[dccwong]

This isn't mine, but I wanted to share it with everyone. I'm sure many of you have seen this by now.

My significant other works for Electronic Arts, and I'm what you might call a disgruntled spouse.

EA's bright and shiny new corporate trademark is "Challenge Everything." Where this applies is not exactly clear. Churning out one licensed football game after another doesn't sound like challenging much of anything to me; it sounds like a money farm. To any EA executive that happens to read this, I have a good challenge for you: how about safe and sane labor practices for the people on whose backs you walk for your millions?

I am retaining some anonymity here because I have no illusions about what the consequences would be for my family if I was explicit. However, I also feel no impetus to shy away from sharing our story, because I know that it is too common to stick out among those of the thousands of engineers, artists, and designers that EA employs.

Our adventures with Electronic Arts began less than a year ago. The small game studio that my partner worked for collapsed as a result of foul play on the part of a big publisher -- another common story. Electronic Arts offered a job, the salary was right and the benefits were good, so my SO took it. I remember that they asked him in one of the interviews: "how do you feel about working long hours?" It's just a part of the game industry -- few studios can avoid a crunch as deadlines loom, so we thought nothing of it. When asked for specifics about what "working long hours" meant, the interviewers coughed and glossed on to the next question; now we know why.

Within weeks production had accelerated into a 'mild' crunch: eight hours six days a week. Not bad. Months remained until any real crunch would start, and the team was told that this "pre-crunch" was to prevent a big crunch toward the end; at this point any other need for a crunch seemed unlikely, as the project was dead on schedule. I don't know how many of the developers bought EA's explanation for the extended hours; we were new and naive so we did. The producers even set a deadline; they gave a specific date for the end of the crunch, which was still months away from the title's shipping date, so it seemed safe. That date came and went. And went, and went. When the next news came it was not about a reprieve; it was another acceleration: twelve hours six days a week, 9am to 10pm.

Weeks passed. Again the producers had given a termination date on this crunch that again they failed. Throughout this period the project remained on schedule. The long hours started to take its toll on the team; people grew irritable and some started to get ill. People dropped out in droves for a couple of days at a time, but then the team seemed to reach equilibrium again and they plowed ahead. The managers stopped even talking about a day when the hours would go back to normal.

Now, it seems, is the "real" crunch, the one that the producers of this title so wisely prepared their team for by running them into the ground ahead of time. The current mandatory hours are 9am to 10pm -- seven days a week -- with the occasional Saturday evening off for good behavior (at 6:30pm). This averages out to an eighty-five hour work week. Complaints that these once more extended hours combined with the team's existing fatigue would result in a greater number of mistakes made and an even greater amount of wasted energy were ignored.

The stress is taking its toll. After a certain number of hours spent working the eyes start to lose focus; after a certain number of weeks with only one day off fatigue starts to accrue and accumulate exponentially. There is a reason why there are two days in a weekend -- bad things happen to one's physical, emotional, and mental health if these days are cut short. The team is rapidly beginning to introduce as many flaws as they are removing.

And the kicker: for the honor of this treatment EA salaried employees receive a) no overtime; b) no compensation time! ('comp' time is the equalization of time off for overtime -- any hours spent during a crunch accrue into days off after the product has shipped); c) no additional sick or vacation leave. The time just goes away. Additionally, EA recently announced that, although in the past they have offered essentially a type of comp time in the form of a few weeks off at the end of a project, they no longer wish to do this, and employees shouldn't expect it. Further, since the production of various games is scattered, there was a concern on the part of the employees that developers would leave one crunch only to join another. EA's response was that they would attempt to minimize this, but would make no guarantees. This is unthinkable; they are pushing the team to individual physical health limits, and literally giving them nothing for it. Comp time is a staple in this industry, but EA as a corporation wishes to "minimize" this reprieve. One would think that the proper way to minimize comp time is to avoid crunch, but this brutal crunch has been on for months, and nary a whisper about any compensation leave, nor indeed of any end of this treatment.

This crunch also differs from crunch time in a smaller studio in that it was not an emergency effort to save a project from failure. Every step of the way, the project remained on schedule. Crunching neither accelerated this nor slowed it down; its effect on the actual product was not measurable. The extended hours were deliberate and planned; the management knew what they were doing as they did it. The love of my life comes home late at night complaining of a headache that will not go away and a chronically upset stomach, and my happy supportive smile is running out.

No one works in the game industry unless they love what they do. No one on that team is interested in producing an inferior product. My heart bleeds for this team precisely BECAUSE they are brilliant, talented individuals out to create something great. They are and were more than willing to work hard for the success of the title. But that good will has only been met with abuse. Amazingly, Electronic Arts was listed #91 on Fortune magazine's "100 Best Companies to Work For" in 2003.

