EA: The Human Story

Hello EA Spouse,

Your story is all too true. My SO also works for EA and my mother often ask, "How do they (EA) expect to get anything out of their employees when they work 12 hours a day for a week straight?" Recently, he had a 23 1/2 hour shift and returned to work within 8 hours---that was the ultimate Labor law violation. I come from a strong labor union family and my mentor is a labor law professor. Common labor laws are being broken at EA on a weekly basis, particularly near the holiday season.

How are the employees, whether temporary or permanent supposed to speak up when they are coaxed with the state of the art gym, Jamba Juice splurges, and late night catering? If anyone complains, they are easily replaced. So many young men want to work in video game industry. The CEO of EA was recently named one of the CEOs who is "worth his weight in gold". Seems to me like he could afford to reorganize the work schedule to be more humane.

this isn't a reply to the above post, it's just 4am and i couldn't figure out how to make a new one >.<

But i read the article, and the whole time I was just laughing. Kind of laughing at the misery of it all. I'm an animator who has worked for about 3 different studios at this point- never EA though. The last project that I was on was.. ready for this? 100+ hours, 7 days a week, for a good 2 months straight. It was the worst thing i've ever had to deal with. And i lost 3 months of my life (the month before the 100 hours was only 80!).
It's funny because the blame can be put on so many people for it. Alot of what happens, if whoever hires you for Game "X", gives you an insane schedule to work with. Like, yeah we need this game done in 3 months. Or something stupid like that, and then, as the gruntwork game designers (or artist in this case) you get to just take a deep breath and deal with it.
With EA, they're also a publishing company too, so they're pretty much unable to avoid any blame whatsoever. With the game i worked on, it was for THQ. But they were just the publisher. We did the game, and they just set the timeline of death.
Thats the root of the problem though. I really had to comment about this post because you said "hiring more people to avoid crunch time" would be the answer. Actually, thats not always the case. With the game I worked on, all the extra artists other than myself and ONE other guy, were totally unreliable. And you know what? ONE of them actually screwed us completely with that "8 hours a day only" attitude, and what happened was that he didn't do his job- a month worth of work, and it got slammed on MY back to cover at the last second. Because he refused to work like the rest of us, we all got burned even harder, because the sad fact of the matter is: Unless someone contests the schedule from day 1, you're stuck with it. You make the game, or you get fired. It's that simple. Well, it should have been anyway, Mr. 8 hours is still happily unemployed.
If i sound like i'm saying shut up and work the overtime, thats not my intent. It's just dangerous because it doesn't help. It just makes the crunch time even WORSE. The producer from EA said it best: Bad management. And Accepting rediculous schedules that don't even give room if problems occur. Let alone the fact it makes no sense ANYWAY. And in games especially, you run into tons of problems. The worst part is that there is no give from the higher ups on this. if you don't deliver their game when you say, giving the excuse of working long hours, won't even get you a shift in the deadline. They just don't give a shit, it's very heartless. And I know lots of people in the industry now.. it's you hear the same thing over and over. In fact, alot of them laugh at you when you complain. Plenty of my industry friends would laugh at this EA post and say, like I did "Thats nothing!" But does that make any of it RIGHT? Of course not.
I'm 23 years old and have only been in the industry 3 years now, but I've barely been on a single project that didn't have a crunch time. Maybe like.. 3. If that. And for me, it all comes down to totally unrealistic schedules.
Though last project came down to totally incompetant coworkers.
My friends and family are always telling me 'you don't have to work those hours" But no one gets it. If i don't work it, someone else will. In then instead of some guy putting in 60 hours a week, suddenly he's covering for ME who isn't, and now he's up to 80. And so on.
If you want to stop the crunches, strike at the root. The publishing companies who usually know you'll take whatever you can get, and don't give the slightest damn if the schedule they give you is totally unreasonable. When a deal is made, you deliver, or you die. Period.
And management. it all comes from the top down. As my old boss used to say:
"Shit rolls downhill"

If you feel like reading my helltrip, feel free:
http://natehorsfallmain.homestead.com/Incred_Summary.html

And best of luck to you, your SO, and everyone else (because there are thousands of us) suffering the crunch.

