Here's why you should be glad to be an Indie. The EA Story.

[Jason Chong]

"EA: The Human Story
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?" Continued at link below ....

http://www.livejournal.com/users/ea_spouse/274.html

(MODERATOR NOTE : Please don't repost the entire text of articles if there is a link to the original source. There could be copyright issues in some cases.)

[Axeman]

There was a documentary made recently in which the question was asked 'Since a corporation has many of the same legal rights as a person, what type of personality does the average corporation appear to have based on the way it conducts itself.'

The conclusion put forward in the documentary was that the average corporation has the personality of a psychopath.

Your description of EA's behaviour certainly seems to give that idea some credence, in their case at least.

[princec]

Larry isn't doing anything to his people. They bring this upon themselves. No-one is forced to work for anyone. I'd have left after a week of that.

Cas :)

[BongPig]

A bit difficult Cas if you dont feel confident of getting another job. Either way, a horrible situation that needs a revolution.
The only real answer would be for the whole team, right in the middle of a crucial 'crunch', to use their combined power and threaten to leave. Its easy for EA to replace a whole team between projects, but impossible to do it mid-development.
The difficult question is, how do you unite a group of broken, tired individuals to stand up and tell the Man to feck off?

In the UK, we used to have Unions for this, but our previous governments soon put an end to that. :(

Jason, I feel for your other half. I hope it works out for them somehow.
EDIT. Ok, NOT Jasons other half! :) Somebody elses. Ill pray for them instead!

[princec]

I'm saying you don't need to unite. Just walk. Never be afraid to just walk. If you're so important to your employer he needs you there 90 hours a week you're important enough for him to take serious notice of the problem. <edit>Oh, and if your employer just goes, "Fine, f*ck off then and don't come back" that'll give you exactly the dose of cold water reality about exactly who and what you were pouring your heart and soul into.

Never take shit from anyone. You are their equal. You are doing them a favour working for them; they are doing you a favour giving you some money.

If Stevey P. were here I have a feeling he'd say the same to you, and then you'd listen :)

Cas :)

[Jason Chong]

HOLD YOUR HORSES. That's not my other half. I just copy/paste the article from the blog site.

Just a disclaimer, I just copy/paste those articles, none of those are my words!

[BongPig]

But Cas, if EA (and other similars) are steadly taking over all the devs, it wont be long till all games industry jobs in the US are like this.
So to walk away, is like walking away from the whole buisness, as other jobs are likely to be the same.
How many of us here really could start again and learn a new trade? I certainly am too old for that now.
So the choice (assuming you stay in games) will eventually become whether to be independent or work for somebody like EA.
Its a crap choice.

[tolik]

I have quite an experience at working at similar company in the distant past. Expectations, promises, change of the entire pissed off management by higher level management, replacement of the leads by religious jerks who are trusted by higher management, relocation of office to change the working environment to refresh some people, etc etc.

Overtimes were mostly unpayed, people enjoyed the development for the first year and this was the most rewarding, but when everbody understood "there's no game, there's art and engines", everybody got totally pissed off. However higher management still was able to convince some of the best workers with even more expectations.

After all, everybody was finally pissed off, some people got departed from country, more outsiders came to the project and fired other people "which don't understand anything".

This hell continued for couple of years until the boss decided to move to another country and the last day before leaving gave contracts to everybody. He was explaining that country is really easy to live in, etc etc, more and more expectations. Some people trusted him and got fooled again. Working overtimes at the shittiest price in another country where they don't have money to live with...


It all sure collapsed after all, but the story isn't finished, as I know.


I was able to stay out of this total mess, cause I was aware of such situations. I had a different stable project (again, underbudgeted and underestimated) and I gained a lot of experience from the overall stupidity of the company with more than 20 employees and like 50 people in overall flow rotation.


Some people are jerks, you should know that.

[cliffski]

Larry isn't doing anything to his people. They bring this upon themselves. No-one is forced to work for anyone. I'd have left after a week of that.

Cas :)


I wouldnt take a whole week of that...
seriously. If someone wants to pay me for 40 hours and tells me to work 60, it just proves they cant do basic math. This is their problem not mine. They can fire me, and I'll see them in court.

[ggambett]

There was a documentary made recently in which the question was asked [...]
That's "The Corporation", by Michael Moore. Very interesting. It was aired even in this part of the world (by HBO I think)

[princec]

Every avenue EA close off from themselves with poor working conditions is another avenue opened up to a competitor. They're only shooting themselves in the foot. Besides, one could always emigrate if one feels so inadequate that one cannot possibly find another job in the industry (or start a business). It's illegal in the UK to work more than 48hrs a week I believe.

Cas :)

[princec]

Yes, we understand this :D But we have to reply to someone!

Cas :)

[EpicBoy]

I'm saying you don't need to unite. Just walk. Never be afraid to just walk. If you're so important to your employer he needs you there 90 hours a week you're important enough for him to take serious notice of the problem.
But that's the problem ... you're not important. If you won't work 90 hours a week, someone else will. Don't like it? Get out.

[EpicBoy]

Oh, and all of this "I would walk" and 'I'd take them to court" talk is all fine and well but it doesn't really fly for a guy who's barely making ends meet and is trying to support a wife and kids.

Walking isn't an option for him.

[Bluecat]

The problem with walking if you feel you are being exploited is that in the game industry there are a ton of other people out there who would take your job in a heartbeat. Thus you have no bargaining power.

This is being exacerbated by the number of computer game colleges that are opening their doors. Advertising that you can earn a good living making games. Getting a job in the game industry is already very competitive. Now there will be hundreds more graduates going for it. It's just grist for the mill.

I've never been much of a union person. I've only ever had a ticket during a couple of temp jobs when I was studying. And I've seen some abuses of union power. But in this case, I truely believe that the only way that employees in the mainstream game industry are going to get a fair shake is to unionize. Currently the employers hold all the cards, that is (generally) always going to lead to exploitation.

[Bluecat]

Just saw this: Gamespot Story (http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/11/11/news_6112998.html)

Looks like the employees are serious. They are taking a class action against EA.

[Mickey Crocker]

"The Corporation" was not by Michael Moore, it was by Joel Bakan and Harold Crooks. I just did a search because I thought it was odd the Michael did a documentary lately that I didn't know about.

[Mickey Crocker]

sorry, my bad...

just noticed that Michael Moore is a part of the cast... But it isn't his movie. It was a film by Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott & Joel Bakan. Which doesn't really matter all that much :p ...anyway...

[princec]

Exactly. And here in the UK if they tried to sack you, you'd drag them through a very nasty industrial tribunal, and be fairly certain of winning. Then if you're wise you'll go contract.

Cas :)

[Air]

I agree with one of the earlier posts stating that Corporations can be linked to personal behavior patterns. I think the corporate mandates for long hours is more of a control issue than a production issue. The leaders want to maintain an iron fist level of control and fear set into their employees. Overworked and fearful employees are less likely to band together and stand up for their rights, because they're tired, beat-down, and feel far less empowered as a whole.

Production can't really be the reason for overworking, since it's proven time and again that production and quality tend to deminish past 40-50 hrs a week, and significantly deminish past 70-80 hrs a week. Corporations know this, but I don't think production quality is as important to them as maintaining lower wages through employee control & intimidation. I think the way they see it is that the most important department by far of almost all the large game studios is the marketing dept. A crappy game can be marketed for a good profit, but a great game with no marketing likely won't sell the sort of #'s those big corps are gunning for anyways.

Of course the game developers are still imporant. EA needs something to market, after all. But as long as gamedev remains a labor of love, it will be the bastard child of constant corporate control attempts, much like the music industry has been for decades now. They know that most of their employees aren't working for a paycheck alone, that they want to keep their jobs, and corporations will play that hand for as long as we allow them to.