EA's attitude toward this -- which is actually a part of company policy, it now appears -- has been (in an anonymous quotation that I've heard repeated by multiple managers), "If they don't like it, they can work someplace else." Put up or shut up and leave: this is the core of EA's Human Resources policy. The concept of ethics or compassion or even intelligence with regard to getting the most out of one's workforce never enters the equation: if they don't want to sacrifice their lives and their health and their talent so that a multibillion dollar corporation can continue its Godzilla-stomp through the game industry, they can work someplace else.

But can they?

The EA Mambo, paired with other giants such as Vivendi, Sony, and Microsoft, is rapidly either crushing or absorbing the vast majority of the business in game development. A few standalone studios that made their fortunes in previous eras -- Blizzard, Bioware, and Id come to mind -- manage to still survive, but 2004 saw the collapse of dozens of small game studios, no longer able to acquire contracts in the face of rapid and massive consolidation of game publishing companies. This is an epidemic hardly unfamiliar to anyone working in the industry. Though, of course, it is always the option of talent to go outside the industry, perhaps venturing into the booming commercial software development arena. (Read my tired attempt at sarcasm.)

To put some of this in perspective, I myself consider some figures. If EA truly believes that it needs to push its employees this hard -- I actually believe that they don't, and that it is a skewed operations perspective alone that results in the severity of their crunching, coupled with a certain expected amount of the inefficiency involved in running an enterprise as large as theirs -- the solution therefore should be to hire more engineers, or artists, or designers, as the case may be. Never should it be an option to punish one's workforce with ninety hour weeks; in any other industry the company in question would find itself sued out of business so fast its stock wouldn't even have time to tank. In its first weekend, Madden 2005 grossed $65 million. EA's annual revenue is approximately $2.5 billion. This company is not strapped for cash; their labor practices are inexcusable.

The interesting thing about this is an assumption that most of the employees seem to be operating under. Whenever the subject of hours come up, inevitably, it seems, someone mentions 'exemption'. They refer to a California law that supposedly exempts businesses from having to pay overtime to certain 'specialty' employees, including software programmers. This is Senate Bill 88. However, Senate Bill 88 specifically does not apply to the entertainment industry -- television, motion picture, and theater industries are specifically mentioned. Further, even in software, there is a pay minimum on the exemption: those exempt must be paid at least $90,000 annually. I can assure you that the majority of EA employees are in fact not in this pay bracket; ergo, these practices are not only unethical, they are illegal.

I look at our situation and I ask 'us': why do you stay? And the answer is that in all likelihood we won't; and in all likelihood if we had known that this would be the result of working for EA, we would have stayed far away in the first place. But all along the way there were deceptions, there were promises, there were assurances -- there was a big fancy office building with an expensive fish tank -- all of which in the end look like an elaborate scheme to keep a crop of employees on the project just long enough to get it shipped. And then if they need to, they hire in a new batch, fresh and ready to hear more promises that will not be kept; EA's turnover rate in engineering is approximately 50%. This is how EA works. So now we know, now we can move on, right? That seems to be what happens to everyone else. But it's not enough. Because in the end, regardless of what happens with our particular situation, this kind of "business" isn't right, and people need to know about it, which is why I write this today.

If I could get EA CEO Larry Probst on the phone, there are a few things I would ask him. "What's your salary?" would be merely a point of curiosity. The main thing I want to know is, Larry: you do realize what you're doing to your people, right? And you do realize that they ARE people, with physical limits, emotional lives, and families, right? Voices and talents and senses of humor and all that? That when you keep our husbands and wives and children in the office for ninety hours a week, sending them home exhausted and numb and frustrated with their lives, it's not just them you're hurting, but everyone around them, everyone who loves them? When you make your profit calculations and your cost analyses, you know that a great measure of that cost is being paid in raw human dignity, right?

Right?

http://www.livejournal.com/users/ea_...age=1#comments

[DarkAgent]

Holy crap that's a long story.

Anyway, interesting read, didn't know EA were such fuc</>kers. I just wish I knew which game it was they were working on so that I can avoid it. Hope it wasn't goldeneye: rogue agent.

[DeadScreenSky]

Originally Posted by DarkAgent

Anyway, interesting read, didn't know EA were such ****ers. I just wish I knew which game it was they were working on so that I can avoid it. Hope it wasn't goldeneye: rogue agent.

