
My [husband] works for Electronic Arts, I'm ... a disgruntled spouse. (2004) - staunch
http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html
======
ryanwaggoner
EA's practices described in this article make me angry, but I'm also baffled.
Why the hell would you stay in this situation longer than about 48 hours?

I can't imagine working for a place that told me it was _mandatory_ that I
work 12 hours a day, seven days a week with no extra compensation. Ummm...go
fuck yourself? Companies don't own their employees. Especially as a
programmer, why would you put up with something so ridiculous? It's not _that_
hard to find work doing development elsewhere.

~~~
thefool
The foot in the door principle.

They don't spring the hours on you, they increase them gradually.

First its - well 45 hours a week isnt so bad. Then after a few weeks its 55,
and eventually, you get to working 85 hour weeks and not really knowing how
you got there.

~~~
megablast
What I have seen in advertising industry, is that people just stay longer.
Nothing is ever said, there aren't even any dirty looks if you leave at 5 or
5:30, it is just that you will be first to leave. Then, when someone else does
it once, they make an excuse, and you feel like you need to make an excuse.

Fine if you are a contractor, that is the way to work at those places.

~~~
pyre
I've heard that that is the way the Japanese salarymen put in their long
hours. A lot of them end up just sticking around at the end of the day doing
nothing. They are just waiting for other people and/or 'the boss' to leave so
that it looks like they are being very productive.

~~~
patio11
Let's hypothetically say we have a young turk in a Japanese engineering
department, where the unspoken departmental standard is 6 hours of work in a
16 hour day. If he works 10 hours in a 16 hour day, he is going to _quickly_
draw the ire of his older colleagues, because he is making them look bad. The
boss will start cracking the whip and get them to meet or exceed his
productivity, and then an arms race ensues. If, on the other hand, he works 10
hours in a 10 hour day, he is going to quickly draw the ire of his boss,
because he is leaving six hours before everyone else, despite the project
being horrifically behind schedule.

There is an entire _genre_ of aphorisms to tell our young turk. Let's see: the
nail that sticks up gets hammered down. The clever hawk hides his claws. etc,
etc.

Work diligently, but with sufficient deliberation to achieve the company's
exacting quality standards. Document your steps religiously. Hammer out
hundreds or thousands of pages of specification documents, since specs always
resemble forward progress. Teach your junior employees, who might be ignorant
in the way of the world, how things are actually done, and most particularly
how they are actually done _here_. With _due deliberation_.

Now, of course, my company was totally different, because we would _never_
slack off like that. But, you know, I've heard stories of how things are done
at places I don't have near-feudal loyalty towards.

~~~
telemachos
Neal Stephenson nails this game of "Don't go too fast; don't go too slow."
perfectly in _Snow Crash_.

The context there is a US gov employee who has a huge tedious memo in her
email. (It's an acceptable use policy on toilet paper use and the prohibited
sharing of that precious resource.) We get treated to a long Stephenson
treatise on how to properly handle such a memo (skim at a rate that suggests
reading rather than skimming, go back occasionally at random intervals - as if
rereading details, etc.). It's very well done.

~~~
boredguy8

         Y.T.'s mom pulls up  the new memo, checks the  time, and starts reading
      it. The estimated  reading time  is 15.62 minutes. Later, when Marietta does
      her end-of-day statistical roundup, sitting in her private office  at  9:00
      P.M.,  she will see the name  of each employee and next to it, the amount of
      time spent  reading this memo, and  her reaction,  based on the time  spent,
      will go something like this:
    
         Less than 10 min. Time for an employee conference and possible attitude
           counseling.
         10-14 min. Keep an eye on this employee; may be developing
           slipshod attitude.
         14-15.61 min. Employee is an efficient worker, may sometimes miss
           important details.
         Exactly 15.62 min. Smartass. Needs attitude counseling.
         15.63-16 min. Asswipe. Not to be trusted.
         16-18 min. Employee is a methodical worker, may sometimes get hung
           up on minor details.
         More than 18 min. Check the security videotape, see just what this
           employee was up to (e.g., possible unauthorized restroom break).
    