That's just good capitalism folks.

[Bluecat]

Exactly. And here in the UK if they tried to sack you, you'd drag them through a very nasty industrial tribunal, and be fairly certain of winning. Then if you're wise you'll go contract.

Cas :)

Same in Australia. We have some reasonably tough labor laws. An employer cannot just arbitrarily sack an employee. There has to be a good reason, otherwise the employee can take advantage of the unfair dismissal laws.

[Jason Chong]

I think EA needs to be careful they don't drive their staff to the brink of insanity.

I've read news about USA where employees were so pissed off and mad they brought shotguns into the workplace and starts shooting at his managers and all that.

I hope it doesn't have to go to this far since you can easily get guns in USA.

[Coyote]

What does "Just Walking" do for you?

It puts you out on the street, inelligable for unemployment because you quit. You probably can't FIND a new job before you walk because you are working 60+ hours a week. So you are trading the demons you know for the demons you don't know. For a lot of these young guys (the games biz takes them young), who have uprooted themselves and their families to move to a high-cost-of-living area, that's a really fearful situation, and they probably DON'T have much in savings to survive on. They are between a rock and a hard place, and they have friends in the workplace they don't want to let down.

Yeah - if you walked into the situation and found out immediately that you were required to work 60 hours a week or MORE for the next nine months, and then probably no break before doing it again on the next project, you'd leave immediately. No problem. But it's like the old saw about how you boil a live frog: if you drop them into hot water immediately, they'll jump out, but if you drop them in cool water and gradually raise the heat, they'll stay there until they die.

And do these companies care? Do you hurt them one bit? No - you are mainly hurting coworkers who then are required to make up for your absence. But in the short term, you are probably having ZERO effect on the sales numbers of that game, so who cares?

It's an ugly, ugly situation. Caused by management that is either crooked or incompetent (or both). I think getting a MAJOR legal smackdown like this is probably the best, fastest way for the industry to change its ways. My big fear is that the companies will, instead of adopting humane practices, surround themselves with legal protection and go right back to their destructive ways.

[Nutter2000]

Fortunately, in the UK, you can generally rely on getting state handouts if you're unemployed.

Unfortunately, so can every scum sucking layabout who can't be arsed to work and wants to live a life of luxury from state benifits (sadly they usually manage it)

[Bluecat]

The other thing you can do, aside from walking, is to "work to rule." Management aren't going to block your way from leaving after a eight or ten hour day. If they sack you, then you haven't quit and should be eligible for unemployment. If you keep records, it might help should you exercise your legal options.

[papillon]

Unfortunately, so can every scum sucking layabout who can't be arsed to work and wants to live a life of luxury from state benifits


No, not every scum-sucking layabout. Just those of you that were born here. :)

(At least, I think I'm ineligible. It doesn't really matter since I'm not the sort to ask for help until fairly desperate, and at the moment someone is still putting a roof over my head. Would be nice if someone would give me a JOB, though. Haven't worked (other than for myself) for years...)

[Nutter2000]

If you've lived in the UK for more than 3 years then I think you're probably elegible or just claim to be a Middle Eastern terrorist fleeing from a democratic regime change caused by our own government that'll do it every time :p

But anyway, enough UK politics ;)

Back on topic....
The trouble with Work to Rule in the industry is that most employment contracts within the industry usually specifically state something along the lines of the management may ask you at anytime to do unpaid overtime, hence working to rule is unfortunately what they're doing :(

[GameStudioD]

I know a few former employees and soon to be former employees of the big game company in Redwood City. I was a tester for them back in high school. I would not give this company a shred of sympathy. They know exactly what they are putting their employees through and the executives encourage it. Their cult-like atmosphere breeds bad management and disgruntled employees. This company is exceptionally bad, easily the worst company you can work for. Hopefully this negative publicity will show people the real face of this company and the exploitation of software engineers throughout the whole industry.

[papillon]

Not been 3 years yet. :)

(The closest I come to knowing someone in the industry is a temp who did testing on Halo 2 and was not happy about being asked to do crunch hours when all reports submitted came back marked 'Won't Fix' anyway... But temping there is a whole story unto itself :) )

[yanuart]

Hmm.. yeah.. the thing is, if I'm not mistaken (I read alot of business/management journal) there's a big differential working/labour culture between Europe and US.

In most of the countries in Europe which the backbone of the industry is a middle size corporates/company, there are some culture involving working appraisals, wage, promotion, etc that needs a "labour union" and in US the culture that are totally different.

Take promotion for example :
in Europe, seniority take a big part in employee's promotion/wage while in US promotion is judged using employee's performance.
So of course unions is needed in those European countries to make sure that companies do things correctly based on those rules (you won't hear a guy who has worked for 20 yrs get sacked for nothing in UK)
instead in US most employees just need to perform better and better to get more incentive and better position, knowing that bad performance will lead to the end of the job and good performance will lead to a better position.
So it's more like a "jungle law" in which both employee and employers understand the consequences.

There's a statistic that says labours in US don't care about union and think unions is a waste of time. Of course there's always downside and upside to those cultures and what we see in this story is the downside seen from the loser's pov.

I think gamedev is a cutthroat business, the difficulty of making games these days in terms of software is equal to making any software (for. ex Windows) but windows is developed for many yearsss and even it isn't bug free and you know what?? microsoft only launched 1 OS product in years or so while EA needs to produce like dozen of titles every years.

for me, personally, I come to the point where I think that those corporates jerks knows nothing bout software engineering when they push a project up your 4ss.. the money isn't worth it my friend unless ur in somekinda gambling debts.

That's why I become an indie, hey, I'm not a lazy person nor I hate working under pressure but I don't wanna do it for the rest of my pathetic life, sure I still do freelance work and of course i still meet those crunch time every now n then (it's inevitable in the business) but I make sure they pay every single cents worth of my pain.

ps : you feel sorry for that guy in EA, how bout this : a friend of mine works at a software company in japan where working hour is 9 am - 2 am and no weekends and yet they don't complain about it :D Those japs are marvelous !!!

[cliffski]

working to rule is the right idea. If i was told to work those kind of hours I just go home on time. sure they can sack me but for what? their incompetence? its not my fault they cant schedule.
and what else can they do? physically stop you leaving the office?
nope. The problem is that many people in gamedev dont know their rights, or are afraid to exercise them.
what makes me laugh is industry people telling you that you are doomed as an indie. they hate the idea people could leave and make their own games. it terrifies them.

[arcadetown]

Seems pretty typical although these hours seem possibly more excessive than others. Typical story, crazy producer develops crazy schedule based upon crazy demands by top brass to meet some crazy projections they gave out to wall street. Then to top it off, once the crunch is over you could be cast out on the streets until the next project comes into the pipeline. So instead of that, you go indie and do it to yourself and work the crazy hours anyhow because your boss (you) is crazy :p

[the2bears]

Absolutely should one walk away... maybe not that instant. Always easy to do with another job waiting. But this is either the USA, Canada, or Europe. Finding something else is not that bad for a quality individual. How good is it for your family to work 80 hours a week and come home ready to lose your temper? Curious (I speak generally here) for some to encourage quitting to become a full-time indie yet thinking "just quitting" is different or more difficult in this case.

That said, it's always easy to give advice. I haven't been in this situation.

Bill

[EpicBoy]

for what? their incompetence? its not my fault they cant schedule.
and what else can they do? physically stop you leaving the office?
nope. The problem is that many people in gamedev dont know their rights, or are afraid to exercise them.
Great idea! And how does he feed/clothe/shelter his wife and kids now? Well, that doesn't matter I guess, he did the right thing and that's all that matters!