That is all standard EA business policy, and has been for years (read what the lead programmer of C&C Generals has to say about this). The only EA games not developed like that are ones done in their Canadian branches (or potentially through outside developers, like Def Jam to some extent), because Canada has laws that actually protect employees from this kind of abuse. So if Goldeneye isn't designed in Canada, it is the exact same thing. Possibly worse even - Slashdot had a lot of ex-EA employees chiming in about this article, along with ex-devs of other companies, and some of them had even worse situations. Worth a read. And remember that most of the major publishers are like this nowadays, EA is just a little worse. Support independent gaming, support the big guys that aren't monsters to their poor employees, and complain to the companies that do pull this kind of ****.

[redlinefoo]

Originally Posted by DeadScreenSky

That is all standard EA business policy, and has been for years (read what the lead programmer of C&C Generals has to say about this). The only EA games not developed like that are ones done in their Canadian branches (or potentially through outside developers, like Def Jam to some extent), because Canada has laws that actually protect employees from this kind of abuse. So if Goldeneye isn't designed in Canada, it is the exact same thing. Possibly worse even - Slashdot had a lot of ex-EA employees chiming in about this article, along with ex-devs of other companies, and some of them had even worse situations. Worth a read. And remember that most of the major publishers are like this nowadays, EA is just a little worse. Support independent gaming, support the big guys that aren't monsters to their poor employees, and complain to the companies that do pull this kind of ****.

exactly, this has been going on for years, if this is news to you, then where have you been for the past 10 years? I read an article about the development of Sonic going to 3-D back on the Saturn...the creator worked non-stop, and slept under his desk. He almost killed himself, and eventually had to throw in his hat b/c of health issues that wouldn't let him continue. The game was never released, but you can find pics of it online...Overwork is caused by deadlines, and there should never be a deadline on art.

[IFantom]

If call centers are the modern day sweat shops then gaming developers must be the modern day pyramid builders.

[HoboJoe]

*eyes are opened*

So this is why we have so many sh</>it games nowadays...

[Heist]

Damn and the people working at Ubi Soft said they had it hard. And here I was, ready to give the freshly opened EA offices in Montreal a shot after I'm through with school. I'm so boycotting them now.

Well, not really.

[DeadScreenSky]

The Montreal studio should be fine - like I said, Canada has laws preventing this kind of employee abuse. I know the Vancouver studio is better for a fact. (EDIT: Though I am now starting to hear some loud complaints. It is better than their California and Florida studios at least.) Of course, you would still be supporting this ****ing company...

[Heist]

Originally Posted by DeadScreenSky

The Montreal studio should be fine - like I said, Canada has laws preventing this kind of employee abuse. I know the Vancouver studio is better for a fact. Of course, you would still be supporting this ****ing company...

Or, I could be taking it apart from the inside!

[dccwong]

Originally Posted by Heist

Or, I could be taking it apart from the inside!

Here's the actual thread where it all started this morning, lots more where that came from... lots of opinions and lots of disgruntled employees.

[dccwong]

Originally Posted by dccwong

Here's the actual thread where it all started this morning, lots more where that came from... lots of opinions and lots of disgruntled employees.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/ea_...age=1#comments

Oops... forgot the URL. =P

[Ingrin]

Hmmm, and a lawsuiit in the works too...

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/11...s_6112998.html

[seba boi]

Originally Posted by redlinefoo

exactly, this has been going on for years, if this is news to you, then where have you been for the past 10 years? I read an article about the development of Sonic going to 3-D back on the Saturn...the creator worked non-stop, and slept under his desk. He almost killed himself, and eventually had to throw in his hat b/c of health issues that wouldn't let him continue. The game was never released, but you can find pics of it online...Overwork is caused by deadlines, and there should never be a deadline on art.

Whoah... And here I was anxious to apply at the Vancouver EA after I graduate... But thank goodness, they're well off in Vancouver....

[43% burnt]

i avoid ea because they put out so many **** games. now i know that by doing that i wasn't helping an evil company. who'da thunk it?

[DeadScreenSky]

Originally Posted by seba_boi

Whoah... And here I was anxious to apply at the Vancouver EA after I graduate... But thank goodness, they're well off in Vancouver....

There is some debate apparently about how humane working at EA in Vancouver is (especially since there are apparently two studios there). A lot of people say good things, a lot of people say bad things. So be cautious.

[Falion]

Sweet! More justification for my hatred of EA!

[[__fight__]]

now I know why so many game studios are in california

[[__fight__]]

[/thinks more]


So... is this industry not sustainable?

games cost millions of dollars and take years to develop, and cost the end user a pretty penny...

