http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/21/b...58693200&partner=rssuserland&pagewanted=print
This point is my favorite:
EA employees "toiling like galley slaves"
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Chittagong
Gold Member
Holy shit. New York Times. That is big - it's not a web forum rant anymore. Shit will hit the fan for the long-term good of the industry, and I'll enjoy every second of it.
FortNinety
Member
http://ga-forum.com/showthread.php?t=22847
Just in case you missed it, but more threads exposing EA the better.
The student I mentioned in my last post in the thread cited the NYTime article I believe.
Just in case you missed it, but more threads exposing EA the better.
The student I mentioned in my last post in the thread cited the NYTime article I believe.
Ferrarisimo
Member
The LA Times ran a story on it last week.
Mama Smurf
My penis is still intact.
I highly doubt it's just EA using these business practices in the industry. So you can say you'll enjoy every minute of this when the shit hits the fan, but the likely result will be better work for employees, worst games for us.
I think this uproar over working conditions at EA evinces a complete lack of perspective. A lot of people here in the U.S. get paid much less to work in far worse conditions. If working at EA is equivalent to "toiling like galley slaves," then working conditions in, say, a meat processing plant must be a crime against humanity.
Sein said:
it's different. The expectation among EA (and really, for a lot of software developers) is to work extremely long hours, well beyond deadlines, and just accept it. Most blue-collar workers are unionized or are paid on an hourly wage, thus they make overtime (and companies would rather have you leave than cost them time-and-a-half). I think it's interesting that this sort of observation is coming out of the videogame industry; I know plenty of consultants who have had to sleep at a client site for several nights to get stuff done in crunch-time.
FrenchMovieTheme
Member
well first off this isn't only EA, but i understand why EA is in the spotlight when they are the biggest 3rd party game publisher in the world
however, i have to ask, why? WHY do these workers need to be working like this? i love madden, but lets be realistic. it doesn't take a 14 hour day 6 days a week for 6 months to churn out a new madden. it doesn't take a 14 hour day 6 days a week for 2 years or whatever to do lord of the rings 3rd age, so are they just making people work OT because they CAN and dont have to pay them extra or what? damn man
however, i have to ask, why? WHY do these workers need to be working like this? i love madden, but lets be realistic. it doesn't take a 14 hour day 6 days a week for 6 months to churn out a new madden. it doesn't take a 14 hour day 6 days a week for 2 years or whatever to do lord of the rings 3rd age, so are they just making people work OT because they CAN and dont have to pay them extra or what? damn man
FrenchMovieTheme said:
I highly doubt any software developer gets paid overtime. They might have to offer them comp time, but that is usually pretty bad (like 1 hour for every hour that you work over 100 hours in a 2 week pay period). I'm sure they use it anyway right after they finish a project.
Edit: And i really disagree with you about your expectations are for software development. Look at most major PC companies - it oftetimes takes a development team 5 years to finish a game.
Nerevar said:
Sure, but blue-collar workers are still paid pittances. As between being overworked and poorly paid and overworked and not as poorly paid, surely the latter is less deserving of pity. This is especially true considering differences in the nature of the work; for example, I doubt that programmers are exposed to appreciable risks of physical harm.
And I don't often see tears shed for other white-collar jobs with extreme hours, e.g., i-banking.
Mr_Furious
Member
Why are some people's immediate reaction to this equalling crappy games? It's not as though EA can't afford to hire additional staff required to do all the tasks to get their games out on an annual basis.
If anything results from this, in the long-term, it'll mean larger teams and/or more realistic schedules. It sure as hell won't mean crappy games unless EA wants to start losing a lot of sales to it's competition.
As a whole, the game industry has pretty unrealistic goals for majority of it's insufficiently staffed developers and the projects they're working on. A reality check such as this is long overdue.
Crappy games are not going to be the solution to this labor problem.
If anything results from this, in the long-term, it'll mean larger teams and/or more realistic schedules. It sure as hell won't mean crappy games unless EA wants to start losing a lot of sales to it's competition.
As a whole, the game industry has pretty unrealistic goals for majority of it's insufficiently staffed developers and the projects they're working on. A reality check such as this is long overdue.
Crappy games are not going to be the solution to this labor problem.
The article might have done more good for the industry if it didn't focus on EA to the near exclusion of other companies. Would have been a much more balanced investigatory piece if the author had bothered to fill in a little more detail on the allusions to similar "slave" practices at other companies.
Mama Smurf
My penis is still intact.
