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What It's Like to Work on League of Legends

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Re: What It's Like to Work on League of Legends

#61

Post by C1sc0cat »

keanzu wrote: post #26
Reedx wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why cherry pick 1 review? You could've copied the more representative aggregation of reviews: Pros: "Riot is a great place for gamers" (in 79 reviews) "Cares about Rioters: Riot has fantastic perks because they want to keep the talent (that's us) happy" (in 67 reviews) "Best free food I’ve eaten, benefits are great, and there is a lot of opportunity if you are willing to work for it" (in 40 reviews) "people that play…

> "Some Rioters lack a sense of appreciation" (in 59 reviews) This phrasing immediately struck me as odd so I went looking for an actual review: 'Some Rioters lack a sense of appreciation. Some Rioters, particularly those who have never worked a "real job," do not seem to appreciate what Riot offers them.' Smells like astroturfing.

Sounds like really weird phrasing to me maybe some one from a different culture or its some really bizarre HR Buzzspeak invented term.

Re: What It's Like to Work on League of Legends

#62

Post by tapland »

elcomet wrote: post #56
Reedx wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why cherry pick 1 review? You could've copied the more representative aggregation of reviews: Pros: "Riot is a great place for gamers" (in 79 reviews) "Cares about Rioters: Riot has fantastic perks because they want to keep the talent (that's us) happy" (in 67 reviews) "Best free food I’ve eaten, benefits are great, and there is a lot of opportunity if you are willing to work for it" (in 40 reviews) "people that play…

All those cons actually seem like disguisedd pros: > Some Rioters lack a sense of appreciation So what riot offers is amazing, but some employees don't know how to appreciate it (but you, you will of course) > Growing pains: They talk of the flat organization which is a selling point to some people > Tends to over-value ivy league and mbas That's what ivy league and mbas (people they're trying to recruit) want to hea…

That's the point when astroturfing. Make the cons attractive.

Re: What It's Like to Work on League of Legends

#64

Post by Proziam »

celticmusic wrote: post #24
0x8BADF00D wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any company in the games industry is like this. It’s a sweatshop.

Their COO would literally walk up to an employee and flick their balls, smack their ass, HUMP on them, and fart in their face (not all at once, although does that matter?) Maybe you consider that normal in game dev companies, but I have to believe that's outside the norm. The guy got suspended without pay for 2 months. https://www.businessinsider.com/riot-games-suspends-coo-scot...

[0]Their co-founder was being boosted by a player whilst going off about how boosting was evil and ruining the game and banning every booster they could find. Of course, I've seen a lot more about the dark side of Riot than most because [1]I've been around pro lol since before there was a cloud 9.

[0]https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/533ak3/com... (apologies, some of the sites originally covering this have died since)

[1]https://lol.gamepedia.com/Pulse_Esports

Re: What It's Like to Work on League of Legends

#65

Post by bsenftner »

bsenftner wrote: post #39
shultays wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is quite a generalization

Con confirm, the games industry is criminal in their treatment of employees. A studio cannot exist without the institutional abuse, as the budgets are not achievable otherwise.

Down vote all ya want, it won't change the reality and your fantasy of working there will be a nightmare of you make it. I was there.

Re: What It's Like to Work on League of Legends

#66

Post by pingyong »

jrockway wrote: post #18
Madmallard wrote: post #10

It's baffling seeing all these credentialed people talk and the game still having an utterly horrid bug riddled client for so long now.

My impression from playing games is that bugs don't kill the games, stopping feature releases to fix bugs kills games. Everyone just laughs at the bugs, even when they change the outcome of an esports matchup with millions of dollars on the line. In the end, the players keep playing and the sponsors keep buying ads, so it's no biggie. Looking through Blizzard's tech talks about Overwatch (they do exist!) is that they…

It should be noted that the client and the game are two completely separate pieces of software. The game itself certainly has a bunch of bugs, but those bugs tend to not be game-breaking, and are mostly "this doesn't behave as described" - for many of these things, it's not even clear anymore what the intended behavior even is. Until it's fixed, it's intended, for better or worse.

But apart from that, the game is actually somewhat bug free.

The client however, is just an honest to god embarrassment. It is legitimately terrible in every aspect that could possibly be terrible. It's slow, so slow that many things temporarily break on laptops, like opening rune pages in champion select. It uses more RAM than the game itself (?), it runs on like 4 different processes that interact in who knows what ways, but if the client crashes and you're trying to kill it that often (but not always) initiates a repair for no apparent reason. Often it doesn't even shutdown properly when you close it. On a friend's computer it one day just died and didn't start at all anymore, with no indication of what went wrong. He had to reinstall the game.

https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/epm9c8/all...