... if EA et al have to double their workforces in order to ease these chrunch times, development costs would skyrocket even more, of course driving the pricepoints of these games to what might be prohibitive to most middle-class users. (don't expect the companies to shrink their profit margins)

Therefore, making the industry more humane might kill it. yet there is no excuse to treat employees this way. So... unsustainable industry.

[DeadScreenSky]

Originally Posted by [__fight__]

Therefore, making the industry more humane might kill it. yet there is no excuse to treat employees this way. So... unsustainable industry.

Nah. Even if the current pseudo-slavery practices still continue, there is an easy fix: boost salaries so they are comparable to Hollywood levels. EA is vastly profitable - sharing some of this profit with their 'real' employees would allow them to retire early. A lot of entertainment industries work more like this, where you work your *** off for a decade or so but make money that corresponds to that. Not the greatest solution, but it would work.

A better solution is even simpler: get some managers who are slightly less stupid and evil. Games don't need to be developed like this, it is strictly the fault of incompetent managers and it just makes game development harder, longer and more expensive. Set realistic deadlines and the lowly employees will be fine. This story even suggests that the crunch time is strictly a maneagerial strategy, and that the game wasn't even behind! Any decent manager understands that overworked employees actually accomplish less real work than well treated employees (you get stuff like two bugs created for every bug fixed). Likewise, throwing huge numbers of people at a problem can also make it take even longer (see the Mythical Man Month). Employees that stay in the industry longer (since they aren't getting worked to death) also allow for greater developmental efficiency - experience benefits all creative industries. You don't see every film actor or director quit Hollywood after only five years because they are overworked. It hurts the process of making entertainment.

[[__fight__]]

Originally Posted by DeadScreenSky

Nah. Even if the current pseudo-slavery practices still continue, there is an easy fix: boost salaries so they are comparable to Hollywood levels. EA is vastly profitable - sharing some of this profit with their 'real' employees would allow them to retire early. A lot of entertainment industries work more like this, where you work your *** off for a decade or so but make money that corresponds to that. Not the greatest solution, but it would work.

A better solution is even simpler: get some managers who are slightly less stupid and evil. Games don't need to be developed like this, it is strictly the fault of incompetent managers and it just makes game development harder, longer and more expensive. Set realistic deadlines and the lowly employees will be fine. This story even suggests that the crunch time is strictly a maneagerial strategy, and that the game wasn't even behind! Any decent manager understands that overworked employees actually accomplish less real work than well treated employees (you get stuff like two bugs created for every bug fixed). Likewise, throwing huge numbers of people at a problem can also make it take even longer (see the Mythical Man Month). Employees that stay in the industry longer (since they aren't getting worked to death) also allow for greater developmental efficiency - experience benefits all creative industries. You don't see every film actor or director quit Hollywood after only five years because they are overworked. It hurts the process of making entertainment.

so what strategy should the managers employ?

paying them more would either cut into EA's profit margin (not gonna happen) or the prices of the products increase. We sure as hell have seen movie ticket prices increase dramatically over the last 10 yrs, but the problem with games is that I just can't see how video game prices can get much higher. They are already very expensive and making them higher only puts them at increased risk of piracy. The middle class just would not be able to regularly buy games if they were to cost 70, 80, 90 dollars....

this is different than movies because even though people pirate movies, nothing equals the experience of sitting in a crowded theatre and watching a film on the big screen, so theatres will for the most part always be pretty safe (its dvd releases that are suffering). Pirated gamese are equal to the legitimate product. The games industry can't afford to increase prices any more. How will they hire/pay more to their employees?

[DeadScreenSky]

Originally Posted by [__fight__]

so what strategy should the managers employ?

Just fire the stupid managers. The real point of the blog entry that started this discussion is that EA doesn't need to treat their employees like this. The game wasn't behind schedule - crunch time wasn't needed. The managers choose to do this **** because they think it will make the employees do more work. It isn't some newly revealed secret that this is complete and utter horse****. Serious software development has been going on for more than half a century now. Basic stuff like Brooks' Law is nearly 30 years old now (a simple summary: "Nine women cannot have a baby in one month".). We have a pretty good idea of specific things that work and don't work in software development (which is all games are after all), and certain game publishers love to ignore this knowledge.

paying them more would either cut into EA's profit margin (not gonna happen) or the prices of the products increase.
...
The games industry can't afford to increase prices any more. How will they hire/pay more to their employees?