        Y.T.'s mom  decides  to  spend  between  fourteen and  fifteen  minutes
      reading the memo. It's better for younger workers to spend too long, to show
      that they're careful,  not  cocky. It's better for  older  workers  to go  a
      little  fast, to  show good management  potential. She's pushing forty. She
      scans through the memo,  hitting the  Page Down button at reasonably regular
      intervals,  occasionally  paging back up  to  pretend to reread some earlier
      section. The computer is going to notice all this. It approves of rereading.
      It's  a small  thing, but over a decade or so this stuff really  shows up on
      your work-habits summary.

------
huhtenberg
Just this weekend I had a dinner with a friend of mine who works for (a
Canadian office of) EA. I mentioned this exact blogpost and he said he read
it. And then he added that nothing had changed.

Overtime is factored into the development plan from the very beginning, and
the overtime period typically starts 6 months before the project deadline.
They will compensate with an occasional day off and the work schedule will be
lax after the release, but people are really squeezed out before that.

~~~
seekely
Keep in mind your friend is at one studio of many under the EA umbrella. Just
like the entire game industry, some studios are a mess. Unfortunately (and
probably unfairly) EA takes the brunt of the bad PR.

However, EA and most other studios industry wide have taken great strides to
improve the treatment of employees since the EA Spouse ordeal. There will
probably forever remain bad/overworked studios, but I see plenty of those
outside of the game industry as well in environments even less
enjoyable/creative/fun.

~~~
_delirium
It's quite possible it's improved, but it seems there's still a culture of:
developing this game _will be_ your life. Almost every single acceptance
speech at this year's Game Developer's Choice awards involved the team
thanking their family for their understanding / apologizing for not being
around for the past 6 months / etc. After hearing that over and over from the
acceptance speeches in succession, it gave a pretty strong impression of the
industry still being a pretty oppressive place to work.

(The IGF segment, for indie-game awards, seemed to involve much happier devs,
except that many thanked their families for indulging their unfunded,
nonsalaried quest.)

~~~
seekely
And I don't think the apologizing to families and stupid hours will ever
completely go away because working in games for many is a big part of their
life/identify/pride for better or worse. Given 1 year or infinite years, some
people will choose to make their current project their life. Just as many
choose to make their startup/band/sport/passion their life.

The only problem comes when the studios, like EA Spouse, get abusive and
ridiculous due to incompetent management. However, over the last 5 years of
being tangentially and directly involved in games, I see this happening less
and less.

------
InclinedPlane
My own assessment is that the games industry is perhaps as much as several
decades behind the software industry in coming to grips with the process and
culture changes necessary for sustainable high-quality development efforts.
There are a few companies that seem to do it right (Valve, for example), but
the vast majority of companies seem to be living by rules determined more by
fantasy and speculation than by actual experience. Much of this is due to the
relatively young age of modern game-making (the efforts behind making, say,
Modern Warfare 2 are utterly dissimilar to the process of making, say, the
original Doom). Some of it is exacerbated by the exponential revenue growth of
the gaming industry.

When you can half-ass your way into making a multi-million dollar return on
investment while doing it wrong, it can be challenging to find the motivation
to do it right.

Hopefully, as the industry matures it'll settle down into more sensible
standard processes.

~~~
whatusername
Valve have had a philosophy of not shipping until it is perfect. (see TF2,
HL2:EP3, etc). This might be changing (L4D2), but I'm still waiting for
HL2:EP3, and games like HL2 had a 6 year development cycle.

~~~
oasisbob
I may not be informed on Valve's ship-philosophy, but is Valve really the best
example of shipping at perfection?

Hasn't TF2 experienced well over 100+ updates by this point?

If Valve is doing something right, it seems to be incremental improvement --
not vitrification and release of a finalized product.

~~~
jasonlotito
TF2 was perfect on release. It was fun, exciting, and offered many hours of
enjoyment, and still does because Valve is constantly going back in and
tweaking and adding content based on community feedback.

Those 100+ updates are fixes to something broken. They are improvements on
perfection. I think only Valve can get away with something like that, though.

