Electronic Arts Cuts 5% Of Worldwide Staff

Jay Evans

any polycounters have any news on this?
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=8006

Daz

At the CA HQ studio it was more like 10%. Predominantly artists. So yeah, there's a lot of folks out there looking for work now.

PaK

if any technical artists are looking for work give me a shout. We need 'em, and we're rigght around the corner from EA.

Xenobond

So, they are probably going to keep the same speedy development cycles for these next gen games with a reduced art staff? Works for me.

Daz

Who knows, they're probably thinking that India is going to save the day.
I'll keep my ears peeled PaK.

PaK

They're probably not looking much further than their bottom line.

Publishers are notorious for bloating content creation staff to ridiculus numbers, adding meaningless (tiers upon tiers) of redundant managment assholes, and then when they reach critical mass laying off the load of them.

At least Microsoft is honest about their intentions and only hire temps for there bloat staff.

I can't stand this business model. This industry needs to grow the fuck up.

-R
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thomasp

actually, i think that's as grown up as it gets. other, far more established industries have been doing this exact same thing since - uh, like forever.

also, doesn't it work like this: keep all the redundant management dudes, but fire the grunts?

PaK

That's not necessarily true. Some established industries needing highly skilled and educated professionals don't institutionalize unstable production models because they've discovered that finding new talent is expensive.

The Ubisoft solution is to not spend alot've money interviewing...and they just end up with a high turnover. A very short-sighed, rweactionary solution to an obvious problem. These policy-makers shouldn't have jobs IMO. They're all fuckin' retards.

Products that are iterative/creative/design centric benifit greatly from a tighly knit team of experts that have a long standing history of working together. Aerospace works that way, as does petrochemical research and pharmaceuticals. I have family members in each and they haven't changed workplaces as much as we do. That's not to say they don't have lay-offs like thuis business; but it's not institutionalized like it is with software.

The fact that *every* fucking game misses it's ship date should tell us all something. We're being poorly lead and grossly mismanaged.

Automotive doesn't miss it's redesigns of the Honda Civic or the Toyota Camery, and the bulk of the new car designs roll out at the same time every year, just like we tryto do.

The process is creative, highly technical, design driven, and requires a boat-load of engineers, artists and grunts at all levels across all disciplines. Very compairable.

-R

Weiser_Cain

what's a technical artist?

Vailias

Someone who fits a gap between programmer and artist. You have a decent grasp of both production portions and can do things like write shaders or mel scripts to make things the artists produce work for the programmers in game.

At least thats how I understand it. Pretty much my dream job next to lead designer. Trying to bone up on mel and a few other programmy/scripty things to make sure I can do a job like that really well.

scanning_factor

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Trying to bone up on mel and a few other programmy/scripty things to make sure I can do a job like that really well.

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Learn how to write shaders too, i noticed in my last round of job hunts people are really impressed by that sort of thing in addition to scripting. Also if you're a maya guy, id recommend learning some advanced deformation rigging stuff too (mathnodes and such). . .good stuff!

KDR_11k

Remember, 3d graphics requires all that math you thought would be completely useless in real life when you were taught it in school. Matrices, vector spaces, quaternions, etc. Lots of algorithms for graphs, sets, etc as well.

Dr. Rudi

Yeah... there's always a magic bullet...."we'll outsource everything.... we'll mocap everything.... we'll scan everything...." god forbid you use your head and plan a little better. To simple I guess.

DW

Slayerjerman

Try being *IN* management or production and deal with all the shit. Its a hard job to organize and prioritize everything. Seriously.

Only when you are management do you have sympathy for them and what they attempt to accomplish. More people just means more things can go wrong (and does.)

How you like it if somebody at random came upto your art cube and started talking on how "they" could do better art. Oh art's not *THAT* hard...color within the lines right, just add click the "make character" button right???

Come on guys, its not *always* management that gets it wrong, its the team as a whole.

Give respect, get respect.

poopinmymouth

I can't even believe the above post. There is a reason EA is in financial trouble, and it sure as hell isn't the line artists fault (the majority of people laid off) EA's management is incompetant as a whole. I don't have to be able to do their job to know they are doing it wrong. I've heard upwards of HALF of a project is management. That's so ridiculous I want to vomit, pee, and poop all at the same time.... down Larry Probst neckhole.

Yes GOOD management is necessary, and I have respect for managers that do their jobs well.

It's not the team as a whole when the problem with the game is that it's over budget, late, and not fun. If the art still looks good (most EA games are as good if not better than the average on that front) the blame certainly doesn't lie at the artists feet. And when you think that you'd probably have to fire three to four line artists to save the same amount you'd save from firing one upper manager, it makes even less sense.

oXYnary

I dont think he was blaming artists Poop. He was just using as an example to make it more understood.

I was at the recent local IGDA meeting and we had a great talk from a project mangager thats been around the block. She thinks M$ has the best system. As Managers in M$ setup isnt built in a structure where the managers are ontop. Its more like a bunch of separate interconnected pyramids.

In a normal system the leads report to the project manager. And they (the project lead) in turn orders the mod in certain directions. The power structure is one way in no one can question the manager except exec.

M$ system is different in that the project manager cannot order the team. She has no power in that manner. She has to convince the team that her method is best. In fact, individual team members can approach her with their own concerns without fear of retribution from her.

PaK

I do have management experience on this current project, Jerry. If you're gunna complain about my statements be more spacific.

-R

Daz

I was gonna respond to it and then I thought better of it. I've seen the wrath before!

The fact is, at least 2 people in this thread worked at that studio, and they, I can assure you, have experienced the sheer madness that the Poopsta speaks of. This thread has nothing to do with respect.

Slayerjerman

Right, I wasnt blaming artists. Alot of good folks got shit canned because the corporate machine that is EA cant deal with handling their own growth.

I dunno, maybe its because the majority of people on the boards are mostly artists is why we mostly hear about artists being shit canned all the time. Makes it sound alot like only the artists are the victims.

But seriously, I doubt any of you would want an EA management/production job and the stress that goes with it.

Also I disagree, respect has alot to do with how a company runs. Being fired for no reason has a negative affect on morale on the team and indivduals. Those individuals then loose respect for the company and work starts to go more slowly. Goes from "wow im making a game" to "fuck this company" rather quickly. If you dont have professional respect for your fellow team mates, how are they to help you in return?

I think everyone is trying to place the blame squarely on certain departments rather than on the poor choices of the company as a whole.

I do agree the whole laying off sucks. Hope you guys all find work again soon.

Daz

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Also I disagree, respect has alot to do with how a company runs.

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Nobody in this thread said that respect has nothing to do with running a company. Most of us here know the importance of respect in the workplace thanks very much.

Scott Ruggels

Having been in the industry for 14 years, most of the problems, especially crunch time, and financial risk aversion ARE management problems, but even more specifically, most managers in game companies have come up through the ranks, from test, and/or production, though mostly testers, who become designers, who become producers, who become Execs. Think about it. Little to no university training in management, and little to no development of "people skills", and learning all the wrong habits of staying up late, eating delivery pizza and cola, and kissing up to their superiors rather than honestly giving accurate, if negative assesments. Worse are managers that rose from the ranks of the programmers, as they lack people skills and realistic assesments of work hours as well, or artists who instead of creating art, and keeping up their skills allow their insecurity to ease themselves out of production, towards management, so they don't have to learn a new piece of software every 6 months, yet support their egos by managing, and taking credit for "The Bold New Vision". This is not common in other industries, but it seems almost the norm in ours. Other industries require managers at least some college business courses, or college level development before they hit the work force. Only a few rare, and talented indivuduals, or manager recruited outside the indisty have enough of a long distance view, to be able to skirt the typical problems of the industry and avoid optimistic feature lists, the pressure from marketing, allow their schedules and projects to be realistic, and avoid creeping feature-itis, schedule drift, "The E3 Demo", and crunch time. 14 years in this industry, since the days of the Genesis and the SNES, and now I have a fairly good bullshit detector these days.

I'm just really sorry Castaway didn't work out, because it was little of the above.

Scott

Daz

Scott, that's about the best explanation I've seen on what's wrong with how many big studios are run, and the reasons why.

PaK

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Scott, that's about the best explanation I've seen on what's wrong with how many big studios are run, and the reasons why.


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ditto

Weiser_Cain

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But seriously, I doubt any of you would want an EA management/production job and the stress that goes with it.

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Not to derail the thread as it has been interesting but I get paid very little and get the occasional death threat.

Paul Jaquays

Weiser_Cain ... would you want more money, if it meant more death threats? Or would you be able to get by if you just got more death threats?

Good analysis Scott. I've worked for companies that are exactly like you describe (jumped up developers) and for companies run by people with business backgrounds, but no understanding or buy-in into the product. To be honest, a company run by the creative guys who founded it ends up being a pretty awful place in the long run.

The ideal situation is people who trained to be business managers, but who love games enough that it's how they want to apply their management skills.

PaK

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The ideal situation is people who trained to be business managers, but who love games enough that it's how they want to apply their management skills.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm, lucky enough to have 2 producers on my project who fit that description exactly. it's like a dream come true. Only if 'all' managers were this way.

-R

Ryno

If a manager is making productions decisions, but doesn't have production experience with the department in question (code, art, test, design, etc.), they should consult with the department leads to get a fair estimate of long/how much effort the project will take. But many don't.

Even if the manager has experience but it is outdated, they should consult with leads to ensure accurate time estimates. For example, it was a much quicker process to model and texture a 300 poly character with one 128 texture sheet a few years back than it is to currently make a 5000 poly character with 2048 diffuse, spec maps, normal maps, etc.

When people make scheduling decisions about something that they know nothing about, bad things can happen. This is one of the more common problems that I have seen in our industry, and why late nights are the norm at some companies.

Scott Ruggels

Oh for another fairly well managed boutique developer to sweep me off my feet again. Once there, I dont't know if I can go back to being a mushroom, but I have to find something, as I don't think I can make March Rent.

Scott

hawken

most places I've worked in, I've seen them piss money into the wind.