really interesting. | | Unfortunately -- lawyers got paid. EA made some rule/structure | changes. And EALA lost most of its square footage to a 24 hour | fitness. Makes me sad everytime I drive by. | shadowgovt wrote: | This post is from 2004. | jolux wrote: | Needs a (2004). | spiderice wrote: | I wondered why she was referencing games such as Madden 2005 | Beltalowda wrote: | It was released two months before this post was made. | AdmiralAsshat wrote: | I thought the decade-plus age would be obvious from the fact | that it's a LiveJournal entry. :) | probably_wrong wrote: | And precisely because it's from 2004 there are plenty of | developers who may be hearing this story for the first time. | | This story, perhaps more known as "EA Spouse", was eventually | attributed to Erin Hoffman [1] and made quite a splash. It | gained EA a bad reputation for excessive overtime that, AFAIK, | they retain to this day. It's not the only reason why EA was | named the "worse company in America" in 2012, but it was among | them. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erin_Hoffman | m0llusk wrote: | Disabling the back button on my browser limited my sympathies. | egypturnash wrote: | That's thanks to the many ways Livejournal has gone to shit in | the eighteen years since this post was written - its creator | sold it, it went through several owners, and ultimately ended | up in Russian hands who have been slowly shitting it up in the | many ways modern sites are garbage. | dsr_ wrote: | To a first approximation, everyone who didn't want to be part | of LJ's practices moved to DreamWidth. | pvg wrote: | _Please don 't complain about tangential annoyances--things | like article or website formats, name collisions, or back- | button breakage. They're too common to be interesting._ | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | [deleted] | 0x500x79 wrote: | I see that "Vote with your feet" got downvoted in the thread, but | it's true. I worked for another one of the large game studios in | the US for a long time. The practices employed at the game studio | were built around keeping people attached to their jobs because | they love video games and loved the games we built. It was | weaponized excessively. | | Almost every town-hall, all-hands, etc was framed around the | product and keeping players happy (we need to deliver this by | this date so you have to crunch). The hiring pool was primarily | people that played the games we developed and there was some | psychological warefare going on that attempted to prevent | attrition based on building what you loved. | | The quote from the article is: > No one works in the game | industry unless they love what they do. | | This is pretty true and can be very toxic in your "job". My | advice: Don't love what you do for work THAT much. Keep a bit of | a disconnect and live your life still. In the modern tech | industry you can leave, you can find a job that treats you well, | don't make your identity a "video game developer on X game" | because that is a recipe for burnout. | | The issues that stemmed from this are impossible to outline. | People made subpar decisions, dealt with inhumane conditions and | harassment, took lower pay, and at the end of the day has caused | REAL harm in the industry (suicides, trauma, etc). We need to be | better and hold these companies accountable from every aspect of | not buying games, not working there, and attempt to make the | industry better. | | I left my stint at video games and went to a different company. | The pay is better, the working conditions are better, my thoughts | are not stifled because of internal politics. | | The industry has changed quite a bit since 2004. During that time | publishers were key and many times deadlines were set by the next | "drop" for the publisher, but many of the problems with the | industry have stayed around and video games are not worth it. | mistrial9 wrote: | put another way, video games are addictive and people in the | industry are not immune to addiction life paths | peytoncasper wrote: | I disagree with your interpretation of OP's comment. Sure you | can argue that playing a video game can be addictive to some | people. But game developers are not getting addicted to | playing the games they make. | | Creating a video game is probably as close as you can get in | the software space to art. It's the culmination of hundreds | of different skills into a single package that has the off | chance to shift and affect culture across the globe. Its | exciting, and has the potential to fill someone who works on | it with an intense amount of pride. That, in my opinion is | not addiction. | | Unless you consider artists, musicians, designers, actors and | hundreds of others who work in purely creative mediums, | addicts. | | There is a lot to be proud of by shipping something that is | used by hundreds of thousands if not millions of people and | especially more so if it makes people happy. It's that | intangible feeling of creating and seeing it successful that | keeps people working in the video game industry despite the | very obvious downsides. | | For a lot of people, it's attempting to create something for | players that fills them with as much emotion as they once | experienced playing another game. | syntheweave wrote: | I also spent time in the industry, and would agree. There are | much better industries to work in to make a paycheck, and games | can be sustainable if you approach them with an eye towards | hobby-scale production. But 20-year-old me would probably still | disagree because he lacked for ideas of how to approach a | career. It is hard to see your options properly when you're | starting out and most "helpful advice" from elders amounts to | "I did this and it worked for me(in a completely different | economy 30 years ago)" or "the good jobs are in X". | | Really, though. The people who do best in games tend to come in | with a specific specialty skill that they enjoy and is | transferrable, deploy it for a brief tour, then exit. Everyone | tasked with arbitrary production-as-a-whole functions gets | wrecked at some point. And