If every company modeled it's game production the same way Valve does, I think
gaming would be better off, even if we had to wait longer between releases.

~~~
wildmXranat
Having played TF2 from day 1, I have to agree with your description of
enjoyable gameplay, but there were bugs, massive blunders both in map design
or character interaction. Who can forget the infinite uber exploit or sentries
located below map grounds. In valve's defense, the game was always user-
centric. Fun, very friendly to community and a great value for the dollar.

We were administrating 4 TF2 servers and updates to the servers were almost a
weekly occurrence. Was it worth the hassle : yes. Valve knew how to handle
community issues and provide a product that players wanted. I don't think it's
easy to hold a lot of game companies in this high regard.

------
oliveoil
there's something seriously fucked up with the game industry. A uni friend
with a reasonably good theoretical CS degree tried to get a junior gameplay
programming job last year and was told/signalled his knowledge and experience
is not game-specific enough. So what I suspect is that the people who manage
to get in have spent some sweet time getting there (perhaps even on
specialized uni courses) and keep telling themselves this is what they really
wanted (wasn't it just yesterday here on HN someone posted the wiki article
about cognitive dissonance?). And it's the same across large portion of game
companies at least, most notably those crunching out MMO games (there's a
great blog about that that I can't find right now).

~~~
ido
I never studied anything game-industry specific (I was a math major) & I'm
working as a game developer now (albeit in a small company that does casual
games, not EA and their ilk) and only worked in 'normal' programming jobs
before that (doing mostly semantic-web and "enterprise" stuff).

Of the ~20 people working here only one (the youngest and most junior,
probably also earns a lot less than most of us) studied in a games-specific
program.

I think many people here don't have a degree or have one in an unrelated field
(I have yet to find a CS-program graduate, the ones I know of mostly studied
stuff like physics and math).

What you refer to might be AAA specific, or just untrue.

~~~
NickPollard
One thing to bear in mind is that the games programming domain is quite
different from the typical web/application programming domain that many here
on Hacker News are used to.

In much of Games Development there is a greater focus on optimization and
efficiency, the programming is a lot lower level and you need to be able to
squeeze as much as you can out of the hardware. All the Games Developers I
have worked for and interviewed for always look for certain skills, like
pointer arithmetic and bit manipulation, that might not be an issue if you're
building a social network or e-commerce site.

~~~
ido
Maybe.

But in my experience my work here is remarkably similar to previous jobs I've
had that weren't in games.

~~~
sprout
Casual games are more web programming. He's talking about the multi-million
dollar productions that tax the top consoles to their limits.

------
ifesdjeen
hm. just red that. let me tell you something. i was working for outsource
companies (sorry to admit, but i'm from Ukraine) for more than 5 years. i can
tell that the average hourly rate of the programmer here is still around 15USD
for an hour.

it's an extremely rare occasion when project goes "right". When you work in
outsource, you get tight time schedules promised by the people who have no
idea about the development process, and teams inevitably kill themselves for
the sake of project. it's most of time not any less than 10 hours a day, with
often working weekends. if you don't like it - just go ahead and leave.

but if you leave, you just find another head of the same beast. afterall, if
you switch jobs way too often, they claim that you're not trustworthy.

well, i'm sorry about the guys who work for EA. they're brilliant people who
got possessed by managers. but there are places, where whole industry is
possessed, and owned. most of the time less skilled people are being taken for
the job just because they could be easily fired, they won't take the ownership
of anything. they'll just do whatever you tell them to do. maybe EA should do
the same? :)

~~~
theycallmemorty
> sorry to admit, but i'm from Ukraine

Why are you sorry?

~~~
ifesdjeen
good question... well, probably because of the current status of IT industry
here...

------
ryanricard
Couple of "WHYYYY?" comments on here, mostly with good answers, but one more
piece that hasn't been mentioned: since the industry is very competitive,
having experience on a shipping game is a huge benefit to your resume. I'm
sure many of those programmers/artists thought "OK, just make it through this
game and then I'll actually have something on my resume."

I mean, could you imagine quitting a startup before they shipped a product?