Jonnyram said:Are you serious? Don't you think inhumane hours make people produce low quality work? Or are you a manager at EA?
I'm sure it doesn't help, but do you really think losing hundreds upon hundreds of hours of work a year won't make the games worst?
Where exacty are EA going to hire the talent to do this? And not just EA, all the other companies who do it too.
You're right though, EA probably can afford it (not that that would mean they'd do it necessarily). What about the rest? We're already seeing big publishers like Acclaim going under as it is, throw this on top and you have to either hire more people (if you can find them), pay the overtime or let the games go to shit. All of these things will cost the company more money,
Don't get me wrong here, I think the workers are right to complain and that the business practices are unfair...but I still think the end result will be poorer quality games or publishers folding even more easily. Maybe it'll be good for the industry in the long run, I suspect it might, but for now...crap.
From what it sounds like, losing those hours of work a year won't affect the quality of the games much because a lot of those overworked hours adds up to more mistakes and bugs that have to be fixed rather than progress made on the actual games themselves.Mama Smurf said:
And EA hiring the talent to do this... well, I don't know how many people in college are getting the relevant degrees, but a boost in employment would help the US economy, and it's not like EA still won't be a profit juggernaut. I don't even think it'll be that bad for the industry right now... and certainly don't think things could get all that much worse (as elitist as that sounds, I just find console games today are way too buggy/copying flavor of the month type games).
Maybe that's the circumstances for this article, but if the accusations leveled at EA are truly pervasive within many other game companies, then the gravity of these accusations should not be reserved for EA alone with only passing reference to what others are doing.firex said:
Sein said:
Are those i-bankers of yours working 80-plus hour weeks while only being paid for 40 of those hours? Is their enthusiasm for the field they're in being ruthlessly exploited by their employers to coerce them into working those kinds of hours? Somehow, I don't think so. And if you think persistent patterns of overwork and sleep deprivation aren't physically harmful to workers, you're either ignorant or insane.
The saddest thing is, these kids are so earnest about wanting to make games, and EA uses their dreams to draw them in and grind them up. They'll pressure these recruits into working insane hours seven days a week and not pay them for half of it 'because this is how videogames are made', as if 'living the dream' should be compensation enough for them. As if EA's doing them a favor by allowing them to toil away on popular titles. It's tragic.
Mama Smurf said:
The other possibility is that games will be released less rapidly, rather than being churned out at a breakneck pace for consumers that have been increasingly conditioned to buy 'more, more, more, faster, faster, faster'. Look at the A-list releases crowding each other for shelf space this Christmas alone, many of which I'm sure had teams working insane hours to get out the door in time for a 4th quarter release. It wouldn't hurt to put on the brakes a little, especially if it also means more humane working conditions for the people making the games.
pj325is said:
Pride and dedication is one thing. An employer (like EA) who knowingly exploits that pride and dedication to get work from their employees without compensating them for it is entirely another.
Mama Smurf
My penis is still intact.
Tellaerin said:
Which still works out as less money for the company in the long run. Instead of a particular team being able to get 3 or 4 games out in a system's lifetime, they'd only be able to do 2 or 3.
And for some games, you KNOW developers aren't going to slow down. Sports games have got to come out once a year (I think it's a law or something) and licensed products need to launch alongisde movies etc.
I really do think this industry needs to go through a lot of shit though anyway and come out stronger. Hopefully there will eventually be such massive penetration of the global market (and why wouldn't there be? Gamers are growing older, but still playing games, more girls are getting involved etc.) that games will just sell straight off for $10 or $15 like cinema tickets, because they know they'll sell so much that they'll actually have a decent shot at good profits. And if there's more movement towards downloading games rather than buying them at a store (which I think likely, though it's going to take time), that's even better.
Sort of strayed off topic a bit there.
In due time, only a few key personnel will continue working on these games in america with most of the labor outsourced to china, korea, india and other asian countries.
It's kinda tragic that these people pay for management's treachery... smarter planning better business practice and generally release of higher quality titles can help the bottom line as much as exploiting workers... but without the exploiting of the people.
It's kinda tragic that these people pay for management's treachery... smarter planning better business practice and generally release of higher quality titles can help the bottom line as much as exploiting workers... but without the exploiting of the people.
Mr_Furious said:
IAWTP. Larger teams and more humane hours will only help. There's no shortage of people who want to make games, so finding the personnel won't be a problem. If you can keep your workforce happy, they will be more productive too. When you are on hour 12 of a 6 or 7 day week, you really aren't as focused as you should be, and that only leads to mistakes which have to be caught and fixed by someone else later.