Geeze, you make perfect sence but I didn't feel like committing suicide until I read your post. Damn, you're a downer.
We need to find some solutions before this happens. I think that's the whole point of this, isn't it?

Well those hours suck, and so do most of the games that EA make, no discredit to your SO, but its just the same game every time, boosting graphics, changing player names/rosters. For a majority of their games. Plus they never get the game right in the first place, constantly seeing patch 1.5 1.4 for many games EA make. THE PUBLIC ARE NOT BETA TESTERS!!!!! Im sure if you ask us we will be, and we would do it for free. You would save ALOT of time doing so.

Perhaps you should consider the possibility that these working conditions and management problems are the very things that cause the games to have such problems. Like in all other production companies, there is a production hierarchy that determines objectives. If the management is poor, it cannot always be mitigated by the individual developers.

i have a friend who works at ea, and he too is working close to 85 hours a week. at first, he was excited, and in the manner the author detailed, bragged about all the time he put in testing the game. the excitedness turned to fatigue, headaches, insomnia, agoraphobia, womanizing, then finally to hardcore drug abuse. anything he could get his hands on to stay up, look good and make the grade, he bought, then later stole. women in his life were reduced to personality-less drones. he never left the house save to make a call to the escort service from a payphone.

after the game was released, with critical bugs he found and notified management of included, it still sucked and is getting horrible reviews. right now, my friend has been released and is sitting at home on a strict green tea and carbohydrate regimen to regrow fatigued bone marrow.

thanks e.a. thanks alot.

dude, you are a liar. at first you say that he works there, then you said he got sacked. what gives??

Thank you for writing this when I'm sure there are thousands like you who are in the same boat, myself included. Ours, and our spouses/partners, stories might just raise the interest of some journalists out there because when EA is promoted in every other flier and commercial you see it's essential that the hidden story be told. My common-law partner has been working for EAC (Electronic Arts Canada) for two years and in that time his position has gone from dream job, doing what he's always wanted to be doing for the "best" company out there, to absolute nightmare. He works 10 hours+ overtime EVERY week with the demands never getting any lighter. He gets sick on a regular basis, wakes up in the night with migraine headaches, cries from mental and physical exhaustion and all I can do to support him is convince him to hang on. His salary is laughable and there are no rewards at the end of a project. He can't even look forward to stat holidays anymore because a day off could jeopardize a deadline. He used to love his job and now he dreads waking up in the morning. What can we do? If you speak up you risk getting fired and what game company is interested in an EA reject? If you quit you're faced with finding a job for a company that may very likely go belly-up in a year, or worse, be bought out by EA who sends you packing. EA employees and animators, programmers, etc. in general need to form a union and start asserting their rights because they're human, not machine, and no one deserves this kind of treatment, especially not from a company voted one of the top 100 companies to work for. People in power need to sit up and pay attention before the industry starts to crumple under the weight of their abused employees.

Come work at Shiny, we have changed all that nonsense :)

Comrades!

The (deadline / fashist onslaught) is near! Keep up the frontal assault, or (the company / Mother Russia ) will fall. Remember, your families, will die if you don't work harder.

Towarishtch / Project Manager Yhukov

I've seen this all throughout the industry with the larger developers and publishers. Some of them at least pay hourly or for OT, but the trend has just grown worse and worse over time. I think EA should be made an example out of what they've turned into, but I also think other game companies with similar practices should be held accountable too. I've seen too many people's lives trampled over by these monsters. Enough is enough.

My name is Josh Patreich. I am a union organizer for the IATSE Local 16. I have been working with people from EA, but more and more I am getting contacted by people from other companies. I want to organize enough companies that it will set some standards in the industry that won't burn everyone out. Let me know if you can help.
unionjosh@local16.org
josh