it doesn't get better at indie | scale, because accountability is even lower in a tiny studio, | and the producers will tend to achieve results by repeatedly | finding new people to do free work, gaslighting them and then | tossing them aside when they stop delivering. And if it's a | true go-it-alone, then you can end up self-imposing crunch when | you sense the game isn't shaping up like it should, and it's | easy to stay there indefinitely until you break because game | scoping can get out of control so easily. | | Like, you can make indie stuff work. I know folks who have. But | they have a _very_ tight grasp on the kind of thing they are | aiming to achieve, and categorically aren 't doing "game | productions" in the sense of spending most of the cycle | fumbling around figuring out how to make the game and worrying | about how to make characters successfully interact with doors. | It's basically always a narrow genre entry like "Sokoban | puzzle", and the dev specialized into doing only that genre so | that more of their work and skillset transfers between | projects. And you can do great work this way and truly achieve | mastery over the subject matter because with such a narrow | scope, the code and assets can be iterated over a ton, without | much deadline stress. But "the industry" as a whole is | blatantly against respecting that process since it's normalized | stealing as much as possible from last year's trends and then | pushing all remaining effort into a wider marketing funnel, and | in doing so, creating a raft of challenging technical problems. | So for as much sheer effort the industry puts in, most of it is | wasted. | [deleted] | branon wrote: | EA perpetuates practices that hurt customers, too. | | I used to unapologetically pirate video games and only within the | past two years have I finally come full circle and begun | purchasing games, both new titles and older ones I had played in | the past but never paid for until now. Steam has been the tool of | choice for this reconciliation process. | | As a result, some of the hardships that paying customers | encounter have become apparent to me only recently. I was aware, | in a peripheral sense, that some singleplayer games required an | Internet connection to run. But this never mattered to me because | the pirates patch that stuff out. | | Lo and behold, I'm sitting in a hotel last night trying to play | Mass Effect Legendary Edition, and the thing refuses to function | because I'm not connected to the Internet. I was astounded. This | has never happened to me before. Why am I subject to this as a | customer? If I steal the game, I receive a product without this | glaring defect (I believe the defect has a name: "Origin"). | | Missteps and antipatterns like this are rife within the games | publishing industry so it's no surprise that employees are | treated even worse than customers. | | I must admit I do not understand the industry, but I don't see | why competent studios like Blizzard/BioWare/Id could not simply | self-publish their games. What exactly does EA add to the | equation? Seems like it would not be a particularly monumental | task to cut them out. | snet0 wrote: | This reminds me of something Gabe Newell famously said about | Steam. | | > "We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. | Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing | problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 | x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal | computer, and the legal provider says the product is region- | locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US | release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, | then the pirate's service is more valuable." | | I'd almost never pirate a game that was available on Steam. | There are games I want to play that I don't see myself playing | (unless I can be bothered to pirate), just because they're on | some ugly, useless, slow, cumbersome and frankly worse-than- | literally-nothing "launcher". I'd rather play a game through | Steam than just through an executable, but I can't say the same | for literally any other launcher/game service. | goosedragons wrote: | TBF Valve and Steam were IIRC the first or very close to | first to have a game that required online activation (not | including like MMOs) with Half-Life 2. Steam was incredibly | frustrating for me as a kid stuck with dial up as the offline | mode was tremendously broken and the install DVDs always | fetched large portions (for dial-up anyways) of the game from | some server. Plus you had to update games upon install even | if you didn't want to which meant longer downloads. | mouzogu wrote: | Afaik only GOG sells games without DRM. I have bought | EA/Ubishit games on Steam which when you open the game, it | installs Origin/UbiWhatever and then run through them only. | cruano wrote: | Steam doesn't force you to be DRM-free like GOG, but they | definitely do have DRM-free games. You can launch them from | the .exe without internet or Steam installed, but it's up | to the publisher | nu11ptr wrote: | +1 for GOG. I don't play games much anymore, but I still | collect some of the older ones I enjoy on GOG knowing that | there is no DRM. I tried steam and purchased a few games, | but honestly I prefer to just have the game flat out | without needing a "client" to get them, so while many | people praise Steam... I'll pass. | [deleted] | dleslie wrote: | A few years ago Steam began showing labeling on store pages | for games that use third party DRM; and if you buy a game | that has it and you did so unwittingly, then you can return | it without issue provided you played less than two hours | and you bought it within the last two weeks. | karpierz wrote: | This return policy is true regardless of whether it has | DRM or whether you knew. | | You can return any Steam game, for any reason, provided | you've played it fewer than two hours and purchased it | within the last two weeks. | sorry_outta_gas wrote: | the refund policy is one of the reasons I buy games on | steam first over other stores, I tend to buy a lot of | games for whatever