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My [husband] works for Electronic Arts, I'm ... a disgruntled spouse. (2004) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1454102 - June 2010 (105 comments)
EA: The Human Story (2004)
111–120 of 156 posts
Re: EA: The Human Story (2004)
#112> Their devotion to D&I I worked for a competitor and this is single-handedly the most frustrating thing I had to deal with honestly. Not because it’s not a noble objective, but because it was weaponised by a minority of people to control the studio in various ways, it was bullying in its purest form and extremely toxic - the environment felt really hostile, like saying something even moderately wrong would lead to a…
To be purely pedantic: Spanish flu was only called that because Spain was the only large country reporting accurate infections and deaths. It ought to have been named American flu, since that's were it originated, but the US was intentionally underreporting (war time rules and all).
Re: EA: The Human Story (2004)
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gamepass would be cable for videogames, PBS for videogames would be a government agency that made them.
The government of Canada funds the development of a fair amount of video games through the Canadian media fund.
Are the results of that fund designed for compulsion to a lesser degree than most games made with similar sized budgets?
Re: EA: The Human Story (2004)
#114> Their devotion to D&I I worked for a competitor and this is single-handedly the most frustrating thing I had to deal with honestly. Not because it’s not a noble objective, but because it was weaponised by a minority of people to control the studio in various ways, it was bullying in its purest form and extremely toxic - the environment felt really hostile, like saying something even moderately wrong would lead to a…
To be purely pedantic: Spanish flu was only called that because Spain was the only large country reporting accurate infections and deaths. It ought to have been named American flu, since that's were it originated, but the US was intentionally underreporting (war time rules and all).
Yeah. That’s the history, and widely understood. At least in Europe (incl. UK)
Only a fool would think that it was because the Spanish we’re dirty or adversely affected.
Re: EA: The Human Story (2004)
#115> Their devotion to D&I I worked for a competitor and this is single-handedly the most frustrating thing I had to deal with honestly. Not because it’s not a noble objective, but because it was weaponised by a minority of people to control the studio in various ways, it was bullying in its purest form and extremely toxic - the environment felt really hostile, like saying something even moderately wrong would lead to a…
> but because it was weaponised by a minority of people to control the studio in various ways
I've also run into this. It can quite literally feel like I'm walking on eggshells. And it's not because I'm deeply racist or misogynistic (at least I think I'm not and I sure hope I'm not), but I literally just cannot voice any of my concern or dissent for any of my company's politically motivated initiatives. I would prefer my workplace to be devoid of political topics, and focused on meeting the business objectives, but that's not the reality.
So I agree. I also treat strong D&I initiatives as a red flag. I don't care what people's race, ethnicity, gender, or ideologies are. If you can do your job well and be a generally (we all have bad days) pleasant coworker, then awesome. If you act like a jerk, that's just acting like a jerk regardless of any immutable characteristics.
Re: EA: The Human Story (2004)
#116> Their devotion to D&I I worked for a competitor and this is single-handedly the most frustrating thing I had to deal with honestly. Not because it’s not a noble objective, but because it was weaponised by a minority of people to control the studio in various ways, it was bullying in its purest form and extremely toxic - the environment felt really hostile, like saying something even moderately wrong would lead to a…
> even if the games are aggressively monetised, it seems that they try to take care of employees.
These are probably related attributes. It's hard to take care of your employees when your company is operating game paycheck to game paycheck.
Re: EA: The Human Story (2004)
#117> Their devotion to D&I I worked for a competitor and this is single-handedly the most frustrating thing I had to deal with honestly. Not because it’s not a noble objective, but because it was weaponised by a minority of people to control the studio in various ways, it was bullying in its purest form and extremely toxic - the environment felt really hostile, like saying something even moderately wrong would lead to a…
The problem with D&I initiatives is that, ironically, they end up spearheaded by extremely privileged people. Those people usually have one (or MAYBE 2) main axis/axes of marginalization (see: upper-middle class/well off white trans women, rich straight POC, etc.). They then proceed to speak for every member of group X and/or declare that their problems are the only ones that matter.
The other problem is that such initiatives are naturally going to tend towards rewarding/biasing towards visible and apparent differences. (Which is why race, sex, and gender take so much center stage). "Diversity" basically only means 'diversity we can see'/skindeep diversity.
Re: EA: The Human Story (2004)
#118This blog post is from 18 years ago so I'd be curious if any game developers can speak to the current state of affairs in the industry. It's always been notorious for overworking employees, but I'm not sure if it's to the same scale described here.
Things have dramatically improved in the last 18 years. That's not to say that crunch doesn't happen, or that there aren't studios that abuse their employees, but large companies like EA have all moved past this death march for months model. Ubisoft is generally considered to be an excellent employer - reasonable pay, good work life balance and career/progression systems available for everyone. It's still not perfect…
Quite a few studios still crunch (eg. Naughty Dog and CD Projekt are some big ones), and a lot of studios that claim they don't crunch outsource their crunch (eg. Insomniac outsources to Lemon Sky Studios in Malaysia, and Lemon Sky is well known for both their crunch culture and for not paying overtime).
Re: EA: The Human Story (2004)
#119Good grief, this post is nearly old enough to vote. EA has changed a lot in those years, mostly for the better. I spent 13 years there from 2005-2018 and it was a great place to work; the people were great, the problems were interesting, and the hours were normal.
This is being posted because people have their knives out for Unity at the moment, and this occurred while Riccitiello (current Unity CEO) was the CEO at EA.
Re: EA: The Human Story (2004)
#120> Their devotion to D&I I worked for a competitor and this is single-handedly the most frustrating thing I had to deal with honestly. Not because it’s not a noble objective, but because it was weaponised by a minority of people to control the studio in various ways, it was bullying in its purest form and extremely toxic - the environment felt really hostile, like saying something even moderately wrong would lead to a…
The problem with D&I initiatives is that, ironically, they end up spearheaded by extremely privileged people. Those people usually have one (or MAYBE 2) main axis/axes of marginalization (see: upper-middle class/well off white trans women, rich straight POC, etc.). They then proceed to speak for every member of group X and/or declare that their problems are the only ones that matter. The other problem is that such in…
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