It's a mess. And not only it is it a mess, it's an embarrassing mess because the client was always a pain point of many players, until they decided to completely re-write it in 2015. From the ground up. Clean slate - scalable, durable, lightweight, all that jazz. And now it's widely regarded as worse than the original client. If there was ever an example of how not to rewrite something, that would be it. Just a catastrophe on every level.

Re: What It's Like to Work on League of Legends

#67

Post by keanzu »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #58
keanzu wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Some Rioters lack a sense of appreciation" (in 59 reviews) This phrasing immediately struck me as odd so I went looking for an actual review: 'Some Rioters lack a sense of appreciation. Some Rioters, particularly those who have never worked a "real job," do not seem to appreciate what Riot offers them.' Smells like astroturfing.

The parent comment smells like outrage mongering. How could I know that you didn’t post it yourself? All the reviews are equally unreliable, you can’t just pick out the ones that you like.

> How could I know that you didn’t post it yourself?

You can't? How could anyone else know that I didn't write "smells like outrage mongering", maybe I enjoy arguing with myself. The only people who know for sure are you and I ... if we are even two different people, maybe you are my sock puppet, maybe I am yours. Who can prove that we are or aren't?

Assuming that I did write every comment in the entire tree - what difference does that make to any of the arguments?

Re: What It's Like to Work on League of Legends

#68

Post by Kiro »

Fnoord wrote: post #63
Kiro wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What company isn't?

Tencent only owns 5% of Activison Blizzard, Paradox, and Ubisoft. They own 40% of Epic Games, and 100% of Grinding Gear Games (Path of Exile).

Also 100% of Supercell and they dominate the Chinese mobile gaming market with Honor of Kings and PUBG Mobile.

Re: What It's Like to Work on League of Legends

#69

Post by Reedx »

Agentlien wrote: post #51
Reedx wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's ridiculous. Game companies are nothing like sweatshops and the reality is much less sensational than what you hear about, which should be no surprise. Most are basically 9-5, generally with flexible hours. Often free food/snacks/games and other perks. Some take Friday afternoons off to drink and play games. Crunch toward release does happen a lot, it's a problem, but they're getting better about avoiding it. Y…

I used to work for EA (five years at Ghost, specifically) and my experience there mirrors what you described. Often there was a crunch towards the end, but the last game I worked on had none. I'm currently working for Zoink and it's similar, though with a stronger stance against overtime.

Thanks. Also thanks to the silent majority who kept my post well afloat. It's weird that describing what typical game companies are like is controversial here.

Re: What It's Like to Work on League of Legends

#70

Post by XPKBandMaidCzun »

rexarex wrote: post #48
XPKBandMaidCzun wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That term, "ol' boys club" is a pretty offensive generalization. It's sad to see this person didn't jive with management at their workplace, and maybe it wasn't a comfortable environment, but it's not like employees have their hands on the knob of who gets hired. It's incredibly hurtful to see someone draw such sweeping, negative inferences without specificity. Whenever the word toxic gets brought up, I brace, becaus…

Are you trying to gaslight people? You can’t seriously be trying to say that someone’s opinion that a company culture is toxic is offensive making you a victim. Come on! Anyone whose actually worked at a toxic company knows when to call a spade a spade. Some company cultures suck! Especially outside the ivory tower of SV. And the gaming industry as a whole is known for a lot of the complaints made!

It seems you feel very strongly about this, I believe you're trying to do the right thing. Management and cultures can be bad at workplaces.

I view situations on an individualized basis - full stop. I am not a fan of being placed to judge situations I don't know based on vague allegations. I prefer view group dynamics as cooperative rather than competitive as much as I can.

My issue is the communication style. The labeling and categorization that leaves people out, and even implies wrongdoing and malice by totally unrelated parties.

Just to take this comment as an example:

Gaslighting implies an intent to psychologically manipulate, as mentioned above, I view things on a case by case basis, and didn't witness the person in the reviews situation (to the affirmative or negative, what if there's actually shades of gray or they are actually at fault in the end?). Ivory tower denotes some semblance of power and advantage.

What if I were to say, the way this is coming across creates a difficult environment for someone who disagrees to express their observations?

I'm not a manager. I'm not part of an ivory tower. I'm not part of the aforementioned aggrieved categories. It doesn't mean my emotions and needs are less important. Disagreeing doesn't imply advantage or malice.

I think the main thing culture needs in SV is better communication. There's other employees who'd potentially be sympathetic, but are probably fearful to offer insights due to belief they'd be belittled.

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