reason and end up refunding 5-6 a year | for various reasons after playing under two hours | | Microsoft only allots you one or two a year or something | which isn't enough considering how misleading game | marketing is mixed with the prices | georgeecollins wrote: | Steam has DRM, the Apple Store has DRM and other services | like GoG don't. Where do game developers put their games? The | places with DRM. | | Unpopular opinion, down votes incoming: Just because you | don't like the way a company chooses to distribute software | doesn't make piracy right or justified. | eli_gottlieb wrote: | >Lo and behold, I'm sitting in a hotel last night trying to | play Mass Effect Legendary Edition, and the thing refuses to | function because I'm not connected to the Internet. I was | astounded. This has never happened to me before. Why am I | subject to this as a customer? If I steal the game, I receive a | product without this glaring defect (I believe the defect has a | name: "Origin"). | | And that's why I still haven't bought "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater | 1+2" _two years later_. | LocalH wrote: | This is just a side effect of hypercapitalism at play. Aspects | of capitalism aren't bad, but when capitalism is the _single | biggest driving force of your society_ , things like this are | bound to happen, because the endgame that gets rammed down | everyone's throat is "making money is your life's purpose". | | These types of things have happened across how many industries | at this point, historically? Practically _all_ of them. | markdestouches wrote: | Such issues are solved with proper regulation and effective | antitrust laws. Unfortunately, if you lose the moment and | allow the companies to gain enough power, it becomes | incredibly difficult to push back against that. That's | basically the state of things in the US | whatshisface wrote: | What's the alternative to capitalism, PBS but for video | games? | thatguy0900 wrote: | would gamepass be the closest to that? The other | alternative would be games being small indie projects or | huge community things. The mods people release for free are | sometimes pretty insane in scope, even if Noone ever paid | for a game again we'd still get some decent games at least | whatshisface wrote: | Gamepass would be cable for videogames, PBS for | videogames would be a government agency that made them. | dleslie wrote: | The government of Canada funds the development of a fair | amount of video games through the Canadian media fund. | whatshisface wrote: | Are the results of that fund designed for compulsion to a | lesser degree than most games made with similar sized | budgets? | thewebcount wrote: | PBS is not a government agency. According to [0] they get | about 13% of their budget from the federal government and | 5% from state governments. So less than 20% of their | funding is from the government. | | [0] https://www.quora.com/How-much-support-does-the-U-S- | governme... | GekkePrutser wrote: | Game pass is more like the Netflix of gaming. Not all the | content you want but at a reasonable price. Stuff gets | removed a lot and there's lots of fragmentation with | competing services. | dylan604 wrote: | >I used to unapologetically pirate video games and only within | the past two years have I finally come full circle and begun | purchasing games, both new titles and older ones I had played | in the past but never paid for until now. | | If you are buying games/software as used, do the original | creators see a dime of that purchase or is it just as if you | never did pay for it? | Jenk wrote: | They didn't say used. | | Also that is such reductive argument. When I sell my | furniture to someone else am I supposed to pity the | carpenters and whatnot? | | How about when I sell my house, should the developers who | built it get a cut? | chucksmash wrote: | > How about when I sell my house, should the developers who | built it get a cut? | | Only a matter of time? | | Some NFTs used this as (an additional) money grab - every | time the NFT is resold, N% of the purchase price goes to | devs - so the idea is definitely out there in other forms | today. | dylan604 wrote: | Book publishers were hot on this too some time back | expecting used book stores to kick back up the chain. It | came around again with eBooks. It's definitely not a new | thought to be sure. | dylan604 wrote: | Yeah, I guess it reads like that's what I was implying. | | I was just asking if original creators get a cut of the | used price. I had seen discussions around that before, but | didn't know if it ever became a thing or not. Just a simple | question. Wasn't trying to be reductive and did not mean to | piss in your cheerios this mornign | mos_basik wrote: | Op didn't say "new and used"; they said "new and older". | | Since the context is that of piracy, I think it's most | likely that op wasn't saying he used to buy bootleg | physical DVDs for a console, but rather that they used to | download executables for a personal computer. | | If so, I've also come around to buying games in about the | same manner as OP describes. Your question sounds odd to | me, because I've never purchased a "used" game; since | about 2011 when i gained access to stable internet every | game I've purchased has been a digital purchase from an | official distributor or directly from the creators. | | There are other discussions to be had about whether | digital purchases with online drm are truly purchases or | rather subscriptions, and whether the cost of a AAA title | should still be as high as it is given that you can't | resell it the way you could when they were physical (and | how inflation plays into things), etc, but those are out | of scope here. | | And then there's unauthorized resellers like g2a. I'll | admit I've bought from there in the past, but I stopped | after reading a great breakdown of how these hurt game | developers more than piracy. These are a little like the | used market for digital (certainly the creators don't get | any of the money changing hands). But there are | differences - since usually, once a key is consumed to | play