Anonymous essay from a spouse of an EA employee

[Urban]

dice owns me

doesnt seem like the higher-ups at ea are very nice to their employees, so if this is true.. how do they keep people on the job?.. seems like alot of people wouldnt take this crap.. or maybe they just love the idea of making games so they take the good with the bad... weird...

[RD]

I posted it on the news at gamedesign.net ----> http://www.gamedesign.net/node/view/781

I wonder what happens if it starts to appear on the big gaming sites, is it legal to post something like this, or is it slander?

[kleinluka]

of course it's legal. it's already on gamasutra, bluesnews, shacknews,.. its basically all over the place.

There's yet an other report from a former EA employee on livejournal. and it's just as bad.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/joestraitiff/

snippet:

However, I skipped many colorful and fleshing out stuff that shows you the culture of EA, e.g. the Executive Producer of the project hung a neon sign in the team area that said "Open 7 days" and constantly sent out emails to the whole team saying that he'd see them over the weekend.

[KungFuSquirrel]

doesnt seem like the higher-ups at ea are very nice to their employees, so if this is true.. how do they keep people on the job?.. seems like alot of people wouldnt take this crap.. or maybe they just love the idea of making games so they take the good with the bad... weird...

As the experienced vets get fed up and leave, they replace them with naive new employees with not a whole lot of work experience. They eagerly take the job, and then are screwed over. They keep the job because a) leaving the team before completion of their first project could be catastrophic to future job hunts and/or b) they just assume it's the norm and don't think twice about it.

I guess on some forums where this is going around there are people re-thinking their ambitions to go into the industry, assuming this is just par for the course. My understanding is also that many of the people that leave EA due to these circumstances end up leaving the industry entirely. Really too bad that people let themselves believe this is normal behavior.

[RD]

As the experienced vets get fed up and leave, they replace them with naive new employees with not a whole lot of work experience. They eagerly take the job, and then are screwed over. They keep the job because a) leaving the team before completion of their first project could be catastrophic to future job hunts and/or b) they just assume it's the norm and don't think twice about it.

I guess on some forums where this is going around there are people re-thinking their ambitions to go into the industry, assuming this is just par for the course. My understanding is also that many of the people that leave EA due to these circumstances end up leaving the industry entirely. Really too bad that people let themselves believe this is normal behavior.

It could explain what happened with gamer55. Once a promising talent working at Blizzard, he died, became a complete hoax, came back alive and began writing fairytales on irc. A crunch musta snapped him

[Mazy]

lol rd

the genius

[Skjalg]

hey! Dont mess with blizzard! best fucking games ever... (and i dont think they fuck their empleyees)

(i hope)

crap...

But uhm.. What is the wisests decision to take when beeing fucked over like that, as was mentioned, it can be catastrophic to your career to just walk out on your first project..

[zaphod]

I have heard blizzard is almost as bad as EA

[Skjalg]

was that irony? or were you serious now?

Hmm... maybe you are correct... but atleast they work long hours in order to make great games (not just stupid ones, like ea, that is 90% similar to another games they have)

[RD]

just for those who dont know who gamer55 is, he never worked at blizzard or even mcdonalds i think

[st0lve]

Whats the difference between EA and EA BIG? Is it a sub company?

Scary stuff to read.

Now I know where I am NEVER going to apply for a job when I get older.

[mikezilla]

I have heard blizzard is almost as bad as EA

They've been on crunch with WoW for like 8 months. Blizzard is pretty scary when it comes to content creation, but people want to work there because they know the end product will justify their work.

EA doesn't quite have that.

[Duff-e]

obviously you havent played nightfire

[Izuno]

quick update you may have already seen, but this issue made the GameDaily again this morning:

http://biz.gamedaily.com/features.asp?article_id=8323

[Skjalg]

I have heard blizzard is almost as bad as EA

They've been on crunch with WoW for like 8 months. Blizzard is pretty scary when it comes to content creation, but people want to work there because they know the end product will justify their work.

EA doesn't quite have that.

I guess its kinda ok, then... but if i were to work 8 months on a project in crunchmode (=no life), i dont think id manage... i need atleast one day outside of work per week...

but all of that depends... i dont consider making maps a job...