Here's the LA Times article from last week.
Sein said:
You need to ease up on the damage control. (Are you a producer at EA, Sein? You're certainly defending them passionately enough.) Many of them are young adults, often recruited straight out of college. Once on board, they're pressured to conform to the standards of a corporate culture that demands they run themselves into the ground without pay so as not to 'let down the team', because 'that's the way things are done' in the industry. How is this defensible, again? Please, tell me.
Tellaerin said:
It's been a while since I've seen the lame argumentation technique of accusing someone of having a secret personal stake in the outcome of the discussion. I can't say that I've missed it.
I have no interest in defending EA. I can just think of much better directions in which to direct my indignation. I think that this whole situation has been blown out of proportion. You're a prime example of that.
Tellaerin said:
If these recruits knew what they were getting into, then they're getting what they bargained for. If they didn't, then they have freedom to exit. Youth is no excuse. These college graduates are 20-21. They're old enough to be able to make their own decisions and young enough that many of them don't have insurmountable financial constraints on their ability to leave a job.
Edit: I have more sympathy for the middle-aged salarymen who have families to support and are no longer in their physical prime. Lots of young professionals work insane hours. I can't imagine how programmers are more deserving of pity than, say, medical residents.
The fact of the matter is that EA is pushing them hard, and the fresh graduates are accepting it, however miserable it makes them. EA knows how high the limits are set for these people, in terms of their naivety and determination, and exploits them for incredible gain. The young adults want to be successful, and success with EA is an excellent foray into the industry. If that means tolerating 60-80 hour weeks and forfeiting any outside life for a couple years, then they will do that. EA is aware of this, and has therefore made the most of it.
As for comparisons to other fields, or how 'this really isn't so bad', Tellaerin has argued pretty succinctly how this is still a serious issue.
As for comparisons to other fields, or how 'this really isn't so bad', Tellaerin has argued pretty succinctly how this is still a serious issue.
Zaptruder said:
Fortunately for Western programmers aspiring to get into game development, this just isn't true. Sure you'll have your FMV and maybe some object modelling outsourced, but creating the game it's absolutely necessary to have everyone close together. It's so frustrating when you have 1 day turnaround for issues and you just can't get anything solved. Outsourcing is financially practical for some things, but it's not this great panacea that gives managers great products for no cost. Game development just doesn't work like that.
Eggo said:
Unfortunately this is wrong too. A desire to make games does not give one the qualification to make them. There are A LOT of bad and crappy coders out there and a lot of times putting them on the code-base is actually a detriment to the team as a whole. It's quite interesting really, the difference in productivity between the top guy on the team and the bottom guy on the team is in factors of 10. That's just ridiculous, and you don't see that in any other field. Michael Jordan doesn't score 100 times the points his teammates do. Doctors don't save 100 times more patients than the other doctors. But a programmer will produce 100 times more useful code than the crappier programmer. 100 might be a tad overboard, but it's really damn high.
And what people from the outside don't understand about game development is that almost every single game undergoes many different revisions and directions throughout its life. Just look at Halo 2 for a classic example, they were "working" on it for 3 years, but changed a lot of their general direction in just the last year. I'd say that's the rule and not the exception. What will save the game industry professionals and software professionals in general from being overworked is getting managers with good experience that have vision and know where to take the project.
I think any programmer can tell you that if you KNOW where to go with a problem and what to do, coding it up isn't a very difficult task. But when you have to code the same thing 5 different times because the way things work, the direction of the team, whatever, changes. Ya, that sucks.
kaching said:
The problem is that too few of them are willing to do so, because they have it impressed upon them that these kinds of working conditions are to be expected in this industry, and that they'll just have to suck it up without complaint if they want to pursue their dream of making games. There's also an underlying threat of being labelled unemployable in the industry if they don't play along, not to mention the pressure to do so in order to be a team player and not let anyone down. Certainly, they're capable of standing up for their rights, but that wouldn't be EA's best interests, and EA's naturally going to bring to bear whatever pressures they can to discourage such behavior.
Sein said:
Given the tenor of your previous remarks, I was led to assume you either had a personal stake in EA's employee practices, or just had little empathy for other human beings in general and had no qualms about seeing them exploited, since it's apparently their own fault for letting themselves be misled and victimized. I suspected it was the former, but I see now that I was mistaken. It's clearly the latter. And no, it's not perfectly fine to run people into the ground until they exit the industry because they're 'young and resilient'--being young doesn't make them less deserving of fair treatment than the middle-aged salarymen you mentioned in your edit.