a game, it can no longer be resold. I assume this | affects the market to look quite different from, say, | gamestop. | dylan604 wrote: | >Your question sounds odd to me, | | Really? GameStop and other extinct companies made an | entire business model of selling your used games to them | and then selling those at cheaper prices to new | customers. That sounds odd to you? | babypuncher wrote: | Mass Effect Legendary Edition should only require an internet | connection the first time you run it on a new PC. After that it | works offline. | mattnewton wrote: | > I must admit I do not understand the industry, but I don't | see why competent studios like Blizzard/BioWare/Id could not | simply self-publish their games. What exactly does EA add to | the equation? Seems like it would not be a particularly | monumental task to cut them out. | | I don't know what it's like at all for those larger studios, | but for smaller studios EA will basically give all this | infrastructure to you for free or even pay you to use it if you | become a timed exclusive on their platform. I believe they are | effectively in the market for buying origin installs to compete | with steam. | Thaxll wrote: | > I must admit I do not understand the industry, but I don't | see why competent studios like Blizzard/BioWare/Id could not | simply self-publish their games. What exactly does EA add to | the equation? Seems like it would not be a particularly | monumental task to cut them out. | | Indeed you don't understand it because BioWare etc ... are just | studio name it's all EA right. People at Bioware are EA | employees they're not Bioware employees. btw EA purchased BW | before ME2 even released so it has been 15years+. | | As for the rest EA is one of the best place to work for in the | video game industry, they're pretty good with their employees ( | working hour, perks etc ... ). | | Regarding the legendary edition it's playable offline so I not | sure what you're talking about. | cupofpython wrote: | >I don't see why competent studios like Blizzard/BioWare/Id | could not simply self-publish their games | | related to this is how the games are managed once installed as | well. Each studio is moving towards each having their own "Hub" | for their games. Usually it is referred to as a "Launcher", but | I dont think it is going to end there. | | For example, Blizzard has "Battle.net". You open battlenet, log | in to battle net, and then select a game to play from your | battlenet library. | | Games I used to be able to just launch from Steam, now open up | a separate UI where I have to login and launch the game from | there (Larion Studios). | | I imagine a future where I come home from work, login to my | housing account, login to my computer, login to the 1 of 5+ | games marketplaces to access my purchased library, select the | game i want to play, login to the publishers account, login to | my game studio account, login to my game-specific user account, | login to the 3rd party server running the game instance backend | for my session, then download a 32gb update and not be able to | play until tomorrow | xmprt wrote: | That's the "future" that we already have except things like | OAuth and single sign on make that transparent to the user. | dleslie wrote: | That's not the future, that's basically now for any Ubisoft | games. | GekkePrutser wrote: | Buy on gog instead :) They don't DRM. | [deleted] | djcannabiz wrote: | at this point it feels like its immoral to not pirate AAA games. | its kinda like buying products that contain palm oil. see | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_oil#Social_and_environmen... | gameman144 wrote: | I know that this wasn't the main point of your post, but palm | oil production has actually become _substantially_ more | defensible in the past decade (i.e. deforestation and worker | exploitation are by _far_ the exception instead of the rule). | | All that to say that the moral thing to do might change with | time. | denimnerd42 wrote: | you can rip my cetyl alcohol based cleanser products from my | cold dead hands.. | djcannabiz wrote: | i am definitely a bit of a hypocrite here- in most of my hair | products there are ingredients that use palm oil as | feedstock. I just try to avoid it in food products. | [deleted] | Jeaye wrote: | (opinions are my own and not EA's) | | I've been at EA for about 1.5 years now and have never enjoyed | working somewhere as much as this. Their devotion to D&I, their | culture around management (and the thorough training each manager | gets), career progression, and feedback, their flexibility for | each individual (even given their size), how frequently we | actually get to speak with SVP-level leadership to ask | questions/voice opinions, their flexibility around WFH, and how | everyone is pleasant to work with make it very easy to talk about | how nice it is to work at EA. On top of all of that, benefits and | pay are competitive (especially benefits). | | EA's a big company, and I'm in EADP, which is an org that builds | the back-end services for the games, rather than the games. But | I've never been asked to work more than 8 hours in a day. | Whenever I have chosen to work more, I've been specifically told | by my manager or his that it's not required and that I can pick | it up again tomorrow. They meant it. | | I read this post before joining EA and was somewhat concerned, | but was told by people I trust that it no longer applies. From my | perspective, they're absolutely right. | | As others mentioned, EA has undergone new leadership since this | post was written. It was also nearly two decades ago. At this | point, it's likely more of a good cautionary tale of how things | can get than an accurate rendering of how things are. | nhunter wrote: | EADP is one of the central teams within the company. By far, | they have a much better experience than any of the product | teams (less OT, lower expectations, less funding). Product | teams are responsible to deliver on timelines regardless of the | support they can get centrally, so teams like EADP get more | opportunity to push back, and that pushback turns into