...except for the fact that the company hired someone the next day to replace him and has forgotten he ever existed. Only one side of the equation loses in this scenario and it's not the company.

[Black Hydra]

Ouch.

I guess that means no complaining from anyone about the difficulty of indie dev. for awhile.

@Axeman - Yeah I actually watched that documentary. I believe it said that a corporation has every single personality trait that elludes to being a sociopath.

[BongPig]

Exactly right EpicBoy. If everybody leaves, they get replaced, and nothing changes. Theres always going to be a steady stream of fresh students desperate to get into the industry. Its like a kind of intensive farming!
Employees should get together, stay in thier jobs, and make a stand.

That Gamespot article shows there is some movement happening. Maybe its not so hopeless.

[Bluecat]

Exactly right EpicBoy. If everybody leaves, they get replaced, and nothing changes. Theres always going to be a steady stream of fresh students desperate to get into the industry. Its like a kind of intensive farming!
Employees should get together, stay in thier jobs, and make a stand.


I agree completely. But leaving does have an effect too. It has several effects actually.

If key employees decide to leave at a critical point in development there is nothing the company can do to overcome the delay that this will cause.

Even having to replace a single employee with a new developer from outside the company will cost a delay. It always takes time to get them up to speed on the culture, with training, and with understanding the code. Can you imagine the cumulative effect of several employees deciding that they've had enough?

Even after all that, there is the cost of replacing an employee. Or maybe I should put it as the cost of losing an employee. My company has estimated that it costs between twenty five and one hundred thousand dollars when they lose an employee. (This is a technical person). First there is the lost accumulated knowledge, then there is the cost of a HR person arranging interviews, doing the interviews, and other associated paperwork, legal fees and so on. There is also a cost associated with not having someone there to do the work that needs to be done (someone else has to do it.) Then as I mentioned there is the cost of retraining.

I would imagine that a five million dollar game that loses five people to burnout during development would save maybe ten percent of cost by having the good conditions to keep those developers. I don't know about you, but I think that is a significant saving to strive for.

All of this affects the companies bottom line. But noone seems to realise that, least of all the shareholders. Maybe if they did, shareholders of companies like EA would see how counterproductive it is to have employees coming in, burning out, and leaving and do something about it.

[EpicBoy]

Well, as someone else said on a different messageboard, the problem here is that what EA does - works. You really can't argue with 6 billion dollars in cash in the bank.

Yeah, it sucks, and it needs to change for the good of us all - but EA has little or no reason to change what they're doing. It's working.

[Bluecat]

Well, as someone else said on a different messageboard, the problem here is that what EA does - works. You really can't argue with 6 billion dollars in cash in the bank.

I don't know. I think maybe I can argue against that! ;)

Six billion dollars is certainly a big argument. But has that six billion come from their exploitation of their employees, or has it come from other successful business practices?

[dan]

I think so too. There are many types of companies where burning talented people out in 2-5 years would ultimately lead to lesser profits, but game development isn't one of them.

Tech people grow up playing games and it's a dream for many of them to get in the biz. You've got a never ending supply coming out of college. Work everybody 60+ hour weeks all the time. So what if they burn out in in a few years? That just means that you're not paying into retirement. Win-win.

Some programmers are going to have to wise up and unionize.

[EpicBoy]

But has that six billion come from their exploitation of their employees, or has it come from other successful business practices?
Again, it's not a matter of what's right or what's fair ... it works. That was his point.

For the record, I don't agree with their practices - I'm just pointing out that their current strategy is making them billions. They have no reason to change.

[Bluecat]

- I'm just pointing out that their current strategy is making them billions. They have no reason to change.

Ok. I see what you're saying. Yes, I agree with that.

The only way they will change is if they are forced to. There are three ways that can happen.

1. Consumer Pressure. Customers decide to stop buying goods made under exploitative conditions. (We can all see how well that's worked with goods made in foreign sweatshops.)

2. Government Regulation. Labor laws get toughened by the government to prevent these abuses. That's pretty unlikely given the snuggly relationship goverments have to big business.

3. Employee Action. Either through class action lawsuits or unionisation. An ant can't eat an elephant, but a billion ants can strip him to the bone in seconds. :p

[Dan MacDonald]

I havn't bought an EA game since they canceled UO2 and shut down Origin systems. The funny part, is I really havn't had to sacrifice any thing. There havn't been any EA game I really wanted to play ;)

[EpicBoy]

Probably the thing that's going to bring around change is information. Developers tell other developers that EA is evil and they shouldn't take that job offer and over time, the message gets around. It's already started and once it reaches a certain level of penetration, they'll be screwed and have to make a change or they won't attract any more decent talent.

[cliffski]

This happens already. I know of at least 1 guy who was at one stage considering jumping ship to EA but has changed his mind precisely because of this kind of thing.

[Bluecat]

But isn't that already happening?

It appears that they are getting the top talent by acquiring developers, but since so many trained and experience developers are burning out and leaving the industry they are only getting relatively inexperienced developers.

[EpicBoy]

It's starting, but it's not at a level where it hurts them yet. People still accept job offers from them in ignorance of what they're getting into. The word needs to be spread more...

[DavidRM]

Just a couple weeks ago, when I was speaking to a group of college students, I tried to describe to them "the tyranny of the paycheck."

The EA spouse blog describes it perfectly.

The US isn't the most labor-friendly nation (especially under pro-corporate Republican rule), but even here the consequences of losing your job aren't that severe. Especially if you let go/fired. If you're let go or fired, you are eligible for unemployment benefits for (I think) 13 weeks. Every state has programs for the unemployed. It's not easy being unemployed and between jobs. But it's not impossible, and very seldom fatal.

So my advice to anyone in the US who thinks their job/boss is mistreating them is to stand up for themselves. What's the worst that can happen? You get fired? So what? So long as you arrived on time (according to federal labor laws), left on time, did the work you were paid for, and so on, losing your job isn't a strike against you. And if, like EA Spouse, you already live in "Game Development Central", you'll probably need only 4-6 weeks to line up another gig.

There's also a bit of stigma about having been fired. As if that reflects on them personally, and makes them less of a person. But, just like in negotiating where no deal is preferable to a bad deal, getting fired from a place like that is probably the best possible option.

You know what scares US workers the most about losing (or quitting) their job? It's not being unable to feed their families, or pay their bills. It's seeing a dip in their standard of living.

Once we ratchet ourselves up to a particular level (usually only a perceived improvement, and most often achieved by digging further into debt), we get almost violent towards anything that might force us to step back to where we were. We resist such changes because we've invested too much of ourselves in our new or current status. Often, if we just take a slight step back and reconsider, we can see a much better way forward than the path we've been following. But too many of us refuse to do that. We hold on more tightly to the very thing that's making us miserable.

-David

[Chris Evans]

So instead of that, you go indie and do it to yourself and work the crazy hours anyhow because your boss (you) is crazy :p

Ha, seriously that really is the irony of it. But the upside is that it's ultimately your choice and if you really need to take a few days off, so you don't burn out, you're free to do it.

Now the challenge is actually convincing yourself to take a few days off...

[mahlzeit]

Working long hours for yourself is not nearly as crazy as working long hours (or even normal hours) for someone else.

[vjvj]

Mahlzeit reminds me of a particular point. The "labor of love" mentality applies to any creative industry; people in the movie industry are known for working long hours as well.

The problem is that in reality, it never works that way in games. I worked at two very large game publishers and I can assure you that it was more along the lines of all the "labor" going to the developer and all the "love" going to the producer. I recall countless extra hours being put in just because our hollywood-wannabe producer wanted to add magic squirrels or something to our game, ignoring such important concepts as "game mechanics" or "implementation details".

So one of the key hurdles for all of us is to realize that the only true labor of love worth spending extra hours on is the project that belongs to US and that we have autonomy over. Out of the six retail games I worked on, the only one I ever gave a shit about was my first indie game. And I'll never go back.

I imagine most of us here feel that way, but perhaps we could do more to propogate this feeling amongst our peers?

[merovingian]

That woman needs a cold (virtual) slap in the face. What kind of spouse would allow their partner to suffer like that? Yeah, it's a great rant, but it's also very old news. She needs to get a job or they need to ratchet down their lifestyle as David so eloquently expressed.

Letting her husband endure that crap ultimately makes her as bad as EA in my book. Let's see where this goes.

[Dan MacDonald]

If you read the comments you might understand a bit better. First of all, if you work on a team with 20 other guys and you all work the same crappy hours. You bond together, you hate how much you have to work and how stupid your managers are, but this is what also unites you with your peers. You know if you quit, they would just have to work more to pick up the slack, because there's no way for EA to hire someone else. If you've worked long and hard on a team, it's really hard to leave all your friends to suffer while you take the easy way out.

Also, when you leave midway through development your name does not get put on the credits of the game. As retarded as this sounds, the industry puts a very heavy weight on shipped titles. To work that long and hard on a major title only to receive 0 credit for it would truly suck. So you work until the project ships and then quit.

[KNau]

Walking out is going to be rough no matter how you do it, especially with the increasingly Orwellian nature of some employment contracts.

Obviously you can forget about any kind of positive work reference. You also can't tell anyone why you left. Sony, Nintendo, Blizzard, Naughty Dog, Epic, Rockstar et al. employ the same work philosophy and you will be viewed as a non-team player if they found out (even though all the executives get to go home at 5 o'clock).

Any of the work you produced is exclusively owned by your employer and fall under their non-disclosure agreements so you can't use them in your portfolio without permission.

Companies like Ubisoft also have loosely defined "non-competition" clauses that can prevent you from working in the industry if it can be proven that you would be working on a similar project for a competing company.

I think the only way around the sh*tstorm is to not get involved in the first place.

Unfortunately, young people are lead to believe there's some sort of "qualification" required to start your own development company, which isn't true. When you are a student, living at home is actually the best time to start.

I wish I hadn't wasted so much time and money going the "traditional route" when I could have just purchased a copy of Visual Basic, Blitz Basic or whatever, spent a couple months teaching myself and then had my own finished game to sell.

I could have started this whole thing when I was 19 with no expenses, instead of now at 31 when I have rent, taxes, bills and dependants to deal with.

I think that's the message that needs to get out there. If more and more young people "go indie" then maybe some changes will happen within the studios to try and attract talent. But most likely they will just ship their development costs overseas, which they're already starting to do.

Like that documentary "The Corporation" said, the one thing not endemic to the corporate structure is a conscience

[merovingian]

If you read the comments you might understand a bit better. First of all, if you work on a team with 20 other guys and you all work the same crappy hours. You bond together, you hate how much you have to work and how stupid your managers are, but this is what also unites you with your peers. You know if you quit, they would just have to work more to pick up the slack, because there's no way for EA to hire someone else. If you've worked long and hard on a team, it's really hard to leave all your friends to suffer while you take the easy way out.

Just because your friend jumps off a cliff or goes to a strip club is no reason to follow him. Why are men, as a group, such lemmings?

So do the lemmings a favor, blaze a trail for them out of the hellhole, be a hero, not a zero.

[vjvj]

I think that's the message that needs to get out there. If more and more young people "go indie" then maybe some changes will happen...

Ah, and I suppose this is where the catch 22 rears its ugly head. One of the reasons I don't fully regret my dev experience is because I was fortunate enough to land a very experienced team. I learned a lot about building industrial strength codebases, how to manage conflicting personalities within a team, and most importantly how to ship a product on time... All skills I'm pretty sure I would have completely ignored if I had went straight to indie. So I consider the 100 hour work weeks for that first 2 1/2 years worth it.

Of course, mileage may vary on all of these things. Some people are born more responsible than I am, and some people start with much less disciplined teams. All the same, I think my advice to a young kid would be to try and get a couple shipped titles on their resume and then GET OUT OF THERE :D

[jaggu]

Oh, and all of this "I would walk" and 'I'd take them to court" talk is all fine and well but it doesn't really fly for a guy who's barely making ends meet and is trying to support a wife and kids.

Ah. Does he goto work after spending a cold night on the streets? Food handed out by passing people? Come on it isnt that bad. If 'making ends meet' means running a fancy car and a swanky house and sucking up to a 'lifestyle', I have no mercy for that guy. He surely cant walk. I say he deserves to face the sh*t he faces.

[princec]

The problem with walking if you feel you are being exploited is that in the game industry there are a ton of other people out there who would take your job in a heartbeat. Thus you have no bargaining power.
So what? Let the mugs do it. If you really, really, want to work on computer games - do it in your own time in the evening, and take the l33t skillz to an ordinary programming job.

For some reason everyone's under the impression that good programmers are 2 a penny. In my experience, less than 5% of the population is actually intelligent enough to program a computer, and less than 10% of those want to be a programmer. And less than 10% of those are actually any good at it. Finding a good programmer is like finding a little sack of gold on the pavement.

Now I'm the boss of a team and have the responsibility of hiring and firing I have to say that for the last 10 years I've had to put up with mediocrity, incompetence, ego, and laziness. Finally I've found and built a team and for the first time in my career I can actually trust these guys to get on with something that I tell them to do.

How do you think our working day pans out?

10.30am Arrive at work.
10.31am Start surfing whilst drinking copious amounts of coffee
11.00am Maybe do a bit of coding or browse Bugzilla
12.00pm Lunch and Soldat for 30 minutes to an hour, or perhaps the pub
1.00pm Resume coding for a bit
2.00pm The guys go off and play table football for a bit
3.00pm Robin's playlist finally finishes and we can put some decent music on
4.00pm More table football
5.30pm - 6.00pm Home

I encourage them to play table football and Soldat and go to the pub. I encourage them to work absolutely no more than 8hrs in a day unless it's a dire emergency. I've had them for a year now, on the most pitiful salary this side of a supermarket checkout, and they love it here. They'll never leave me in the shit. And I'm determined to keep them because for once I've actually found someone capable of doing the job.

Cas :)

[EpicBoy]

If 'making ends meet' means running a fancy car and a swanky house and sucking up to a 'lifestyle', I have no mercy for that guy. He surely cant walk. I say he deserves to face the sh*t he faces.
Ever lived in LA? Do you know how much you have to make to even maintain a reasonable standard of living? These guys aren't driving fancy cars and living in mansions, I assure you.

[jaggu]

Ever lived in LA?.

Ignoring the veiled sense of superiority in that statement, I can only say one thing in response: Get out of LA. Its not as if no game development is happening outside it. Dallas (id software) comes to mind. Or maybe move to UK. Loads of game companies here. What about Australia? Familiar english speaking countries with reasonably familiar culture - you may enjoy learning the differences. France may be an option. Japan, outsourcing countries in Eastern Europe, India etc could be farther options. Have you ever even thought of finding out about these companies or were they beneath your perusal? In fact many such companies will probably treat you much better. For example, companies in the far east will almost treat you like a maharajah because you are literally providing them valued work AND pay you in USD. You may enjoy that.

In the tech world, everybody moves to where the work is. I moved 8000 miles across 2 continents. If you cared to look, you may find staff in your own company who have flown in from Europe, far east etc. It works both ways mate. You want to have your cake and eat it too. Physics and common sense both say thats not possible.

If one wants to protest, one has to keep one's life simple. Simplicity doesnt mean bread and water, destitution and squalor. Simple means not complicated. How one can simplify their own life so that they can be as free is as possible is upto them to decide. Expecting the world to support their complicated lives is stupid.

[EpicBoy]

I don't mean to be rude, but some of you are a little out of touch with reality.

"Just walk"
"Move to another country"
"Stand up to management"

Real life doesn't work like that.

[princec]

Yes it does, mate. Real life really does work like that. It's this belief that it doesn't that gets people into this situation in the first place.

Look at Steve Verrault, for one particular seedy example. He noticed that it costs $500 a month to live in Thailand and he digs Asian chicks, so putting 2+2 together he just upped and left and lives life in paradise, being fed creamy grapes by a hot babe as he dreams up new puzzles for Aargon. Anyone can do it. It's just fear that holds us back.

Cas :)

[merovingian]

I don't mean to be rude, but some of you are a little out of touch with reality.

"Just walk"
"Move to another country"
"Stand up to management"

Real life doesn't work like that.

Y'all just keep telling yourself that, OK? I'm always on the lookout for good slave laborers. They're so hard to find these days!

[jaggu]

I don't mean to be rude, but some of you are a little out of touch with reality.

"Just walk"
"Move to another country"
"Stand up to management"

Real life doesn't work like that.

OK. Lets hear your solution. Pray enlighten us how real life does work. You are not rude but patronising by claiming you know more about real life than we do. But let us slide that. Are you expecting management to 'understand' that you have a mortgage to pay on a non-mansion house and a used car to run whilst half way around the world ppl with a bedsit and dodgy public transport are ready to code for 1/10 your salary bcos that will lead them to a lifestyle you currently enjoy? You may claim they are worthless. They may be. But what if they can deliver what you deliver? Next time when you buy clothes for your son/daughter for $4 take a moment to flip the label and see where the product is made. What do you see? Made in USA? Hee hee. More like Mexico, China, Bangladesh, India etc. Yes, they are capable of producing and remember once that garment would have been made in the good ole USA. Surely for the amount of demand in programming, supply is available and hence the noose around your neck. And finally, management is not filled with Gandhis. They want ferraris, golf club memberships, yada yada. What else is there left for you other than to stand up? Please tell me sir.

[princec]

Hands off, I saw them first!

Cas :)

[FlySim]

I think there are other forces that sometimes keep people in crappy jobs -other than the desire for fancy cars and mansions. Fear of failure is a big one, from high school thru college you taught not to fail. Another is the fear of not getting another job - the "just move" advice is tough if your wife has a job or you have family or your kids are in school or you just plain like the area. Here in the San Francisco bay area it is very expensive just to live. I do think the guy at EA should have quit earlier, but its always easier from the outside...

-J.R.

[EpicBoy]

Look at Steve Verrault, for one particular seedy example. He noticed that it costs $500 a month to live in Thailand and he digs Asian chicks, so putting 2+2 together he just upped and left and lives life in paradise, being fed creamy grapes by a hot babe as he dreams up new puzzles for Aargon. Anyone can do it. It's just fear that holds us back.
So a single guy with no attachments was able to move to another country? Color me amazed.

I'm talking about people with wives, kids, mortgages, responsibilities, etc. These people can't do that sort of thing.

What else is there left for you other than to stand up? Please tell me sir.
What I'm saying ... and I'm amazed you guys have no conception of this ... is: If you're working 70+ hours a week and have the things I've described above as dependants in your life - you don't have a lot of options.

You don't have time to look for another job, you don't have the resources to just up and quit, and you don't have the freedom to just move to another country.

I don't know how else to explain this.


Anyway, I'm done with this. I've explained my position and won't be responding to further pokes and prods.

[Andy]

I'm 100% with Epic one.
Don't simplify Cas. If you get amount of related around you that becomes very hard to drive the situation in extreme manner.

And I'm 100% with Jason.
I have nothing to propose to help you Jason. But please just be sure that I'm on the side of your fair claims against of your current chefs. They should worry about their slaves a little bit more if they don't like to kill them quickly... :(

[svero]

So a single guy with no attachments was able to move to another country? Color me amazed.

I'm talking about people with wives, kids, mortgages, responsibilities, etc. These people can't do that sort of thing.

That's strange... I just met a guy who's living up the street from me. Him and his pregnant wife moved here from San-francisco and are are teaching english here in town. I guess there must be some special circumstances in their case, like a lack of excuses and so on.

While I donno if I'd agree with princec's characterization of my life, living costs, and access to grape feeding babes (where are they?!?), I will say that moving to another country involved and continues to involve a quite a bit of hassle and it isn't something you just decide to do on the spur of a moment regardless of your marital status. I had plenty of ties to where I lived that had to be untied and taken care of before I left. Such as quitting my 100k+ a year job, selling my car, subletting the condo and so on. If you're really determined, houses can be sold, kids can change schools, wives can travel with you etc...

[papillon]

.... well, it *is* something you decide to do on the spur of the moment when your spouse gets deported. :) Goodbye, having a place to live.... Goodbye, having a job... goodbye, ever seeing the money for the household items you didn't have time to sell before fleeing the country...

[Jason Chong]

If your wife is a homemaker I think the move wouldn't be so drastic.

But what if she has her own job and career as well ? That could cause another marital time-bomb.

[yanuart]

yeah.. i feel sorry for that guy, as a fellow programmer I know exactly what he's talking about.. I feel there's something wrong with the industry that needs to be fixed soon.
We don't hear this kinda thing from ppl who work in microsoft/oracle/sun or do we ??
If other software industries or any content industries can run without human slavery, how come game dev can not ?
Is there a statistic that shows the turnover rate in gamedev companies ?? I really like to see it to draw my own conclusion.

I'm looking for a way to support him.. morally of course :D.
I think it's more productive than posting rants about who knows how to live a better life (after all, aren't we all patronizing egoistic larger than life indies right ?).

ps : when a guy hold back his dream to just runaway to a secluded paradise because he has mortage, wifes and kids.. sometimes it wasn't an act of fear.. in some cases we like to call it responsibilty and prudent but then again.. yeah u maybe right.. it is fear. :rolleyes:

[merovingian]

A few years ago, I was more or less in the position EpicBoy describes minus the kids and plus twice the salary of those poor damned souls at EA. All I can say is don't let that stop you. All I got for staying in a bad situation was my marriage ending badly when the wife decided I was no fun anymore and ran off with someone else.

Fortunately, I still had the salary and once she wasn't spending over half my take home pay every month on god knows what, I recovered pretty quickly, and this despite a home equity loan I had to take out to pay her off that erased any and all equity I had in what was now my house. Smartest move I ever made BTW. I love real estate.

In closing, I feel he is making a strong choice just by not making a choice here. I've met a lot of people like him, and I was once a lot more like him myself. It doesn't get you anywhere, but he has to figure that one out for himself. Sucks, eh?

Risk and reward go hand in hand.

[Dan MacDonald]

I kind of agree with epic boy. I worked for Microsoft for 2 years. I was hired there full time during my 3rd year of university. It was a great first job, paying just under 60k a year. Unbelievable for someone who's last job had been $12.50 an hour writing ASP code for a .com. I was young but I also started a family young I had a kid and my wife stayed at home. We were living paycheck to paycheck in overpriced apartments. Now keep in mind these apartments were a 30 min commute from Microsoft because we just couldn't afford to live closer.

The team I was on was going to get the next version of their product canceled as another team was going to implement similar features in their application. The management of my team decided to promise to have the next version of our software done in 10 months and was able to hold off the powers that were trying to incorporate the features into the other product. We'll it took over 2 years to finally ship the next version. So needless to say we were working 12-14 hr days for quite a long time. We didn't have to come in on the weekends TOO much, but it was quite draining. I remember skipping Christmas vacation and coming to work with a temperature of 103. (I didn't realize I was sick, it took me 3 days to figure out why I couldn't focus all that well).

Despite all that, most of the members of my team (good guys) had come over from India on work visas, they were bound to Microsoft because without being employed there they would have to go back to India. They had no wives or families and their only friends were at work so they put in 16hr days pretty regularly and were there on most weekends. They didn't like it much either but they really didn't have anything else going on, so they were there. Come review time I received mediocre reviews and all the raises went to my hard working co-workers. It didn't matter that I was working 12-14 hrs a day, my co-workers were doing 16's. It took me about 1.5 years to realize I was being exploited. When I did there was not much I could do about it, I was at work all the time and when I wasn't i was too exhausted to do anything about it.

Fortunately I had a buddy who was doing contract work at Boeing and had developed a really great reputation there. When he recommend me they hired me almost sight unseen. If I hadn't had that I don't know that I would have had the energy to go pounding on doors with my resume.

But that was the situation, too overworked to think about anything else. Being unemployed for 2 weeks meant I wouldn't be able to pay my rent buy food etc. I didn't have a second income that (my wifes) that I could fall back on to make it work. There are so many situational factors that come into play when you are working that much. I had the benefit of literally hating the software I was working on. But this EA guy may actually care about what he is creating, it's a game after all. Ironically despite having the perfect indie job at Boeing making 6 figures and only working about 30hrs a week, I quit it a year later because the work was too boring and the various customers I had to work with were too stupid. I couldn't handle the bureaucracy. Now I'm a developer for hire working out of my dining room and I've never been happier!

[papillon]

Coming from having supported two people on less than that $12.50/hr (can't even imagine the later 60K) it's hard to imagine that in two weeks you could really find yourself unable to buy food. If nothing else, there's credit. That's how the whole fleeing-the-country thing had to be accomplished, after all. But then, I have no idea just how bad your rent WAS, and no idea what kids cost. :)

[EpicBoy]

Dan

Out of curiosity, how did you make the transition from Boeing to full time indie? Did you get a game out the door first, or just decided to go for it one day out of the blue or ... what?

[Dan MacDonald]

@epicBoy

I worked at Boeing long enough to to pay off my credit card debt and did other things to reduce my cost of living instead of expanding it to fill my new income. I re-financed my house, sold a nice '97 eclipse and bought an '84 firebird.

During my time at Boeing I had a friend who was working at an enterprise solutions company doing software development. He and I had teamed up in college on a number of projects and kicked some serious butt. I thought it would be fun to work with him, so one day when one of the stupid people at Boeing threatened to call security because my badge was in my wallet instead of around my neck, I resigned. It helped that I had already interviewed at my friends company so I was able to transition rather smoothly into a new job. Not to mention the fact that I had a little "buffer" of cash built up from working at Boeing.

The one catch for working at the new company, was that my salary would go back down to 60k. It was tight, I enjoyed working there but the commute was 45min into downtown Seattle and the hours were long. In the end I was barely breaking even again despite having reduced my debt.

Around that time I was offered two different jobs, one was to work from home in a salaried position doing cell phone development for a company that had just recieved 44M in funding. The other was an hourly contract job that had no promises of work, but the client indicated that he had at least 5 months worth. After getting a bad vibe from the salaried position, I passed on their rather generous offer and took the contracting work instead.

Now that I do contract work, I only have to average about 4hrs of work a day to cover all my expenses, add that to the fact that I can work those hours whenever I want in the comfort of my own living room, and I'm a happy man.

I have two clients that I swap back and forth between, doing games work for one and enterprise applications for the other. But new opportunities seem to come up all the time. Once people know your available it seems like a lot more opportunities show up.

@papillion
Well when I got the Microsoft job, I figured I was set for life. The first thing I did was buy myself a 15k sportscar and send my wife and her mom on a vacation to central America on my credit card! Not having much of a credit history I was swimming in debt and interest payments. 60k really didn't seem to go as far as I thought it would. Plus I was still going to school, but not full time, so I had to make payments on my student loans. My rent was $1300/mo for a 2 bedroom apartment. Car payments (plus the large insurance fees that come with it), tuition, Credit Card debt, and just keeping a kid in formula and diapers all adds up VERY quickly. My paychecks were only about $1500 every two weeks (After tax), so yeah we were razer thin and just starting out as a family. So what happens when you need a vacume? or maybe a bed? we didn't have either so those types of expenses add up very quickly. Once you have all those things it doesn't take very much to keep the ship going. But at the time, it was tough.

I no longer have any credit cards. :cool:

[Anthony Flack]

If you're let go or fired, you are eligible for unemployment benefits for (I think) 13 weeks.


Just out of curiosity, what happens after that 13 weeks is up? I didn't know unemployment benefits in the US just stopped.

[merovingian]

Just out of curiosity, what happens after that 13 weeks is up? I didn't know unemployment benefits in the US just stopped.

You're no longer "unemployed" that's what!

I think you can draw your own conclusions from that.

[DangerCode]

I don't mean to be rude, but some of you are a little out of touch with reality.

"Just walk"
"Move to another country"
"Stand up to management"

Real life doesn't work like that.

Sensitive subject, but I'm going to back EpicBoy on this one. The Employer/Employee match is just another relationship where one can find themselves in a abusive situtation with no easy/simple solution.

It's remarkably easy to find yourself in the situation where your employer successfully strings you along for a long period time, promising all sorts of things if you can hold it out "just a little bit longer". I imagine some people here have even experienced marriages with that kind of dynamic.

I love easy answers, but they all too often come with the benefit of hindsight.

[DangerCode]

Just out of curiosity, what happens after that 13 weeks is up? I didn't know unemployment benefits in the US just stopped.

They do. That's why it's funny to hear the talking heads pointing to a reduction in the number of people classified as "unemployed" as a sign of a strong ecomic turn-around. Many of those people may still be out of work - they just aren't collecting an unemployment cheque anymore.

[DavidRM]

I used to go "bouldering" at a nearby park. Demolition (to build a canal, I think) decades ago left a lot of exposed rock face, and during the spring I used to head up there with some buddies to drink beer and climb rocks. (Fortunately, most of the rock faces were only 3-5 meters high, so we weren't being that reckless.)

There was one spot in the park that proved interesting: a place where two 5-meter cliffs came to within less than than a meter of each other. The distance between them was so small, any adult could easily step across without even breaking stride. You had to be aware of the drop, of course, but otherwise it was a quick step and onward.

What happened, though, was that people would treat that short open space as almost impassable. Many would never step over it, choosing to remain on the side they were on rather than take the step to the other side. They could *see* that the gap was incredibly narrow. They would even agree, if asked, that the gap was less than their normal walking stride. But they wouldn't step over it.

To be fair, the first time I came to it, I paused to consider it too. I think anyone would. But once I stepped across the first time, like everyone else who would just take the step, from then on I could take it at a run. Just pay attention to where you are, and take it in stride.

One obvious lesson is that some people just don't like risk, and avoid it when the cost of failure is just too high--even if the *chance* of failure is miniscule.

Another lesson is that I could never get anyone to take that step who didn't want to. They had to decide for themselves.

But that never stopped me from trying to point out how safe and easy the whole thing was, and how little risk there really was.

I'm stubborn, I guess, and yet optimistic. I really do believe that anyone can achieve whatever they want. But *they* have to believe it too.

-David

[Jason Chong]

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20041114

[Dan MacDonald]

Slashdot linked to a CMU students intern report after doing an internship at EA. He claims that the reason EA is successful is that it is better managed then other game companies. Which is rather interesting. The other thing that I found interesting was that EA plans to fill 1000 jobs in the next year. Traditionally they have turned to college campuses for 10% of these new hires but going forward they want to fill 75% of these jobs with grads.

And why not, grads will work long hours with out complaining because they want to prove themselves on their first real job. Heck, that was me at Microsoft. Secondly, they don't have any industry experience so they have no expectations other then the ones that EA sets... "hey guys 90hr weeks are the norm, it's the same everywhere". On top of that they have no experience so they can't demand high salaries like people with big resumes. It's the perfect arrangement for the EA work machine.

[Anthony Flack]

Let me get this straight - if, after 13 weeks, you haven't found a new job, you're basically left to starve?

[Raptisoft]

Let me get this straight - if, after 13 weeks, you haven't found a new job, you're basically left to starve?

Ha, the only way a person starves in America is if they go on a hunger strike. Or are typing to be Paris Hilton thin. Basically, in America, if you're starving, it means you're either really, really rich or a "politically aware" college student. :)

[papillon]

There's pretty much always a way to get by, it's just that a lot of those ways are crappy. People at the end of their rope tend to end up living in a hotel room (which costs enough that they can't possibly save any money they make for anything better) and eating food-cupboard giveaway-food, which often means peanut butter and candy.

(Since these people often don't have real places to live or real kitchens, free handout food tends to be very bad, nothing that needs storage, nothing healthy.)

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1804&e=1&u=/washpost/20041109/tc_washpost/a35193_2004nov8 has one story...

[kevryan]

Basically, in America, if you're starving, it means you're either really, really rich or a "politically aware" college student. :)

...or so focused on finishing your computer game that you forget to eat during the day and you look up at the clock at its midnight and you wonder where the day went. :D

I went from 155 lbs to 145 lbs the last month and a half while working on TIM.

[DangerCode]

Let me get this straight - if, after 13 weeks, you haven't found a new job, you're basically left to starve?

I imagine there's still some social assistance available, like food stamps or whatever. I believe it is also possible to get extensions under some circumstances.

But yeah, when you lose your job the clock starts ticking.

[Yossarian]

I think a lot of this discussion stems from single people (or married with no children) not understanding the very profound change in mentality that you undergo when having kids. It isn't for a lack of trying, I'm sure most of you are attempting very hard to see if from that angle as well, but it is one of those things that you truly don't understand until you are there.

Trust me, I used to think I knew, but I really really really didn't.

You can call it fear of failure that some people get stuck in these jobs and can not or will not just walk away, but that is overly simplistic and it ignores some basic human connections with your kids. Any decent parent that has a strong relationship with their kids will be most often putting their needs first, sometimes to the detriment of their own happiness.

Often times, a parent will give up being happy, and keep themselves stuck in a crappy job with crappy bosses, and crap hours, because they don't want to uproot their kids who are in school and have friends. And if you are talking about the possibility of long term unemployment, you can definately forget about it. I just went through a 5 weeks stint of that recently, and far worse than me not having money to spend on games, was the real fear of how to take care of my daughters. Living off food stamps and free food from a shelter while living in an apartment and not being able to buy clothes is just NOT an option. If I was stuck in a similiar situation, I could very well see myself gutting it out as well, and that would be solely to insure that my family is taken care of.

That being said, obviously I'd have to start shopping around for alternatives as soon as possible, but then those aren't always there when you need them. And how the heck do you fit in job hunting to an 80 hour week when all you REALLY want to do every night is get 15 minutes with your kids before they go to bed, and then crash yourself. Its a brutal situation to get stuck in.

I think eventually this will bite EA in the butt. Word is getting around on the conditions, and every day there are more and more ex-EA people in the industry spreading the word (I work with two right now that were with Tiburon). I've seen companies before that have removed the experienced (and expensive, and how I was unemployed eventually) positions and replace them with new hires. It works as long as they were building off projects already spearheaded by those expensive guys, but future projects all start degrading rapidly, and they are quickly left with a bunch of crap. While I doubt EA will go under anytime soon, I could see them missing some projections a few quarters in a row in the near future, and then having to take a good long look at why their customer satisfaction on their games keeps going down.

[Mark Fassett]

Wife and kids may hinder you. It didn't stop me from deciding to leave a job I hated. And the best thing is, now that I'm happier, so is everyone around me. It never makes sense to stay in a job you hate for an extended period of time. It will ruin your relationships, eventually, especially if you're never home like these EA guys. If I was him, I'd be doing everything in my power to get out, including searching for new work when I'm supposed to be working, looking for temporary work, etc...

[merovingian]

I think a lot of this discussion stems from single people (or married with no children) not understanding the very profound change in mentality that you undergo when having kids. It isn't for a lack of trying, I'm sure most of you are attempting very hard to see if from that angle as well, but it is one of those things that you truly don't understand until you are there.

Trust me, I used to think I knew, but I really really really didn't.

You can call it fear of failure that some people get stuck in these jobs and can not or will not just walk away, but that is overly simplistic and it ignores some basic human connections with your kids. Any decent parent that has a strong relationship with their kids will be most often putting their needs first, sometimes to the detriment of their own happiness.


The trick, if you're married, is to make sure the spouse is pulling his/her own weight. It'd be nice to have a stay-at-home parent, but in LA, the bay area, NYC, or Seattle, it's not practical. Each partner really needs to make enough money that if the other lost their job, then they'd have time to find a new one. I would never marry again unless my wife were pulling in the region's median wage or more.

So unless you're married to Mary Poppins meets Martha Stewart meets Carol Brady meets Jenna Jameson, get the woman to work, stat. Idle hands are the devil's work. My ex didn't have time to clean, cook, or look out for me. But she had plenty of time to whinge about her life in her blog and to fall in love with someone else.

People have time for what they really want (unless they're working at EA of course).

[papillon]

At the very least, if your spouse is in a bad situation and can't look for jobs properly with that 80-hour week, then you should be working hard trying to find better opportunities for your spouse!

[Yossarian]

et the woman to work, stat.

Having my wife home to take care of our 11 month old is VERY important to me. For many it is a goal, and again something done for the good of our children, that we can keep one of us home.

I happen to make the most money by far (I guess my stupid fault for not marrying a rich chick, I'll do better next time I promise), so its really a no brainer that she stays home.

The ideal Indie plan, obviously, would be to marry a very famous porn star that makes lots of dough. Good contacts in the entertainment industry, steady income, and cool parties. For those of us *not* living near the porn industry hotspots, sometimes our plans have to adjust accordingly =)

[DangerCode]

The trick, if you're married, is to make sure the spouse is pulling his/her own weight.

If I may, "pulling her own weight" is far more than just making cash.

It'd be nice to have a stay-at-home parent

Yes, it is nice. Perhaps even nice enough to put up with some crap at work. ;)

Life is complicated, and everyone has their own story. Some of the one-size-fits-all thoughts expressed here may make catchy (if not sexist) sound bites, but I doubt they work well for everyone.

[merovingian]

Having my wife home to take care of our 11 month old is VERY important to me. For many it is a goal, and again something done for the good of our children, that we can keep one of us home.

I happen to make the most money by far (I guess my stupid fault for not marrying a rich chick, I'll do better next time I promise), so its really a no brainer that she stays home.

The ideal Indie plan, obviously, would be to marry a very famous porn star that makes lots of dough. Good contacts in the entertainment industry, steady income, and cool parties. For those of us *not* living near the porn industry hotspots, sometimes our plans have to adjust accordingly =)

Well then you've made your choice. And that's cool as long as you're not kvetching about the unfairness of the universe. I'd let my wife stay home the first year or so of child-rearing myself, and then I'd hope to do the same while she got her career back in order.

[Dan MacDonald]

Heh, my wifes last job was working as a checker at a local grocerie store (I told you we started a family young!) Her ability to bring in a few hundred dollars a month really wouldn't make or break our financial situation if I lost my job. Frankly, she's worth far more as a homemaker then she would ever be as a checker. Who knows, maybe ea_spouse is having a baby soon (though not likely) I know the fear of loosing medical benifits before having a child has kept more then one disgrunteled father in their job longer then they might have liked.

