EA's bright and shiny new corporate trademark is "Challenge Everything." Where this applies is not exactly clear. Churning out one licensed football game after another doesn't sound like challenging much of anything to me; it sounds like a money farm. To any EA executive that happens to read this, I have a good challenge for you: how about safe and sane labor practices for the people on whose backs you walk for your millions?
I am retaining some anonymity here because I have no illusions about what the consequences would be for my family if I was explicit. However, I also feel no impetus to shy away from sharing our story, because I know that it is too common to stick out among those of the thousands of engineers, artists, and designers that EA employs.
Our adventures with Electronic Arts began less than a year ago. The small game studio that my partner worked for collapsed as a result of foul play on the part of a big publisher -- another common story. Electronic Arts offered a job, the salary was right and the benefits were good, so my SO took it. I remember that they asked him in one of the interviews: "how do you feel about working long hours?" It's just a part of the game industry -- few studios can avoid a crunch as deadlines loom, so we thought nothing of it. When asked for specifics about what "working long hours" meant, the interviewers coughed and glossed on to the next question; now we know why.
Within weeks production had accelerated into a 'mild' crunch: eight hours six days a week. Not bad. Months remained until any real crunch would start, and the team was told that this "pre-crunch" was to prevent a big crunch toward the end; at this point any other need for a crunch seemed unlikely, as the project was dead on schedule. I don't know how many of the developers bought EA's explanation for the extended hours; we were new and naive so we did. The producers even set a deadline; they gave a specific date for the end of the crunch, which was still months away from the title's shipping date, so it seemed safe. That date came and went. And went, and went. When the next news came it was not about a reprieve; it was another acceleration: twelve hours six days a week, 9am to 10pm.
Weeks passed. Again the producers had given a termination date on this crunch that again they failed. Throughout this period the project remained on schedule. The long hours started to take its toll on the team; people grew irritable and some started to get ill. People dropped out in droves for a couple of days at a time, but then the team seemed to reach equilibrium again and they plowed ahead. The managers stopped even talking about a day when the hours would go back to normal.
Now, it seems, is the "real" crunch, the one that the producers of this title so wisely prepared their team for by running them into the ground ahead of time. The current mandatory hours are 9am to 10pm -- seven days a week -- with the occasional Saturday evening off for good behavior (at 6:30pm). This averages out to an eighty-five hour work week. Complaints that these once more extended hours combined with the team's existing fatigue would result in a greater number of mistakes made and an even greater amount of wasted energy were ignored.
The stress is taking its toll. After a certain number of hours spent working the eyes start to lose focus; after a certain number of weeks with only one day off fatigue starts to accrue and accumulate exponentially. There is a reason why there are two days in a weekend -- bad things happen to one's physical, emotional, and mental health if these days are cut short. The team is rapidly beginning to introduce as many flaws as they are removing.
And the kicker: for the honor of this treatment EA salaried employees receive a) no overtime; b) no compensation time! ('comp' time is the equalization of time off for overtime -- any hours spent during a crunch accrue into days off after the product has shipped); c) no additional sick or vacation leave. The time just goes away. Additionally, EA recently announced that, although in the past they have offered essentially a type of comp time in the form of a few weeks off at the end of a project, they no longer wish to do this, and employees shouldn't expect it. Further, since the production of various games is scattered, there was a concern on the part of the employees that developers would leave one crunch only to join another. EA's response was that they would attempt to minimize this, but would make no guarantees. This is unthinkable; they are pushing the team to individual physical health limits, and literally giving them nothing for it. Comp time is a staple in this industry, but EA as a corporation wishes to "minimize" this reprieve. One would think that the proper way to minimize comp time is to avoid crunch, but this brutal crunch has been on for months, and nary a whisper about any compensation leave, nor indeed of any end of this treatment.
This crunch also differs from crunch time in a smaller studio in that it was not an emergency effort to save a project from failure. Every step of the way, the project remained on schedule. Crunching neither accelerated this nor slowed it down; its effect on the actual product was not measurable. The extended hours were deliberate and planned; the management knew what they were doing as they did it. The love of my life comes home late at night complaining of a headache that will not go away and a chronically upset stomach, and my happy supportive smile is running out.
No one works in the game industry unless they love what they do. No one on that team is interested in producing an inferior product. My heart bleeds for this team precisely BECAUSE they are brilliant, talented individuals out to create something great. They are and were more than willing to work hard for the success of the title. But that good will has only been met with abuse. Amazingly, Electronic Arts was listed #91 on Fortune magazine's "100 Best Companies to Work For" in 2003.
EA's attitude toward this -- which is actually a part of company policy, it now appears -- has been (in an anonymous quotation that I've heard repeated by multiple managers), "If they don't like it, they can work someplace else." Put up or shut up and leave: this is the core of EA's Human Resources policy. The concept of ethics or compassion or even intelligence with regard to getting the most out of one's workforce never enters the equation: if they don't want to sacrifice their lives and their health and their talent so that a multibillion dollar corporation can continue its Godzilla-stomp through the game industry, they can work someplace else.
But can they?
The EA Mambo, paired with other giants such as Vivendi, Sony, and Microsoft, is rapidly either crushing or absorbing the vast majority of the business in game development. A few standalone studios that made their fortunes in previous eras -- Blizzard, Bioware, and Id come to mind -- manage to still survive, but 2004 saw the collapse of dozens of small game studios, no longer able to acquire contracts in the face of rapid and massive consolidation of game publishing companies. This is an epidemic hardly unfamiliar to anyone working in the industry. Though, of course, it is always the option of talent to go outside the industry, perhaps venturing into the booming commercial software development arena. (Read my tired attempt at sarcasm.)
To put some of this in perspective, I myself consider some figures. If EA truly believes that it needs to push its employees this hard -- I actually believe that they don't, and that it is a skewed operations perspective alone that results in the severity of their crunching, coupled with a certain expected amount of the inefficiency involved in running an enterprise as large as theirs -- the solution therefore should be to hire more engineers, or artists, or designers, as the case may be. Never should it be an option to punish one's workforce with ninety hour weeks; in any other industry the company in question would find itself sued out of business so fast its stock wouldn't even have time to tank. In its first weekend, Madden 2005 grossed $65 million. EA's annual revenue is approximately $2.5 billion. This company is not strapped for cash; their labor practices are inexcusable.
The interesting thing about this is an assumption that most of the employees seem to be operating under. Whenever the subject of hours come up, inevitably, it seems, someone mentions 'exemption'. They refer to a California law that supposedly exempts businesses from having to pay overtime to certain 'specialty' employees, including software programmers. This is Senate Bill 88. However, Senate Bill 88 specifically does not apply to the entertainment industry -- television, motion picture, and theater industries are specifically mentioned. Further, even in software, there is a pay minimum on the exemption: those exempt must be paid at least $90,000 annually. I can assure you that the majority of EA employees are in fact not in this pay bracket; ergo, these practices are not only unethical, they are illegal.
I look at our situation and I ask 'us': why do you stay? And the answer is that in all likelihood we won't; and in all likelihood if we had known that this would be the result of working for EA, we would have stayed far away in the first place. But all along the way there were deceptions, there were promises, there were assurances -- there was a big fancy office building with an expensive fish tank -- all of which in the end look like an elaborate scheme to keep a crop of employees on the project just long enough to get it shipped. And then if they need to, they hire in a new batch, fresh and ready to hear more promises that will not be kept; EA's turnover rate in engineering is approximately 50%. This is how EA works. So now we know, now we can move on, right? That seems to be what happens to everyone else. But it's not enough. Because in the end, regardless of what happens with our particular situation, this kind of "business" isn't right, and people need to know about it, which is why I write this today.
If I could get EA CEO Larry Probst on the phone, there are a few things I would ask him. "What's your salary?" would be merely a point of curiosity. The main thing I want to know is, Larry: you do realize what you're doing to your people, right? And you do realize that they ARE people, with physical limits, emotional lives, and families, right? Voices and talents and senses of humor and all that? That when you keep our husbands and wives and children in the office for ninety hours a week, sending them home exhausted and numb and frustrated with their lives, it's not just them you're hurting, but everyone around them, everyone who loves them? When you make your profit calculations and your cost analyses, you know that a great measure of that cost is being paid in raw human dignity, right?
Right?
===
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DUDE?!
November 30 2004, 06:43:49 UTC 16 years ago
Rick
Re: DUDE?!
Anonymous
December 4 2004, 07:18:05 UTC 16 years ago
Re: DUDE?!
16 years ago
Re: DUDE?!
Anonymous
16 years ago
thanks
Anonymous
November 30 2004, 16:00:05 UTC 16 years ago
ea spouse: a little more info, please
Anonymous
November 30 2004, 16:32:52 UTC 16 years ago
Just wanted to let you know that my only problem with your LJ posting is that it's terribly addictive. My local newspaper ran a syndicated story (LA Times) earlier this month and I decided to check it out. Now, I spend several hours a day on the site and have added my two cents here and there.
Question: Is there a link - a *very* direct link - to EA's site regarding this entire matter?
For the record, I do not have any ties to the gaming community, nor do I purchase games, so EA is not going to miss the dollars from my wallet. Primarily, I *strongly* object to EA's abusive practices.
However, you know these guys better than the rest of us. Is it a good idea that I email them, even though I have no connection to the industry/community? Are they that much of a rat bastard that they would turn ugly on the general public?
Stay with this. You and your SO have made a lot of new friends, and hopefully people that you can trust. We are on your side.
Re: ea spouse: a little more info, please
Anonymous
November 30 2004, 17:08:49 UTC 16 years ago
Re: ea spouse: a little more info, please
Anonymous
16 years ago
Re: ea spouse: a little more info, please
Anonymous
16 years ago
list of EA games
Anonymous
16 years ago
Re: ea spouse: a little more info, please
Anonymous
16 years ago
Re: ea spouse: a little more info, please
16 years ago
thanks for the reply
Anonymous
16 years ago
Re: thanks for the reply
16 years ago
I wrote songs about this stuff!
Anonymous
December 1 2004, 11:32:53 UTC 16 years ago
I've written a few songs about being a disgruntled, overworked game industry slave, dating back to 1997 or maybe earlier:
http://www.softegg.com/homepages/TimonMarmex/wcpunk/
In particular, the songs Hello Sailor, Running Down, and Retro-Rocket are very pointedly about the subject.
http://www.softegg.com/homepages/TimonMarmex/wcpunk/RunnDown.html
http://www.softegg.com/homepages/TimonMarmex/wcpunk/helloslr.html
http://www.softegg.com/homepages/TimonMarmex/wcpunk/rtrorckt.html
Having burned out of my last game industry job, I'm trying to make a go of being a freelancer, retooling skills in different areas other than game making. It's hard to change careers when everybody wants five years of specific experience with very specific tools in order to get any sort of position at all.
Take care.
-- Timon --
http://www.softegg.com
What other fields are there for artists
Anonymous
December 1 2004, 16:42:17 UTC 16 years ago
Re: What other fields are there for artists
Anonymous
December 1 2004, 17:02:32 UTC 16 years ago
Here are the options I can think of:
1. Film FX (pays better but even more unstable than games. Artists get treated like shit there also)
2. Architectural Viz. (harder for us game folks to break into I think. A lot of firms want people with a backgrounds in architecture.
3. Defense previsualisation
4. Web graphics..not a lot of 3d. low pay unless you contract
5. Go back to school (probably best option)
good luck,
Re: What other fields are there for artists
Anonymous
16 years ago
Re: What other fields are there for artists
Anonymous
16 years ago
for those who are thinking of retraining:
December 1 2004, 21:30:20 UTC 16 years ago
Why not do your own aptitudes testing? Or see a career counselor? Here's a link to start you off on a new and better life:
http://www.prospects.ac.uk/cms/ShowPage/Home_page/Applications_and_interviews/Interviews/Test_yourself/p!eLidF
I feel your pain
Anonymous
December 2 2004, 04:14:06 UTC 16 years ago
I have some questions
December 2 2004, 05:28:41 UTC 16 years ago
I'm a business major, and one of the industries I've thought about going into is the video game industry. I'd like to ask a couple of questions if it would be okay? :)
Please contact me at bleedingvanguard@hotmail.com, if you're willing.
In case you want to know how I found your journal, I read Penny Arcade ;)
Thanks,
-C.S.-
Re: I have some questions
December 2 2004, 18:16:37 UTC 16 years ago
13 Hour "Professional Day"
Anonymous
December 2 2004, 13:45:00 UTC 16 years ago
Re: 13 Hour "Professional Day"
December 3 2004, 10:37:42 UTC 16 years ago
Thats EA bullshit!
Anonymous
December 2 2004, 16:48:53 UTC 16 years ago
Rick Giolito
Anonymous
December 2 2004, 17:41:05 UTC 16 years ago
Near the end of our last project, as we're nearing beta and have already been crunching for 7 months, he announces happily that he's managed to secure us a slip! Wheee two more months of crunch! Never mind that the reason for this slip is that he can't stop adding major technologies and needlessly redesigning missions after we've already reached alpha. No he plays it off like he's our saving grace, that he put his neck on the line for us and now it's our last chance to prove that we're as talented as we say we are. "Kiss your wives and children goodbye for two months and get the job done", he says. (Really, that's a quote) "I've put my neck on the line for you guys but I've played my last hand. If you want to save my job, keep your foot on the gas and get the job done."
Actually Ricky, I quite enjoyed that little pep talk. So my options were, I could go home at reasonable hours from now on and that would guarantee you'd get fired? Sounds good to me.
You're dead weight my friend. I'd stay on that sabbatical if I were you.
Re: Rick Giolito
Anonymous
December 3 2004, 06:02:08 UTC 16 years ago
Re: Rick Giolito
16 years ago
Re: Rick Giolito
16 years ago
Re: Rick Giolito
Anonymous
16 years ago
Another Write-up in the Press...
December 2 2004, 19:06:34 UTC 16 years ago
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2004/12/02/no_fun_and_games/index_np.html
-Peter
LIVE STOCK LIKE TREATMENT NOT LIMITED TO GAMING INDUSTRY - MY STORY (PART 1)
Anonymous
December 2 2004, 19:25:17 UTC 16 years ago
I found this letter thru an article on the front page of yesterday's Salon.com. Don't feel like taking the time to register if I don't have to, but I will identify myself as Ranndino.
The letter by the EA_spouse is incredibly well written and it has generated such mind boggling response because the kind of treatment of employees described in it is not limited to the game industry. Tech workers in other industries can very much relate.
A few years ago I was hired to work for a company called TWIInteractive, which is the multimedia (website dev) arm of the humongous IMG (International Management Group). IMG, for those who aren't familiar with it is a company that represents many of the most famous athletes and entertainment stars such as Tiger Woods, Heidi Klum, etc. Being young and somewhat idealistic I thought I hit the jackpot. I love sports and here was my chance to learn and grow in a company that worked on major sports web sites. My boss (an art director) who hired me turned out to be a great guy and at first everything was going well. Well, if you don't consider the salary that they gave me and them dragging their feet for 4 months before making me a permanent employee. I guess that should have been the first sign of trouble, but I enjoyed the work so much that I didn't really give it much thought.
After a few months real signs of trouble started to emerge. The tech director, a workaholic nutcase from South Africa, repeatedly clashed with my boss, the art director over who’s in charge of what. You see, the guy who had no college education or any experience in graphic design thought he could walk around suggesting to us things down to which colors to use, and how to draw lines. This went on for a while until my art director boss grew so frustrated that he quit a job that paid him six figures at the age of 28! I’m trying to keep this relatively short, so I won’t go into details, but you can imagine how bad it got that he would do that.
After the art director left things became hell for me. I was seen as his loyalist and the new art director was apparently told from the first day he was hired that I was a problem employee. No matter what I did it was never good enough. I was asked every 5 minutes what I was working on. Anyone who is a creative understands how incredibly counterproductive that was. Even if you’re not. It breaks the train of thought and the stress level that it produces becomes unbearable. Anyway, the workaholic tech director started putting me on projects that had little or nothing to do with what I was hired for. He would throw me into technical areas which I knew little or nothing about and gave me almost impossible deadlines. Being a pretty intelligent person I learned on the fly and managed to complete all the tasks on time. Were they happy? Nope? They kept picking on the tiniest imperfections in my site code and telling me that my performance was inadequate. This was unbelievable because I had no idea how to code when starting the projects. I was a purely creative graphic designer, yet I learned to code and produced sites in a matter of weeks and they would pick on bugs and tell me that I sucked ass. Needless to say that I felt as low as one gets. Here I was buried in books and blowing my brains out for weeks trying to get it done, got it done and was chastised for it.
On top of this I was called in numerous times into the office by either my new art director or tech director and told that I wasn’t being a good team player. Why? Because I refused to work insane hours and weekends. Just like many have said here I understood that when the project had to be done a crunch was acceptable, but not when it became an unofficial company policy.
REASONS FOR SUCH TREATMENT AND WHY WE NEED UNIONS (PART 2)
Anonymous
December 2 2004, 19:28:24 UTC 16 years ago
I’m not in favor of socialism. I have lived in a socialist country and it sucks ass, but the unions are the only answer to this problem. As long as corporations are driven to squeeze out as much profit as they can out of their workforce they won’t stop. And it’s only getting worse. As the competition increases and other companies make their employees slave for longer hours ones that don’t find themselves unable to compete. They either follow suit or go out of business. At one point this will result in no good alternatives for the white collar workforce as it did for the blue collar workforce decades ago.
My girlfriend’s grandfather came to this country from Italy without any education. He learned the iron working trade and thanks to a powerful iron workers union he made a fortune. Yes, a simple iron worker without higher education earns $50-60 an hour and the benefits that they get most IT workers can only dream of. To think that corporations will wake up and realize that they are creating an extremely large number of very unhappy people and start playing nice is extremely naïve. Also, like I said blaming managers or even corporations themselves is short sighted. The system as it is right now forces them to operate in such manner. If a manager doesn’t treat his underlings like live stock he gets canned. If a corporation has ethical values they get squeezed out of the market by asshole companies. It becomes a matter of simple economic pressure.
QUALITY OF LIFE, WHAT MAKES US HAPPY AND WHERE ARE WE HEADING (PART 3)
Anonymous
16 years ago
CONCLUSION (PART 4)
Anonymous
16 years ago
Re: CONCLUSION (PART 4)
16 years ago
Re: CONCLUSION (PART 4)
Anonymous
16 years ago
This is why Unions were created!
Anonymous
December 2 2004, 20:42:12 UTC 16 years ago
Forget the Overtime law - that is virtually gutted by the Bush Administration- what your husband needs to do - and do quickly - is band together with his other workers and form a strong, united union. It is not easy to do and it often results in months if not years of uncertainty but it is the only answer. California law does not limit work hours, but union contract CAN. It is the ONLY thing that can. The only thing that can prevent a company from making a virtual slave out of you is a union contract. And it is not just for blue collar workers anymore. Lawyers, nurses, professors and other professionals have done it, but only by setting aside their ego and embracing collective action. So, if this really means a lot to you and your husband, you'll start contacting unions and speaking to his co-workers and take back his right to have a life. If he doesn't they could be moving you to a company town in the near future.
Sorry if I came off like a ranting communist but I do feel bad for you and other workers like your husband, but somewhere along the road the American workers decided they didn't need unions anymore, and now they work 100 hour weeks. Maybe its time to revisit the issue. Best of luck.
Re: This is why Unions were created!
Anonymous
December 3 2004, 19:44:30 UTC 16 years ago
I gave an example of my girlfriend's grandfather, a simple iron worker, who thanks to a strong union made a fortune. Her mother is a nurse (she's studying to become one as well). She was just telling me today that she got a look at her mom's paycheck the other day. $84,000 with a month to go!!! Working 36 hours a week! Her mother works 3 days a week, 12-hour night shifts. That was her choice because this way she gets 4 days completely off and they pay even more for night shifts.
So, let's summarize. With a month to go in the year she has made $84,000 working 3 nights a week and enjoying her 4 days off, every week. Anyone still think Unions are a bad idea?
EA Work Ethic
Anonymous
December 2 2004, 22:47:43 UTC 16 years ago
I was 40 years old and sleeping under my desk to final a game. Shortly after I quit I have never looked back, some call the org, the evil empire...at times thats not to far from the truth.
I am glad for the op and the credits, but I'm very glad to have my life back.
Many senior artists and programmers are leaving as we speak....
Re: EA Work Ethic
Anonymous
December 3 2004, 03:49:33 UTC 16 years ago
All true all true
Re: EA Work Ethic
16 years ago
Re: EA Work Ethic
Anonymous
16 years ago
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