OT on | the product teams. | | tl;dr: Central Team experience at EA is VASTLY different than | being on a game team. It's great if you're on a central team at | EA, but I'd never work on a game team if I enjoy seeing my | family (plus EA pays at least 50% less than similar roles with | skills that would still be needed outside of gaming) | ironlake wrote: | >I've been at EA for about 1.5 years now and have never enjoyed | working somewhere as much as this. | | Her story is part of an ongoing labor movement. People | dismissed it back in 2004, but it's led to change. The | practices she describes used to be more common, especially in | gaming companies. | | The change happened because of the labor movement. If you | aren't ownership, then you are a worker and you should have | solidarity with all the other workers. | [deleted] | karpierz wrote: | I suspect that your experience comes from working at EA in a | leadership capacity, whereas the toxicity complaints come from | the front-line workers (IE, SWE, QA). | drakonka wrote: | I worked at EA for almost eight years as an SE individual | contributor and it was honestly great. Don't get me wrong, | the place had its issues, but from the perspective of my | specific job, coworkers, work-life balance, benefits, etc, it | was excellent and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it. But I | think I really lucked out with my studio, line managers, and | TDs. At such a huge company there will be a whole range of | positive and negative experiences across locations and teams. | | Edit: there was definitely plenty of overtime though. Just | wanted add this to make sure I didn't paint an overly | idealistic picture despite my overall positive experience. | babypuncher wrote: | In the last decade EA has actually built a decent reputation | as a good place for developers to work. The article posted | above is from 2004. It was a pretty big scandal at the time, | and it actually did lead to meaningful reforms at EA. EA has | had their fair share of other scandals. Rushing unfinished | products to market, sleazy monetization schemes, etc, but | developer crunch is not one that has really come up in a long | time. | mehlmao wrote: | > in the last decade | | So since Riccitiello left? | highwaylights wrote: | To clarify, EA changed solely _because_ of this post. It was a | very dirty open secret that suddenly became incredibly public, | and the backlash at that time was vociferous. | | Ultimately (unless I'm mistaken) EA was forced to pay back pay | plus overtime and stopped all crunch for some time. There was a | lot of talk of congressional regulation at that time if I | remember correctly, too. | | From Wikipedia: | | "Hoffman's actions, in part, led to the filing of three class | action lawsuits against EA and some changes throughout the | industry at large, such as the reclassification of entry-level | artists as hourly employees, thus making them eligible for | overtime under California law.[8] Her fiance, EA employee | Leander Hasty, was the main plaintiff in the successful class- | action suit on behalf of software engineers at EA, which in | 2007 awarded the plaintiffs $14.9 million for unpaid | overtime.[9]" | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erin_Hoffman | droptablemain wrote: | Under capitalism, the nature of the relationship between | productive employees and the employer is exploitative (while | simultaneously being mutually beneficial). It is in the | employer's interest to extract as much surplus value from the | employee as possible. | | "Consider the human"-type messages do not appeal to CEOs, and if | they did, he would ultimately be replaced because dehumanization | is baked into the core of the system. | [deleted] | NonNefarious wrote: | On a tangent: Why does LiveJournal hijack the browser's Back | button? | | That's scummy malware-site-style shit. | [deleted] | pvg wrote: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32110743 | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | This is fairly old. I have no idea whether or not it still | applies. | | I have also found that discrete teams, within a company, can have | radically different cultures. | | That said, game development has long been known as a "labor of | love," with emphasis on " _labor_. " | | In the 1980s(!). I was recruited by Sierra Online. Even though I | thought it would be cool, I consulted enough game developers to | get talked out of it. | atlasunshrugged wrote: | Thought this was about Effective Altruism to start with! Would | have been nice if this called out that it was from '04 | mysterydip wrote: | "Press Reset" by Jason Schreier is a great look at the human side | of the industry in general. The crunch, layoff, move to a new | studio, repeat is all too common. EA was on a whole other level, | though. | TheWoodsy wrote: | Anyone curious to find out their browser wants to talk to russia | via 91.192.149.121 UDP port 3478? | [deleted] | dang wrote: | Related: | | _My [husband] works for Electronic Arts, I 'm ... a disgruntled | spouse. (2004)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1454102 - | June 2010 (105 comments) | maximilianburke wrote: | Good grief, this post is nearly old enough to vote. | | EA has changed a lot in those years, mostly for the better. I | spent 13 years there from 2005-2018 and it was a great place to | work; the people were great, the problems were interesting, and | the hours were normal. | kevinh wrote: | This is being posted because people have their knives out for | Unity at the moment, and this occurred while Riccitiello | (current Unity CEO) was the CEO at EA. | maximilianburke wrote: | Yeah, I'm aware that Riccitiello was the CEO of EA; he was | also the CEO of EA from 2007 until 2013, when a lot of the | behavior that was called out in the EA Spouse essay was | fixed. | synu wrote: | This was while John Riccitiello was running EA. I was there at | the time and it was crazy how many people were being driven so | hard. You may recognize his name now from the recent | Unity/malware merger news, or maybe from calling developers who | don't extract maximum