EA buys into Mythic..

[Takitothemacs]

Why do you need to try to get more people to pay? Sounds like you're single handedly funding them with all your accounts already

Between Crom, Finche and myself we can launch a small zerg tbh

[ambera]

your task for this month is to all get your partners to open an account

I've only got 1 partner and he has 1.5 accounts already. That should be enough. Why run our own zerg when we can borrow yours?

[Cromcruaich]

Why do you need to try to get more people to pay? Sounds like you're single handedly funding them with all your accounts already

All my money goes on fast elves and loose luris.

[Grymligast]

Got 8 acc´s myself and another 3 who I am keeping for friends who have quit.

[Lieva]

http://www.gucomics.com/

hehe

[Cryn]

Of course it's not exactly slave labour, but the working practices that EA enforces are illegal and they have been taken to court over it on a few occasions. It's really no better than companies using child labour and such in 3rd world nations - that's not something that should be supported. Note that EA will often push developers to work almost twice as long as the legal maximum European working hour week, are you suggesting that's not something to be bothered or concerned about? Those limits exist for a reason.

I'm not condoning this sort of awful working practice, but EA would hardly be unusual here. Development is rife with poor management, leading to a rollercoaster of slack/busy periods. I'd be surprised if Mythic had the sort of strict 9 - 5 + decent overtime compensation deal you described Microsoft as having.

Job and knock is the way development should be handled, backed up with inspirational culture and management. Noone takes that route though, cos management is populated with bureaucrats instead of leaders.

[Xest]

I'm not condoning this sort of awful working practice, but EA would hardly be unusual here. Development is rife with poor management, leading to a rollercoaster of slack/busy periods. I'd be surprised if Mythic had the sort of strict 9 - 5 + decent overtime compensation deal you described Microsoft as having.

Job and knock is the way development should be handled, backed up with inspirational culture and management. Noone takes that route though, cos management is populated with bureaucrats instead of leaders.

Well things have certainly got a lot better, on the contrary though it's generally still the independants that do have the good working practices - id, Blizzard, Mythic and such. Also even other larger firms like Vivendi may well be just as bad but I've yet to hear any complaints about Vivendi's working practices, yet the complaints about EAs are much more commonplace. That's not to say EA is alone, there are some other dev. studios out there that do it but EA is most certainly the biggest and most prominent abuser.

With regards to slack/busy periods, that's not the issue here, the point is EA is expecting permanent crunch time out of workers, no one can physically do that for their entire life, even the most strong willed person is going to burn out eventually under those kind of conditions and that's the real problem here.

There are companies that tried to do exactly the opposite like Ion storm however and well, look how badly that ended up but I'm convinced that was due to bad managers with good ideas, when you get good managers with good ideas who beleive in good working practices you get places like Google, Pixar and such - places that just look damn fun to work

[Lieva]

peeps who have been saying ea overwork their workers.
Sanya from mythic posted this on /gu forums...

"Going to be" underworked and underpaid?

HAHAHAHAHHAHA.

*wheezes*

Oh, you funny, funny man.

Let me break it to you gently. The people with Ferraris are not even 1% of the whole industry. Everyone who does not own their very own company could EASILY make 20% more money in any other industry. That goes for the programmers, the artists, and the writers. Even a web writer like me can easily score a twenty GRAND pay raise just by going to work for an actual PR agency. Twenty thousand. Sweet monkey deities. For most of my so-called career prior to Mythic I didn't make twenty grand in a whole year.

And I find it hard to resent even the three whole dudes driving Jags, because most of them went YEARS getting paid in shares instead of actual money. Shares that had nearly a 100% probability of being worthless, because most games? Never launch.

As a side note: A small indie like Mythic (less than 200 is considered small) has lousy benefits, because in the US, might makes right when it comes to health care and the other things normal grownups enjoy when they become employed. A ginormous corporation like EA, on the other hand, tosses around things like "vision coverage" like Pez. You think a whole company full of nerds doesn't need vision coverage like you need clean underpants?

Oh, yeah. If you want to work in games AND be rich, start your own company and eat a lot of ramen, or better yet, marry someone rich.

Our guys were already working overtime... only we didn't PAY overtime. Most devs will tell you they work because they love it. Money can't buy devotion, no matter what I once thought.

so business as usual i spose

[Xest]

I think there's a line between what Sanya's on about and what EA are guilty of with a lot of their aquired companies tho, hell I work overtime and don't get paid for it, it's just something you have to do sometime - because when it comes to promotion time it gets you a long way. I don't however work more than 45hrs a week (except on extremely rare occasions).

The irony in the games industry right now, which Sanya kinda hinted at is that the individual developers making the most money are indies making small casual games. Certainly if you're not a high up designer/exec then building your own small company selling addictive games to the casual market is the way to cash in. Again this is down to the way the mega-corps like EA have totally gutted game dev. as a career and treat it as a sweat-shop trade however.

The game developer who made the most personal income over the last year wasn't John Carmack or anyone like that, it was the guy behind bejeweled.

[Lairiodd]

There is also the saying which goes something like "do what you love, and starve". The point is that when people are deciding what job they are willing to take, they take into account everything. Sayna even points it out explicitly. There are programmers at Mythic who could make money by switching career. Why don't they ? (because their current job is worth the difference in pay).

In order to work in the games industry, you would tend to find that most people have made trade-offs. This could include worse working conditions, lower pay or longer hours. The benefit is that those people are doing a job that they prefer to other jobs. They have effectively put a monetary value on working on games every day.

In Paris, there is a group of people responsible for keeping the sewers moving. Apparently, the roll these big spheres down the sewers. (google Paris sewers cleaning ball). They will also go looking for items if you drop them don't the rain water grills on the street. I am sure that it is a high paying job compared to the amount of work they have to do/stress of the job. Also, they probably spend hours a day sitting around doing little. Now, would you ever do that job ?