~~~
epochwolf
> I mean, could you imagine quitting a startup before they shipped a product?

I did. (Granted, the product changed every month and the website I was working
on changed every week.)

------
niels_olson
> ninety hour weeks; in any other industry the company in question would find
> itself sued out of business

Not really. Resident physicians were only very recently restricted to 80-hour
work weeks. And even many of the residents bemoan the lost patient-contact
time.

What's the average start-up work-week?

------
motters
Conditions like this were enjoyed by 19th century industrial workers - and
still go on in some of the poorer countries today. It's the result of
unregulated working conditions and inadequate or non-existent labour laws. If
the factory owner's only motivation is making money at the fastest possible
rate, and there is an abundant supply of workers of a similar standard then
labour can essentially be treated as a consumable.

------
liedra
I want to know what happened! Did they stay? Has EA's approach changed?

I'm hoping no, and yes, in that order. Anyone have any more recent experience
in EA's "sweatshops"?

~~~
matthew-wegner
There was a settlement: <http://www.gamasutra.com/php-
bin/news_index.php?story=9051>

~~~
liedra
Ahh, thanks! That's good to hear. I hope it changed a few things there!

------
visava
Even in 2004 why work $40/hr if you are a good programmer. If you like game
programming make one for yourself while relaxing in a boring Big Corporation.

~~~
liedra
A lot of good programmers are not good graphics designers or good artists or
marketers but want to get into the games industry because they like the idea
of working on games. There are (in Australia at least) even entire bachelors
degree streams on game programming (for more complicated games that require
lots of people), so it would probably seem natural to those graduates to seek
employment there too, since they really have specialised in game programming.

Like someone mentioned above, it's a glamour job, kinda like working in the
film industry. You'd be surprised what people will do to "get in".

~~~
_delirium
Yeah, I've talked to people in the game industry about where they see their
careers going, and the idea of leaving it _entirely_ to go work at some
"normal" software job is almost horrifying to many: give up their dream of
making games, and settle for being in the credits to like, Microsoft Office
2013, or working on a search engine at Google or something?

The "plan B" seems almost invariably to be to accumulate enough
money/connections to start an indie-game studio, at least a ramen-profitable
one--- much more often than a plan-B of working a "normal" programming job,
anyway. Partly this might be because many of the game programmers _really_
want to be game designers, and hope to work their way up to that. From that
perspective, moving from game programming to "normal" programming is sort of a
step in the wrong direction, since it's even further from game design than
game programming is.

~~~
m0tive
I have to agree, that's the way I see it. I'm just finishing a computer
animation / games programming degree and I'm about to start looking for work.

The only other thing I'd add, from my point of view, is my games (and
graphics) programming skills and training have always seemed completely
separate to traditional software development. For instance, there is a
computer software course at my university but it's in a different department
(in engineering, mine is in 'media').

I think, at least from the point of view of a graduate, traditional and games
programming seem like two different industries...

~~~
enneff
"The only other thing I'd add, from my point of view, is my games (and
graphics) programming skills and training have always seemed completely
separate to traditional software development"

What kind of programming role do you think you'd have in a team?

I ask because, as a generalist programmer, I think that I could write you any
kind of program, including a game engine, at a professional level. I'm just
wondering what the difference between my training and yours is.

~~~
m0tive
What I said below:

> [I had] a lack of formal education in software development. I've had quite a
> lot of programming lectures but everything beyond C++ inheritance has been
> off my own back.

I think the more I've learnt, the more I'm coming to a similar opinion that I
could probably write any kind of program I got asked to.

In film effects, I'd probably end up working within an R&D or pipeline
department. In games, maybe working on the engine? In true though, I've a very
poor knowledge or the structure of a software or games team (though I know
most of the inner workings of film effects).

I suppose I label myself as games / graphics programmer because I've always
been making/learning about games or effects...

------
thecircusb0y
Going to work overtired is the same as going to work drunk ->
[http://theweek.com/article/index/202658/going-to-work-
sleepy...](http://theweek.com/article/index/202658/going-to-work-sleepy-as-
bad-as-showing-up-drunk)

EA has grown so large they will "Challenge Everything" in their path that goes
against their profit margin.

However I find it hard to believe its hard for small studios to have success.
If the studio develops a good product and releases it to the masses on the
internet or xbox live arcade, or the number of homebrew scenes, you will get
attention. You just have to make a good product.

IMHO, some of the best games lately are free or not the latest and greatest.
Corporate big wigs are pushing mainstream games into a corner and beating them
a lead pipe for every bit of control over the flow of money and players.
Activision and EA Corporate Big Wigs have fubared Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
2 (tm) and Bad Company 2. Both games will suffer in the long run with lack of
an SDK for the modding community. There is also a lack of dedicated server
files, which remove the option for hosting your own game servers. The
communities have spoken loud, and the developers do here this. Infinity Ward
and Dice have already lost employees because they disagree with EA and
Activision's control and greed.

In the end I am very loyal to the companies which remain respectful to its
fans and work with the people, and not for the money.

Valve, iD, 3dRealms, are just a number of companies that are more concerned
with producing a good game, and sharing the success all around. Love to 3rd
party developers with SDK's, love to the players for not charging massive
amounts of money for DLC, just good old love for developers.

In retrospect, I'm sorry for the abused developers all over. But they have a
choice, and they choose to endure that reality. But some will choose to break
off and make a startup. Valve was created by 2 former Microsoft employees, and
they started small, and look at them now. They have produced games, software,
and contributed to the community with massive amounts of information, and
content to award the player, and the developers (both in house and 3rd party).
Same goes for Epic Megagames, which continue to release Unreal Tournement
games, with updated fresh engines. Id Software will continue to produce the
next Doom and Quake. (Where it all began.) 3dRealms if I remember correctly
has gone under, but I pray to god someone buys the Duke Nukem Forever project
and finishes it soon. To quote Steve Ballmer: "Developers Developers
Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers
Developers Developers"

Now I need to get back to my job... as a developer. [I apologize if I was
unorganized or off topic]

~~~
ido

       However I find it hard to believe its hard for small
       studios to have success. If the studio develops a good 
       product and releases it to the masses on the internet or 
       xbox live arcade, or the number of homebrew scenes, you 
       will get attention. You just have to make a good product.
    

Do you have resources/links to support this rather bold statement?

~~~
thecircusb0y
First thing that comes to mind is James Silva and The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai
-> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dishwasher>

James Silva has won recognition from Microsoft, has co-authored books on XNA
game development. He's another kid that in the middle of no where upstate NY
that did a great job, made a good product and is doing well for himself.

Also if you just look for indie game developers ->
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_indie_game_developers> alot of these
games appear on STEAM (steampowered.com) and are distributed to many customers
successfully for Win/Mac/Linux.

In fact most game developers started out as mod teams. Back in the Quake days,
Team Fortress was made, and now the same people that made that made TF2. Left
4 Dead started out as a mod for HL2, and turned into a full fledged game on
the OrangeBox engine.

Last thing that comes to mind is -> "<http://sandboxgamemaker.com/> which is
another production that has been very successful. My friend who's on the dev
team has had stories come back from teachers in Europe and California that use
this software with kids, and has helped them learn and find passion in their
work.

If it pleases the court, I'd like to end with this. If you wish for me, I ask
for a brief recess to prepare material. :-)

~~~
ido
Sure, there are some successes.

There are also some rock bands that are financially successful.

That doesn't mean it's not hard to find success by starting a rock band or a
small studio as long as you make good music/games.

~~~
thecircusb0y
Man.. I'm sorry if this isn't the response you're looking for, but the only
thing that comes to mind now is that if you enjoy what you do, you'll be more
successful then the person who is only looking for success and not enjoying
what they do. All the people I listed were people that do this out of passion,
and have become successful over time.

I dunno man, I admire them, they don't have a daily job, they have a daily
dream.

Yes there are hard times, but everybody has their own difficulties, and when
there is failure, you learn and try again towards success. I believe any
entrepreneur will tell you that to win, you are going to lose, you are going
to learn, and you will eventually be successful.