value through microtransactions "fucking | idiots." | [deleted] | ncr100 wrote: | [the 'fucking idiots' discussion | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32097752] | antiverse wrote: | Yup, this ties into the recent happenings with Unity and | ironSource. | xbar wrote: | He is why I never worked at EA. | sascha_sl wrote: | When I interviewed at a medium sized game studio, mostly known | for their graphically impressive engine, I asked to have another | offer (different industry) matched. The recruiters response was | that they couldn't do it, but they know I'll still choose them | "because making games is cool". | | Suffice to say I didn't take that offer. Studio tour was fun | though. | nu11ptr wrote: | This should have a "(2004)" suffix on the title. I thought this | was current and only accidently noticed the date later. | [deleted] | silentsea90 wrote: | Great call out. I was confused why Madden 2005 was being | referenced but it makes more sense (note: madden 2005 launched | in 2004) | AshamedCaptain wrote: | > When the next news came it was not about a reprieve; it was | another acceleration: twelve hours six days a week, 9am to 10pm. | | What amazes me is that there's someone out there who thinks that | this type of "crunchs" would improve performance. Do they ever | really improve actual performance ? | | I have been in (non-videogame) software companies that did this | (never as an employee though), and I literally saw people staring | at their computer screens doing absolutely nothing. Not even | browsing Facebook or whatever, just... staring. They would do | that for the majority of the day. Probably sleeping with their | eyes open. | | I have the impression that adding hours like this is like adding | manpower as in The Mythical Man-month way... it can only slow | down the project, never speed it up. | [deleted] | silentsea90 wrote: | Why does game dev take so long? I assume most of the physics, | game dynamics etc are standardized. Artwork, building a story, | designing the game etc sure require work per game. I ask as a | noob, not expressing an opinion at all. | [deleted] | [deleted] | justinhj wrote: | I worked in the game industry for over twenty years as an | engineer. Most of the time the work was fun, the projects were | interesting and the money was okay. Eventually I needed more | stability, better pay and work life balance, and I went into | business software, a decision that I wish I had made earlier. I | think that the game industry has some issues that are very | difficult to solve caused by various compounding factors, and for | these reasons there will always be below market pay for | engineers, crunch and studio closures/mass layoffs. The factors | are 1)games are a creative endeavour subject to fashion. There is | no guarantee that your star team that made Space War 1 will make | hit sequel nor that people will be into space war games in 5 | years. 2)project management is extremely hard when you have 200+ | people across the world working on complex systems and a varying | product description 3) the combination of uncertain delivery and | high marketing spends required for a AAA title, and other hard | dates like thanksgiving or a sports season beginning, means that | crunch is almost guaranteed. 4)the cool factor of working in | games means a supply of young people that can be taken advantage | of. below market pay, unpaid OT and little structured career | development. In my time I saw project managers come from academia | and from government or military contractors and none of them | could tame the endemic issues that come with this industry. Not | all of these problems exist at all developers, there are bright | spots and it's possible to have a long and lucrative career. Just | have your eyes open. | [deleted] | AlbertCory wrote: | I organized a softball game between my startup and EA in 1984 or | so, as described in [1]. Trip Hawkins hit a monstrous home run. | Our president hit into a double play. | | The fact that they've even lasted this long is some kind of | tribute. Trip's idea at the start was to build games like a movie | studio: have outside companies take all the risk of building the | thing, and just assign an in-house "producer" to help them. | | If an EA employee said, "Hey, I want to build games myself!" he'd | say, "OK, you can give up your stock options and your job | security, and in exchange you can get all the royalties that a | game developer gets." Most of them thought better of the idea. | | So now, it's... what? They work employees like game developers | but don't pay them like that? Why would you do that? | | [1] https://www.albertcory.io/the-big-bucks | shp0ngle wrote: | please put (2004) in the title | hvs wrote: | This blog post is from 18 years ago so I'd be curious if any game | developers can speak to the current state of affairs in the | industry. It's always been notorious for overworking employees, | but I'm not sure if it's to the same scale described here. | yelnatz wrote: | I left last year after working there for ~8 years. | | It's night and day; EA when I left was a great place to work | at. Work life balance was a priority, a lot of communication | from execs, coworkers were great. | | My only gripe with them is the revolving door of contractors, | QA and devs alike. | maccard wrote: | Things have dramatically improved in the last 18 years. That's | not to say that crunch doesn't happen, or that there aren't | studios that abuse their employees, but large companies like EA | have all moved past this death march for months model. Ubisoft | is generally considered to be an excellent employer - | reasonable pay, good work life balance and career/progression | systems available for everyone. It's still not perfect, but 8ts | not this! | elabajaba wrote: | Quite a few studios still crunch (eg. Naughty Dog and CD | Projekt are some big ones), and a lot of studios that claim | they don't crunch outsource their crunch (eg. Insomniac | outsources to Lemon Sky Studios in Malaysia, and Lemon Sky is | well known for both their crunch culture and for not paying | overtime). | system16 wrote: | In the years following this, a lot of the big game developers | (especially mobile) opened offshore studios in SE Asia and | Eastern Europe where endless crunch like is described in the | legendary ea_spouse post is still very alive and well. | Basically orders come down from "HQ" which is typically the | home office in Western Europe or US/Canada, and the overseas | studios follow their marching orders. Added bonus for the | company: much lower employee salaries and lax or non-existent | labour laws. | | Source: worked for a major game developer at one of their SE | Asia studios for a while. | IntelMiner wrote: | The last EA game I picked up was the Command & Conquer | remastered collection. I even went as far as to buy the | physical box set from LimitedRunGames | | Hearing how they treated LemonSky absolutely soured me on | playing it in the end however | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bm7KUE1Kwts | swivelmaster wrote: | Some places are still like this. EA is not. I worked at a | company that was acquired by EA in late 2011 and stayed until | 2016. Post-acquisition, EA's HR folks made sure that a whole | bunch of the studio's staff were properly classified (salary | vs. hourly) and that the studio was following proper procedure | regarding timecards and overtime. The studio also hired on some | senior staff to deal with operations and production practices. | | There were still some bad times - politics outside of the | studio forced staff into some do-or-die milestones that | required crunching for a week or two at a time, but nothing | like the kind of sustained months-to-years crunch I've heard | about in other places. | | The funny thing about EA is that even though it has such a bad | rap for making big mistakes in the past, they made them FIRST | and have managed to learn. A lot of other major publishers that | grew to comparable size more recently are still making them. | pizzathyme wrote: | Funny story: I know one of the engineers who was on this exact | team being written about who was still at EA years later. I asked | him why he didn't leave, and he said "I didn't really mind. I got | a settlement from the lawsuit and bought a nice car. Then I went | back to work." | daveslash wrote: | This was one of the posts selected for inclusion in Spolsky's _" | The Best Software Writing"_, a book that I very much enjoyed and | recommend. | | https://www.amazon.com/Best-Software-Writing-Selected-Introd... | barrysteve wrote: | That ea_spouse post is best seen on the internet, to the OP's | link. Why would we buy a book to read free internet posts? | Isn't that going backwards? | | Also it's a bit crass to copy/paste someone's story of | victimization, health-failing story of suffering, intro'd with | some math about sweat-shop productivity and sell it as part of | a random software article jambalaya for $9 a pop. | | What does selected for inclusion even mean? Joel saw this story | explode back in 04 so he copy/pasted it into Notepad++ "for | inclusion"? It's not like he's an art curator who does the work | of sorting wheat from the chaff. Google and social media | aggregators do most of the work on that for internet writing. | | Ugh, I guess it's enough hackernews for me, for a while. | Everything is a product and even the "greats" like joel are | trying to sell the pixels I saw last week, copy & pasted back | to me in paper form. Virtue ain't in this post. | dijit wrote: | > Their devotion to D&I | | I worked for a competitor and this is single-handedly the most | frustrating thing I had to deal with honestly. | | Not because it's not a noble objective, but because it was | weaponised by a minority of people to control the studio in | various ways, it was bullying in its purest form and extremely | toxic - the environment felt really hostile, like saying | something even moderately wrong would lead to an incursion. | Saying anything against that behaviour meant you were somehow | anti-feminist or misogynist or racist, even defending yourself. | They were the arbiters of what D&I means and they can do no | wrong. | | To give you an example of what I mean: during the start of the | pandemic the managing director of the studio said "we don't know | if this virus will be nothing, or the next Spanish flu, so we | should take all necessary precaution in the worst case" - he was | dragged publicly by our internal D&I delegation about the sheer | racism of saying "Spanish" flu. | | So, I treat _strong_ D &I initiatives as a red flag, personally. | | But I agree that EA is considered one of the better employers in | the industry, even if the games are aggressively monetised, it | seems that they try to take care of employees. | dang wrote: | (We detached this subthread from | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32109896.) | sangnoir wrote: | To be purely pedantic: Spanish flu was only called that because | Spain was the only large country reporting accurate infections | and deaths. It ought to have been named American flu, since | that's were it originated, but the US was intentionally | underreporting (war time rules and all). | dijit wrote: | Yeah. That's the history, and widely understood. At least in | Europe (incl. UK) | | Only a fool would think that it was because the Spanish we're | dirty or adversely affected. | _gabe_ wrote: | > but because it was weaponised by a minority of people to | control the studio in various ways | | I've also run into this. It can quite literally feel like I'm | walking on eggshells. And it's not because I'm deeply racist or | misogynistic (at least I think I'm not and I sure hope I'm | not), but I literally just cannot voice any of my concern or | dissent for any of my company's politically motivated | initiatives. I would prefer my workplace to be devoid of | political topics, and focused on meeting the business | objectives, but that's not the reality. | | So I agree. I also treat strong D&I initiatives as a red flag. | I don't care what people's race, ethnicity, gender, or | ideologies are. If you can do your job well and be a generally | (we all have bad days) pleasant coworker, then awesome. If you | act like a jerk, that's just acting like a jerk regardless of | any immutable characteristics. | mywittyname wrote: | > even if the games are aggressively monetised, it seems that | they try to take care of employees. | | These are probably related attributes. It's hard to take care | of your employees when your company is operating game paycheck | to game paycheck. | KennyBlanken wrote: | > So, I treat strong D&I initiatives as a red flag, personally. | | Based off the general vibe of your comment, those companies | don't want you. D&I driving away people who are made | uncomfortable by D&I _is working exactly as designed._ | | Somehow I have managed to be employed at a number of companies | for decades without once been in fear about being bullied by | false accusations of being misogynistic or racist. I've never | seen another white person bullied under the pretense of having | been racist or misogynistic. | | I have, however, seen blatantly homophobic and racist behavior | - some of it violent (in a professional workplace) and seen it | covered up by management. | | My guess is that you don't see 'light' racist, misogynistic, or | homophobic behavior as problematic - "can't make a joke these | days" - and therefore see the people who are disciplined for | such behavior as "bullied." | dijit wrote: | Everything is contextual, there probably is racism in my | company, somewhere. Calling it out when seen is something | that has been pretty normal in my professional life. | | Maybe it's because my first CIO was gay, or that I was | working in a metrosexual community. | | Same with racism, I grew up shoulder to shoulder with south | Asians and black people because that's just how life is when | you live in a multicultural society and they haven't been | adequately scapegoated. | | I can't convince you that you're wrong about this, because | you're not in most circumstances; but good people, in my | experience, do not do nothing in the face of bigotry in the | workplace. | | The difference, however, is that there is an _unmitigated_ | independent group who have decided what utopia means and can | not care about the means to their end. | | The unfortunate situation I'm in is that I support their | cause, but they're bringing the movement down. | | Addendum: you're also subtly implying the MD was somehow | guilty of being against D&I, as he was dragged publicly, | despite _literally spearheading_ these initiatives and | winning many awards for his work in promoting D &I in the | industry and independently in the region. I find that kind of | a reach honestly. | Mezzie wrote: | The problem with D&I initiatives is that, ironically, they end | up spearheaded by extremely privileged people. Those people | usually have one (or MAYBE 2) main axis/axes of marginalization | (see: upper-middle class/well off white trans women, rich | straight POC, etc.). They then proceed to speak for every | member of group X and/or declare that their problems are the | only ones that matter. | | The other problem is that such initiatives are naturally going | to tend towards rewarding/biasing towards visible and apparent | differences. (Which is why race, sex, and gender take so much | center stage). "Diversity" basically only means 'diversity we | can see'/skindeep diversity. | ldlddldljsne wrote: | ldkdjdosk wrote: | [deleted] | kmeisthax wrote: | This is from 2004, and we know so much _more_ about the games | industry that stories of overworked QA testers and programmers | seem utterly quaint. Every company in the business[0] is run by a | yet-to-be-convicted sex offender or enabler of such. Activision | is currently involved in one of the biggest equal-opportunity | lawsuits in history, which is only eclipsed by the legal fight | between US EEOC and California DFEH[1] over who gets to prosecute | them and how far they should go in doing so. | | At the time I assumed that this behavior was enabled by a high | churn rate - i.e. companies hiring junior developers unaware of | the awful practices of the games industry and wearing them down | until they left. However, this turned out to be naive. That's the | Amazon approach - and Amazon is actually going to start running | out of people to churn through soon. The games industry _hasn | 't_. | | What I can only assume now is that the games industry does _not_ | churn through developers as much as they mould them into paragons | of toxicity. Anyone who _does_ churn out is just a normal human | being, and those who stay are either already toxic or get moulded | by the system into being as such. | | [0] Nintendo is an interesting case. Management has actually been | pretty opposed to crunch time and confident in delaying games | until they're ready. However, there has been reports of | overworked _contractors_ from time to time. No reports of sexual | harassment, yet. | | [1] At one point California tried to file an intervening motion | on the US EEOC's settlement agreement, and the US EEOC responded | by alleging conflicts-of-interest that would have dynamited both | parties' cases. | [deleted] | zac23or wrote: | The gaming industry is weird. The industry "forces you" to use | pirated games. | | 1. I have a PS3, and I tried to use the Playstation Store, I | didn't pirate anything, despite the PS3 Store being slow as hell. | But Sony basically closed the PS3 Store (you have to put money in | your wallet on your computer and make purchases on your PS3). | This makes the purchase a much more complex act. I will sell the | PS3 or unlock it. | | 2. Mobile gaming today is gambling, focusing on sick people, | addicts, and you're "an idiot" if you don't do this. | | 3. To buy 100% of some games, you need thousands of dollars. | | 4. Many important fixes are from the community such as Resident | Evil Crack which fixes stuttering or slow GTA JSON parser. | | Look, if GTA or Resident Evil isn't important enough for the | industry to be careful about... the industry is broken in the | roots. | | In the end, pirated games are better than most legally purchased | games. | [deleted] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-07-15 23:00 UTC)