EA just had second quarter profits of something like $97 million (second quarter usually isn't all that hot in game sales either, being summer months). They can easily put a little of that back into their employees! (EDIT: That apparently works out to around $27,000 per employee, just for that quarter.) EA can complain all they want that it would cut into their profit margins, but so will class action lawsuits and the inevitable unionization that will follow. Their president didn't need a 3 million dollar salary (including bonuses) last year. (That doesn't include the $30 million he made off stock sales.) This is the same old thing: executives making a fortune off cheating their employees. The fact boils down to this: EA isn't paying their existing employees for real work they are already doing (the exemption thing EA brings up doesn't actually qualify - I doubt 95% of these employees even pull in 2/3 of the $90,000ish salary needed). EA simply has to spend more on its employees, and they will - one way or another.

But a better method is to actually just have smaller teams of happier, more productive employees using more sophisticated developmental models. Huge teams just make the project more complex, and the extra work doesn't compensate for that complexity. Part of the problem this cycle is the PS2's ****ty hardware, which makes better developmental models far more difficult, but middleware and the like still help there.

[SolidChamp]

Originally Posted by dccwong

http://www.livejournal.com/users/ea_...age=1#comments

Oops... forgot the URL. =P

That link must be to a closed/passworded location, a game developers forum of sorts? Cause thats the first time I've ever seen a forum where so many game developers are posting.

This is absolutely horrendous! I can't believe this is common knowledge for most gamers out there! I had no idea this was going on. That's quite an amazing letter, very powerful and a real eye-opener! It's funny, because some of the titles EA has been turning out as of late haven't been up to par with what they are famous for. NHL 2005 was a bit of a joke, ESPN NHL 2K5 put it to shame. And as good as Madden 2005 is (and as popular as it is), it's not really the best football game on the market. And my earlier claims about the new Goldeneye having serious potential for being an amazing online multiplayer experience might go right down the tubes.

Hey, chances are, the reason for the last console version of Medal Of Honour (Rising Sun) turning out so badly (really badly, and I BOUGHT THAT PIECE OF CRAP!) was because of the stress put on the team. Think of it, Medal Of Honour is one of EA's flagship series, and they wanted to get the game out so fast, that it ended up being bad!

This is horrible. I hope things change...this letter seems to be causing quite a stir. I mean, to get your letter mentioned on Gamespot is quite a thing. That means that a SERIOUS gaming community is taking notice.

[[__fight__]]

Originally Posted by SolidChamp

That link must be to a closed/passworded location, a game developers forum of sorts? Cause thats the first time I've ever seen a forum where so many game developers are posting.

nope

this thing just totally caught fire yesterday

it's was posted and linked all over the internet and within hours, caught the attention of Gamespot and other big sites...


1400 responses in the first 24 hours. The power of the internet

[mephea]

This isn't really a surprise to me, most corporations are like this. They will make the employee suffer so the stockholders get rich, so the CEO can finish paying for his yacht, etc, etc.

I think this is a shame though, because, ya know, for a minute you woudl think "but nothing bad could come out of the video game industry, right?'

[[__fight__]]

Originally Posted by mephea

This isn't really a surprise to me, most corporations are like this. They will make the employee suffer so the stockholders get rich, so the CEO can finish paying for his yacht, etc, etc.

yeah but there are supposed to be laws to protect people

[Drummers02]

Fu</>ck Their Lives!!

[mephea]

Originally Posted by [__fight__]

yeah but there are supposed to be laws to protect people

unfortunately money is above the law -_-

[taran72]

Great post...someone said this before, and I will elaborate:

Big companies, small companies, public and even private:
They will screw you on a whim.

I know everyone says "Duh", but I'm saying this from direct and indirect experience: They will screw you for a dime, for stockholders, and/or for little to no reason whatsoever. All that corruption and greed you read about in the papers that you think are extreme cases? not really.

None of these executives at these companies are underpaid. They are all earing 10-20 times what you the average programmer, developer, cashier, whoever is earning. They are so out of touch, and care little about your stressful working conditions, long hours, or money woes. They read the same articles about corruption and greed that you and I read, and they sleep well at night. If you cut their taxes or give them breaks, that money will be deposited almost directly into their pockets, NOT handed down to the people that actually do the work.

The only way you can hurt them is lawsuits like the one mentioned in Gamespy. Damaging the image of the company and making them pay lawyers is the only way you can punish them. Contrary to what you might think, stealing office supplies does not work. It just means they layoff the supply clerk and outsource the job.

[[__fight__]]

Originally Posted by mephea

unfortunately money is above the law -_-

not in civilized countries its not


WELL I'm not saying that this type of thing doesn't happen in Canada or Sweden or New Zealand, but its not as easy(or legal) to get away with it as it in the US, especially the more republican states

that california "exemption" law is outrageous!

[patey]

That's a really sad story. I'm interesting in seeing how far this goes.