Anonymous Mythic employee dishes dirt on WAR and SWTOR

[Fordel]

Why do people still work for EA, is it just desperation and no where else to go?

[Lantyssa]

Now I have visions of EA employees being given a THAC0 based on time served.

THAC0.  Hahaha.  Gods, you're so old, Nebu.

[Fordel]

THAC0 is like the worst devised system I've seen while on that tangent.

[Modern Angel]

God no, what? There are a zillion worse systems.

[Fordel]

But I haven't seen those systems! 

[Cheddar]

Why do people still work for EA, is it just desperation and no where else to go?

Money.  A steady paycheck is a hell of a drug!

[Rasix]

Good to know you're paying attention.

[Trippy]

Now I have visions of EA employees being given a THAC0 based on time served.

THAC0.  Hahaha.  Gods, you're so old, Nebu.

That's not *that* old. Old is playing D&D from the original 3 book "white box" set.

[Nebu]

That's not *that* old. Old is playing D&D from the original 3 book "white box" set.

Did that too.  What do I win?

[Nevermore]

A new crayon to fill in the numbers on your dice.

[Abelian75]

The employees gather around and roll d20's to keep their jobs, duh.

And on a natural 20, YOU get to chose someone to let go!

[Lantyssa]

A new crayon to fill in the numbers on your dice.

I used silver marker pens.  Looked so much better than crayon.

[Furiously]

I used lead on the side opposite 20.

[Soln]

KEEP ON THE BORDERLANDS

I had to help the derail.

Anyhoo, via Slashdot, seems Zynga now worth more than EA. 

[Sir T]

It appeals to the all important gold farmer demographic.

[sam, an eggplant]

If it was actually public with shares trading at that valuation, I'd short the hell out of Zynga. Of course it's not public and that number was plucked out of someone's ass.

[LC]

Zynga is like the dev house of cards.

[Chimpy]

Zynga is like the dev house of cards.

Can't that be said about most dev houses though?

[sam, an eggplant]

Zynga is scummier than most.

Social gaming isn't going away, but the outrageously profitable anti-consumer tactics from "industry leaders" like Zynga will quickly become a thing of the past. Zynga did extremely well when social gaming was the Wild West. They could get away with anything. Those days are ending.

I'm still impressed that Raph didn't follow suit. He was positioned to take the lead and it's just so much money. I'm sure it crossed his mind as metaplace slowly foundered. I know I'd be tempted.

[Velorath]

Why do people still work for EA, is it just desperation and no where else to go?

To be fair, so far we've heard about possible layoffs from Mythic, and now EA Canada and Black Box.  Layoffs at Mythic shouldn't be any sort of surprise (really the surprise there is that they're still around at this point).  EA Canada seems to have run into some issues getting NBA Elite completed to the point where the game was delayed indefinitely, leaving NBA 2k11 without any competition.  That's a pretty big hit to EA there.  Meanwhile, Black Box only has the Skate franchise at the moment since Need for Speed is currently being worked on by Criterion (Black Box's last Need for Speed game, Undercover got released to terrible reviews).  As far as I know, they don't currently have any announced projects, and one can only assume they're working on the next Skate game.

These aren't development teams shipping successful products and losing their jobs right after.  These are teams that have shipped some underwhelming products or flat out couldn't get their games finished at all.

[tmp]

Roll-offs? 

They put them in barrels and roll them out of town, pardner.

[Margalis]

Why do people still work for EA, is it just desperation and no where else to go?

EA pays quite well and has a whole bunch of middle-manager type roles where you basically don't have to do any work.

[UnSub]

Why do people still work for EA, is it just desperation and no where else to go?

Why do people work for any big company? They are one of the market leaders, relatively stable and have lots of potential options / tentacles into various properties.

This is also an industry where the options are:

1) Work for yourself, toil long hours, launch a title probably no-one ever sees, die in obscurity.
2) Work for a small indie studio, toil long hours, launch a title probably few see, find out the owner's ex-wife just left town with the payroll.
3) Work for a moderately-sized studio, toil long hours, launch a title some people buy, find the studio collapses under unmanaged debt.
4) Work for a large studio, toil long hours, launch a title people may actually have heard of and buy, be straight-jacketed into the most unimaginative design possible, get fired as a cost-cutting move.
5) Work for a big publisher, toil long hours, launch multiple titles, see 4 in 5 titles fail to reach profitability, realise the only way to stay in business is to fire people as a cost-cutting move.

and variations thereof. "Launch a title, see huge success, get all the creative freedom you'll ever want, repeat" is the dream the games industry is built on, but only happens very rarely.

[Numtini]

You forgot all the options in which they work for a successful studio that EA then buys. 

[shiznitz]

You forgot all the options in which they work for a successful studio that EA then buys. 

Lotto ticket?

[Sheepherder]

6) Work for Blizzard Entertainment, toil long hours, launch a title people may actually have heard of and buy, be straight-jacketed into the most unimaginative design possible, not get fired as a cost-cutting move.

[UnSub]

6) Work for Blizzard Entertainment, toil long hours, launch a title people may actually have heard of and buy, be straight-jacketed into the most unimaginative design possible, not get fired as a cost-cutting move.

... leave Blizzard, start your own studio, see 1) - 3) above. 

(Yeah, there are other options, but that post was interrupting my RotMG time.  )

[Sheepherder]

ArenaNet still hasn't fucked themselves out of a job yet, and Guild Wars isn't exactly obscure.

The last stillborn creations that even hinted at competing with WoW were eaten fresh out of the womb though, so in a little while AN might be a data point on a line.  Particularly since GW2 seems fit to compete with Diablo III and WoW's new expansion.

[KallDrexx]

Arenanet is the exception, not the norm. 

Most game companies suck to work for.

[UnSub]

If ArenaNet sees GW2 launch and become bigger / better than GW, they'll have bucked a long trend in Western MMO development. I can't think of a Western MMO studio / developer who's second title / sequel exceeded their first effort.

... except for Funcom, but they set the bar real, real low with Anarchy Online's launch.

... or maybe Wizard101 rising from the ashes of Shadowbane.

[Demonix]

If ArenaNet sees GW2 launch and become bigger / better than GW, they'll have bucked a long trend in Western MMO development. I can't think of a Western MMO studio / developer who's second title / sequel exceeded their first effort.

... except for Funcom, but they set the bar real, real low with Anarchy Online's launch.

... or maybe Wizard101 rising from the ashes of Shadowbane.

Wait what?  I didn't know that about Wizard101!  That's...kinda cool.

[Famine]

 

Most game companies suck to work for.

Dono about all of that. You will always have various opinions on current or past experiences like any career field for any industry in the world.

[KallDrexx]

Dono about all of that. You will always have various opinions on current or past experiences like any career field for any industry in the world.

True, but in most circumstances, people in software development don't try to work designing a very specific type of software, unless they have a specialty in that.  Game development is different in that a lot of people want to get into it only because they think that developing games is the most fun job ever.  Due to the high amount of people that want to get into game development, the barriers to entry are high which allows for lower paid jobs and larger egos for the people who actually make it in. 

When Auran laid us off because they went bankrupt, because Fury was a piece of shit due to egotistical leads who thought they knew everything about making a game fun (and my opinion was worthless because I was only a Junior, and players opinions were worthless because players don't know what they want), I talked to several of my colleagues who had worked at quite a few companies and all of them said that the uncreative environment I was in was in most game companies. 

The fact that they stayed in the industry, and went from company to company (good companies that got bought and/or dismantled to shitty companies that were as bad as Auran) and the fact that I left the game industry and almost instantly started making $10k more in salary seems to back that up.

The problem is game designers are rarely good business people, and good business people are rarely good game designers.  There's more to running a game studio than just having a great game idea, you need good project management, resource management (money and staff), marketing, a sound business model, etc... 

In other industries, to create a software product you first have to recognize that there is a gap and need of some sort where your software can fit in (similar software force the users to use an inefficient process, there is no software that does x, y, and z, etc...).  Games are different in the fact that they almost start out with "wouldn't it be cool if...".  They are two fundamental different ways of starting or going about business and the latter seems easier to the person at the time while the former is more of a proactive approach.

Hell if Auran came up with a business plan during the pre-production stages of Fury than things would have been massively different, as it would have been more focused on how to use a game to make money rather than making a game then trying to figure out how to make money off it.  They admitted in several interviews that the business model was figured out part-way through development during an "Ah-ha" type of moment.

[Lantyssa]

Apparently it was more of an "Ur ur" moment...

[UnSub]

I remember the devs asking on the Fury forums what kind of payment model players thought they should use. 

Although I'm a strong believer in consulting with both consumers / end users / players for business decisions, there are some things you can't treat those groups as experts on. How to earn money to keep the lights on is one of those things.