Sein said:
For a person who has no interest in defending EA, you're doing quite a job of it in this thread. As far as blowing the situation out of proportion, I think it's telling that you consider the notion of a company working their employees 80+ hours a week while paying them for only half those hours to be so minor that calling it inhumane and exploitative is blowing it out of proportion. I hope to hell none of us are ever stuck working for you.
The problem with "if they don't like those kinds of hours, they can find a job somewhere else" is that EVERY company has the same set of expectations.
To be blunt: America has a huge problem with overwork. There is way too much glorification of working a zillion hours at your job...and for most of the people I know in the workforce, those extra hours don't earn ANY extra compensation. So we're all the suckers, and the companies chuckle all the way to the bank...and somehow, we've all been sold an illusion that all that extra unpaid time will get us SOMETHING someday. Hey, guess what? You don't get a bonus check when you die.
If it's really not possible to make videogames in such a way that employees can expect a 40-hour week with OCCASIONAL overtime (and compensated overtime would be reasonable), then I'd be perfectly happy seeing videogames go the way of the dinosaur. But I find it hard to believe that balancing the personal life of the employee and the goals of the corporation is impossible.
To be blunt: America has a huge problem with overwork. There is way too much glorification of working a zillion hours at your job...and for most of the people I know in the workforce, those extra hours don't earn ANY extra compensation. So we're all the suckers, and the companies chuckle all the way to the bank...and somehow, we've all been sold an illusion that all that extra unpaid time will get us SOMETHING someday. Hey, guess what? You don't get a bonus check when you die.
If it's really not possible to make videogames in such a way that employees can expect a 40-hour week with OCCASIONAL overtime (and compensated overtime would be reasonable), then I'd be perfectly happy seeing videogames go the way of the dinosaur. But I find it hard to believe that balancing the personal life of the employee and the goals of the corporation is impossible.
Tellaerin said:
I'm tempted to but will refrain from questioning your personal interest in this matter. You seem to be much more emotionally charged than a neutral individual would be.
Tellaerin said:
What you fail to realize is that people often want to be treated differently. If they have some quality -- in this case, youth -- that they can leverage as a bargaining advantage, then who are you to second-guess that tactic? The article makes clear that recent graduates have a better chance of being hired than older job-seekers.
Both EA and its recruits are taking full advantage of their bargaining positions; EA offers the prospect of a successful career in the industry, and recruits have youth, education, and skill. I have much more faith than you do that these recruits are capable of leveraging their skills and making rational and informed decisions about their employment. If, as I believe, all of the participants in this system are intelligent and willing, then what does it matter that you find it unconscionable?
Zaptruder said:Are you saying where you can't imagine a scenario where the few key personnel are moved to china?
Not as an industry-wide movement no. You do have cases like Ubisoft where they have a studio in Shanghai that is responsible for an engine (and even a game). I see Ubisoft expanding that studio, but they're also expanding their Montreal studio as well.
Mr_Furious
Member
Being someone that's been working in the game industry for over the past 10 years, unfortunately it's not. :-\Sein said:
The only one taking advantage here is EA. These young recruits you keep mentioning don't have dick to "leverage" and are too green to know what's really going on and will tolerate all the bullshit just because they are new and are being conditioned to do so. What's worse is that these "new recruits" are also learning really bad work ethics and that's much harder to shake once you're seasoned in the industry.Sein said:
Speaking for myself, I put up with the bullshit for the pure love of making games. I truly love games, not only as a career but also as a hobby. I've been witness to the glories that can come from such hard work and abuse and that is my motivation to continue to put up with what I can in the hopes that "my day is coming". If I were new, I'd be putting up with it because either a) "I don't know any better" or b) "just because" (or both).
The #1 cause for all of the hardship is simply poor management and this business wreaks of that.
Yes, I'm familiar with the concept of Golden Shackles, seeing as it greatly predates the EA situation and is a far more pervasive problem as -jinx- points out. Just because the actions of many corporate entities are heartlessly opportunistic in this regard doesn't absolve the individual of their personal responsibility to fight this syndrome, acting proactively to prevent its occurrence by remaining educated and firm in the defense of their personal rights.Tellaerin said:
Mr_Furious
Member
Easier said than done, my friend. Some people have families to support (like myself) and fighting such a fight can result in worser hardships than just being forced to work overtime.kaching said: