3 ms·

Since you mention videogames. I used to work at EA and one thing I found was that the company culture was not as developer oriented as you might expect. Obvious

Since you mention videogames. I used to work at EA and one thing I found was that the company culture was not as developer oriented as you might expect. Obviously, they invested a lot in developers, artists, and other content producers. But the overal company culture and the upper echelons of leadership very strongly reflected EA's history as a software publishing company founded by business folks, and not a group of game makers who set out to build their own company. It was very much about producers, money, marketing, etc. I used to joke that EA was in the business of selling disks and that the games on them were merely an annoying chore that they were obliged to do in order to get people to buy them. It often felt like they considered the entire dev team to be a cost center.

vvanders 4y ago
Ex-gamedev and this totally rings true. We had one title I worked on where the "interviews with the dev team" was all just interviews with the external producers(aka PM who came in from the publisher to keep everything "on track"). Never happened to us but the best one I heard was that the publisher puts a clause in your contract that they get the source+IP if you go bankrupt(protect their investments, their taking huge risk, etc....). However about 2/3 through development when the studio is at peak HC burn they would start denying milestones for trivial things. One, two milestones go by and the studio burns through all cash, folds and publisher gets source+IP. Publisher then hires the dev team, who just lost their jobs, at a reduced rate(most gamedev a don't have great savings...) to finish out the game, avoids paying any royalties and picks up the IP. Happy to be out of that industry, some really interesting technical challenges and driven people but the whole thing is similar to the recording industry in the way they exploit people and passions for their own gain.

vvanders 4y ago

Ex-gamedev and this totally rings true. We had one title I worked on where the "interviews with the dev team" was all just interviews with the external producers(aka PM who came in from the publisher to keep everything "on track"). Never happened to us but the best one I heard was that the publisher puts a clause in your contract that they get the source+IP if you go bankrupt(protect their investments, their taking huge risk, etc....). However about 2/3 through development when the studio is at peak HC burn they would start denying milestones for trivial things. One, two milestones go by and the studio burns through all cash, folds and publisher gets source+IP. Publisher then hires the dev team, who just lost their jobs, at a reduced rate(most gamedev a don't have great savings...) to finish out the game, avoids paying any royalties and picks up the IP. Happy to be out of that industry, some really interesting technical challenges and driven people but the whole thing is similar to the recording industry in the way they exploit people and passions for their own gain.