Quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
quick question, are working conditions in EA any good. I heard it both ways, that people work 10-12 hours a day and I heard it another way saying it was comfortable and it was the usually 8-10 hours a dat, so im kinda lost on that one. But i did see some really nice benefits etc etc EA offered

EA have a number of different studios, from what I hear from friends and acquaintances working at a number of them, quality of life at each varies massively.

Usually quality of life at any games company depends on quality of the studio manager and middle management (producers, leads) - in particular how well they listen to and understand their people during scheduling, whether or not/how much they mislead their own bosses (or publisher) over scheduling (such as lying about how complete a feature is to cover their own back), and how well they manage change control. Feature creep without adequate change control and bad/innaccurate/overly tight scheduling are the two main causes of killer crunch times.

I'm afraid to say where I worked, because I'm pretty sure that I signed something which prevents me from saying nasty things about it. It was a small company known for one or two games that did ports of big name titles. It was bought out shortly before my arrival by Big Publisher A.

I worked on a team that was just starting. I worked normal hours for most of my stay there, however, towards the end, it became obvious that our team wasn't hitting the milestones (the leadership on our team was horrid), so Big A started taking a more active interest in our team. We'd receive new milestones literally for the next Monday on the previous Thursday. While I didn't have to work the weekends (my milestones were painful, but doable in two days), the rest of the team had to work long hours and weekends to hit the milestones. I quit around this time, but pretty much the whole team was in constant crunch, just six months into the project. The game was cancelled a year later (well, that's when it was announced at least)

One of the other teams at the place was just finishing up a movie license (it was based on a game they did a port to previously). They literally lived at the company. They actually had people come pick up their laundry. They slept there. They never went home. They had to finish the game to coicide with the movie release. They were finishing up the last month or so when I started, so I don't know when the crunch started. They got two weeks time off after it was finished, then came back in and started working on the sequel.

Yet another team had yet another movie license, but it was to coincide with the DVD release of a movie (and was one of the worst games I've ever played). They were never officially in crunch, but during the entire six months I was there, they were working weekends and 12 hour days. They didn't get holidays off either. Technically, not crunch - they didn't get meals catered or their laundry picked up - but there was unbelievable pressure to work long hours anyway. They didn't force you. They never said "you have to be in on Saturday", but you did anyway.

I started the company at the same time as someone on this last team, who was from Finland. My wife became best friends with his wife. She had no car and knew little about America, but was left alone for a majority of the time. He would frequently not come home at all, or if he did, just long enough to take a nap and shower and head back in. I felt so sorry for her, and for such a bad, bad game that was $10 within two months of release...

This is just one company, and you're milage will vary considerably based on your position on the team and the capability of your management. Even between three teams in the same company, it was a very different experience. None good, of course, but I'm sure they must exist out there somewhere (though I've never personally heard any names of these companies). Anyway, if you want to go into the game industry, avoid the bad teams at all costs. How do you find the bad teams? Beats me. I never did.

Quote: The culture was very much, "if you are hitting your targets and producing quality work, then you don't need to work overtime, unless we're in crunch time". If I found something very difficult, and I was running out of time, I might voluntarily work a bit of overtime to get it done.

I interned at a game company a couple of years ago that was developing a AAA title for PC, and the situation was similar. Most days it was 10am-7pm (9 hours, not so bad although I would have preferred 9am-6pm). The last couple of months of the project, we had 9am-9pm, 6 days a week, but that didn't last for too long so I didn't really mind it much. It was tough for people with wives/kids but at least it beats companies in "eternal crunch mode". I don't really have anything to compare with, but I think that company is probably one of the better ones in this regard, they even gave generous bonuses on milestone completion, which is at least nicer than "good job, here's a pizza".

roos

I think what you guys are experiencing is one of those zero sum games where a positive feedback loop is created and everybody loses in the end. You might as well pull back and work normal hours and the end result would be the same. I realize this is easier said than done, especially with all the pressures weighing down on you. You probably got ten or twelve people viaing for your job, and your collegues aren't helping by working longer and longer hours, which forces you to do the same. Sadly, working so hard isn't helping anyone else, because you're devaluating your own and everbody else's skills, not to mention conditioning the consumer and publisher to cheap labor. It basicly amounts to flooding the market, which is never a sustainable strategy, even illegal. In a few years all your jobs might be exported to 3rd world countries, so it won't matter any which way, so my suggestion would be to rebel a little and just hold your employer to the contract they signed. If you band together, they can't fire all of you, correct? You'd also be doing us indie's a favor, it's hard enough competing by yourself against twenty people, but twenty people working 12 hours a day is almost impossible. At least we still got 100% creative control over our work, but I'm not sure that weighs as much as the other stuff I mentioned. Oh well, take care y'all.

The first developer I worked for I started at the bottom. It was a 9 - 6 day with an hour at lunch, finishing a bit earlier of Friday - just under a 40-hour week. Every month or two there might be a few late nights - up to 8 or 9 - and even a bit of weekend work. It wasn't forced, people gave as much time as they could afford.

The place I'm interviewing at now works a 37.5 hour week and the overtime sounds similar.

These are both in the UK - I think the US is generally a bit worse.

But if you work in a normal job and code at home on your own game for 3 hours then your working day is 3 hours longer than your company claims - games programmers do it because they want to make games, which is one reason why the pay is generally a bit less - more competition for jobs.

Just check the company and ask them how often overtime happens, and how bad those periods are.