[Pyabo]

Larry isn't doing anything to his people. They bring this upon themselves. No-one is forced to work for anyone. I'd have left after a week of that.


Coming late to this thread... but thought I'd throw in my $0.02 and say that I agree 100% with Cas. EA does this to people because (up until now maybe) people allow it to be done.

The blogger story is interesting, but they've put up with this for how long... a YEAR? Get a friggin' spine and a clue. A class action lawsuit is a good start, but it would be better if everyone just WALKED.

[svero]

If you have kids, a mortgage etc... I'd say that you are tied down a little, but anyone who's serious about making changes can plan and work their way out of it in time. It just may take a little longer. If people want to change their lives they have to be willing to accept some sacrifice and risk. Many people who tell me they couldn't possibly quit or move etc.. are also unwilling to forgo their car payments and take a bus to work, or cancel cable tv and put money aside to move etc... But worse than that they tend to be creatures of habit. It's just easier and more comfortable staying put. I wonder if they consider the risk of not changing job? Are the kids safer staying for a company that doesn't look after their employees. What's to stop them from laying you off on a whim and moving development to bangalore? What then? Nothing in life carries no risk.

[WildFire]

What can I say? Been there done that.

I worked at Funcom on the game Anarchy Online in 2000. As we were nearing the wished for deadline, management got pretty creative with overtime, vacations, weekends...

"Stand up to management"

I voiced my concern about organizational as well as technical issues, and soon became a problem. They started the so-called "funcom process" against me. I handed in my resignation the same evening.

"Just walk"

By being willing to just walk away, I got the management off my back so I could actually get on with my job. I stayed another three months, the time required by law after a termination of a contract. I finished the special graphical effects system long before the game was released in something short of a total disaster.

It was a win for me, lose for the company situation. I got the experience, the job on my CV, and kept my integrity. Funcom eventually got the game right, but they lost out on market shares because of the delays and bugs.

"Move to another country"

I thought I'd never work in a computer game company again, but currently I'm the AI programmer in a game company in Greece - dreaming of going Indie! I might tell that story some other day!

[Chris Evans]

I have a wife, kid, and mortgage, yet I also quit my job earlier this year.

I didn't have a "high" salary, but I had a good salary with excellent benefits. So it certainly wasn't easy to walk away from. However, I think the advantage I had was that I walked away from the job before I was too tied down. I didn't stay around long enough to get a "high" salary, nor did I have enough time to drastically increase my lifestyle expenses. If I stayed around long enough, I might have.

Even though I quit my job with a wife and kid, I agree with the poster who said there isn't a one-size fits all solution. For example, if my wife was pregnant I certainly would have stayed at my job for another year. It would be foolish for my wife to give birth without health insurance. Any minor complication could sink you financially.

So yes while I'm obviously a proponent of "quit your day job sooner than later", I still think timing is important. Everybody's situation is different.

Finally, don't under-estimate the housewife. My wife was at home taking care of the baby while I worked. However, when I quit we essentially switched places. She works and I'm now at home taking care of our kid while I do the Indie business. She doesn't make as much as I did, but it's enough plus our savings to keep us afloat until the Indie business gets going.

But as Steve mentioned, there's always going to be some risk involved. It's just unavoidable. If you keep waiting and waiting for there to be barely any risk, then you'll stay at your day job forever (or until they fire or lay you off).

I may be living a little dangerously right now, but at least I'm home with my family pursuing my dream. I've never been happier. It's great seeing my son grow up first-hand, instead of my wife giving me nightly reports when everyone is asleep. So if the worst happens and I can't be a full-time Indie anymore, I'm going to cherish the last 9-10 months with no regrets. :)

[Dan MacDonald]

Absolutly, I love being around my kids all the time, even if they do drive me nuts. It sure beats seeing them for 5 min before I go to work and 10 min after I get home as their on their way to bed.

[Coyote]

Sure, I get my choice of being punched in the face or in the gut, but it won't mean I won't complain about my lack of options.

The "take it or leave it" attitude - with no room for compromise - sucks. Sorry, I'm a greedy little S.O.B., but I want it all... I want to be able to make a reasonable living making games, and have time for a family and something resembling a real life. The American dream! So I'd like to see the mainstream games industry 'repaired' from it's current awful state.

What's gonna have to happen is that experienced game developers will have to prove their worth. As long as companies like EA are convinced that they can make the most money using disposable employees fresh out of school, tossing them like used Kleenex at the end of 2 years / 2 projects for another fresh batch willing to work 90+ hours a week to "prove themselves," they are gonna keep doing it (until stopped by lawsuit risk, I guess).

But if they can be convinced that ten 5-year veterans working 40-hour weeks are both more productive and no more expensive than 10 newbies getting worked until they drop, then they'll change their practices. Maybe. Or they'll just outsource it all to off-shore and get a bunch of Indians or Russians or Chinese to crank out the latest Madden.

[yanuart]

getting worked until they drop, then they'll change their practices. Maybe. Or they'll just outsource it all to off-shore and get a bunch of Indians or Russians or Chinese to crank out the latest Madden.

how about outsourcing to more obscured countries ?? lol.. i live in indonesia and we do things that you don't want to do anymore.. that's the price of living in a 3rd world countries..

[PoV]

Heh, speaking of that EA work hours scandal, I found it interesting to know my former employer (I left in june) seems to be joining the EA family. Heh.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=5473

Fun fun.

[Coyote]

Interesting development in this saga. Well, not a development per se so much as yet more attention:

http://enginesofmischief.com/blogs/ramblings/archives/2004/11/11/643

[aiosup]

I wouldnt take a whole week of that...
seriously. If someone wants to pay me for 40 hours and tells me to work 60, it just proves they cant do basic math. This is their problem not mine. They can fire me, and I'll see them in court.

This is a good solution if you can afford it. But how about people who are insecure, have a family situation, or just a family around, and are affraid / unwilling to change their whereabouts? They should be offered options / be protected too. I guess I just don't wanna hear too much about jungle law (oki, I won't go that far into calling myself a socialist *yikes*)...

Supposedly walking away is exactly what you should *not* do. Suing is another thing. The legal way is, in theory, the best, but do you think there won't be repercussions? I guess here is where unions help in - preventing you getting fired when you stand by your rights. Without strong unions, rights will be just tresspassed over and over again. This happens with every business, in every corner of the world. However, strong unions have a vicious opponent: the poor guy that's willing to make a buck no matter the costs (I've read a reply in the article quoted in the beginning of this thread - the person spoke about indians taking her job - this is also happening with people working in Russia, Romania, Bulgaria, India, China aso for big game producers like UBI, EA, Sony aso).

[aiosup]

But if they can be convinced that ten 5-year veterans working 40-hour weeks are both more productive and no more expensive than 10 newbies getting worked until they drop, then they'll change their practices. Maybe.
The problem is they're not. Not for the type of games the big companies develop nowadays. First a real deal (this is where the 'heavy-weighters' come in), then sequels, sequels, and (many) more sequels. Content development is pretty much advanced nowdays, eh?

Or they'll just outsource it all to off-shore and get a bunch of Indians or Russians or Chinese to crank out the latest Madden.

Yes, they could do so, for the original version of the game. Luckily(?), they must have such and such percentage of their business in their base countries to be able to call themselves American or British or French (no offense intended) companies... Otherwise, Indonesia, India, Russia, Bulgaria, and Romania (again, those countries) would be the greatest producers of computer games in the world (as the boat-based hardware companies from Taiwan and Shanghai are).