~~~
ido
You don't have to convince me in any of that.

All I'm saying is that unfortunately "if you build it they will come" does not
a good business plan make.

You will probably need to market your stuff even if you've produced something
awesome, and it's not particularly easy to find success in the indie-gaming
market in large part _because_ it is attractive to so many other people.

------
whyme
I once had someone ask me I was willing to work overtime in an interview. I
said "It depends....!".

And so it went:

dumb-ass company> What do you mean it depends?

me> Well, if it's a reasonable amount and I am compensated for it, then I'm
game, but otherwise I'm not.

dumb-ass company> We don't pay for overtime, it's expected in our industry to
put in some overtime.

me> That's ok, as long as I can take time in lieu.

dumb-ass company> We don't do that either.

me> Well my priorities are different than yours. I put my family first and my
employment after. So each hour of overtime I would work for you would be an
hour stolen from my family.

dumb-ass company> When you work overtime you do so because having a job lets
you pay for you family. So working overtime and having a job really is putting
your family first - right?

me> Sometimes, but truthfully if I took this job I would only work only long
enough to find a job where I am not required to work uncompensated overtime
and the company has a "families first" value system. However, in reality,
working for you would probably leave me with little to no time to look for
work, so I feel I am better off to pass and invest my time wisely........

\--

You folks working at places like EA are caught in that same cycle: the company
is working you so hard your not able to effectively look for work.

I recommend two options:

1\. Stop working overtime. Show up for regular work hours and let them get mad
at you. Let them threaten you. Let them fire you, but until they fire you
spend your time looking for a better job.

or:

2\. Quit. And understand your sacrifice is an investment. Have confidence in
yourself to succeed. Empower yourself to better both yours' and/or your
family's lives.

If your going to spend the rest of you life being manipulated your life is
going to suck.

Have or Have not!

Live or Live not!

It's up to you! Not your company.

------
mrbgty
I've heard before that EA forces employees to work long hours and for low pay
but this part got me:

"The current mandatory hours are 9am to 10pm -- seven days a week -- with the
occasional Saturday evening off for good behavior (at 6:30pm)"

Saturday evening off for good behavior....

------
josefresco
After reading this and the comments here I can't help but think of the extreme
opposite case of DNF. It's an extreme example but shows the opposite end of
the spectrum. At least EA actually ships games (ducks)

------
caf
Sounds like the workers in the game industry need to unionize.

~~~
dododo
or programmers in general. i'm baffled why this hasn't happened yet.

~~~
enneff
Unions typically protect workers who belong to industries where there are more
employees than there is demand.

Programming is a highly-skilled profession that is constantly in demand. We
don't need protection because companies compete for the good ones, not the
reverse.

------
earl
Wow. How on earth do these people not sack up, tell their boss to diaf, and
walk out the door? Because honestly, if you allow people to use you like a
punk, stop whining when they do. At will employment works both ways.

It's not that I never work on weekends, but when I think it's excessive, and
particularly when it's not due to my own bugs, I just implement a personal
comp time policy. I email my boss and say, "I'm taking a mental health day
because I worked too much this weekend." This has only gotten a negative
response once and replying, "If this is a problem I'll find another job where
it isn't" shit him up. I suggest you all do this. Employment is a two way
street, and if you aren't happy in your situation, _do something about it_.

~~~
chris100
Love it, but it has one problem. Your argument is basically that it's a free
market.

So, assuming the market is bad and jobs are hard to find, is it then ok to
work nights and weekends like the article describes? Or should there be some
kind of limit to "slavery"?

~~~
xenophanes
If it's a free market and "jobs are hard to find", or in other words "the
supply of quality employees is lower than the demand" then it's _the perfect
time to start a business_. You can get a good deal hiring good people. You
don't even need an awesome business strategy, just make reasonable, productive
use of their talents and there's plenty of room for you to come out ahead.

To the extent it's hard to do this -- there aren't many talented,
underutilized people floating around unable to find work -- that's the extent
to which it's not actually hard to find a job.

