[TRENCHES] Thursday, December 20, 2012 - The Devoted Fanbase

Geth

The Devoted Fanbase
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/the-devoted-fanbase

On the Rainslick Precipice of the Trenches

Anonymous

My tale isn’t so much “from the trenches” as much as it is about how close I became to being deep inside the foxhole.

It was November, 2004 and my graduation from undergrad was rapidly approaching. I had already received a job offer I was seriously considering, but before I could accept that offer, EA contacted me and said they’d like to interview me. “Great,” I thought, “it’s every developers dream! Working for a game studio!” We set a date and time for a phone interview and I began eagerly counting down the days, until…

...remember, this was November of 2004. For those of you who forget, or who wish not to remember, or who were simply not around at the time, let me remind you: this was the month the story of EA_Spouse broke. I can’t do the story justice, so instead I will simply post a link to the original: http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html

I e-mailed ea_spouse never expecting to receive a response, but lo and behold, she responded, asking which office I was interviewing with. When I mentioned the office, she basically told me to avoid in no
uncertain terms. This sealed the deal for me. I had no intention of doing my time at a company that abuses its workers in so cavalier a fashion.

The day of my interview came. After exchanging pleasantries and talking about my experience, I had my chance to ask questions. Since I knew I had no intention of joining EA at this point, I decided to confront. “So, I recently read an article published by the spouse of someone who works at EA. I was wondering if you’d heard of it and what you thought about it?” A pause. A clearing of a throat. A roaring, awkward silence that I could feel through the phone.

“Ah. Er. Well… you know, certainly when deadlines come, hours increase, but, er… that usually tapers off pretty quickly, once the product ships. Really. It’s, ah, usually only for… a couple of weeks.” I debated pushing. I wanted them to admit that the long hours were the status quo and not the result of pushing to meet a deadline. I wanted to reduce them to tears. I wanted blood. For the proletariat! For the people! Vive la revolucion!

Except I didn’t. I didn’t push. Because I’m a computer geek and computer geeks tend not to be the confrontational type. In the end, they didn’t offer me a 2nd round interview (big shocker), and I went to go work as a programmer for a faceless investment bank where I work worse hours than I would have at EA.

Vive la revolucion, I guess?

marsilies

I'm trying to figure out why his two job options were EA or a bank. Did he not try for any other game studio?

Durkhanus

Maybe he did. Maybe any other job offers on the table weren't worth mentioning for the purposes of this story.

Soop

Oh man. Todays was crushing. I couldn't even finish reading the EA Spouse article, I could feel myself starting to well up.

I don't want to buy a game which has pushed people to that kind of point. I know the point (or one of the points) of the Trenches is to highlight these conditions, and hopefully shame people into doing the right thing, but I'd actually adhere to some kind of watchdog system where people could confirm the working conditions of a certain game.

If enough of us would make it clear, by voting with our dollar/Euro/pound, then the publishers would hopefully make a clear choice to go after our money and simply give these poor guys a break. Hell, they could still fire them afterwards, but treating them like shit for months is just...

I love video games, they've been a constant thrill and a big part of my life since a young age. A huge part of my life. But I don't want to support the industry blindly.

Skunkape

So this guy passed up a job based on a message board post? Doing your homework on a potential employer is a good thing, but to make a decision based on 1 post from somebody's wife? That is just irresponsible, seems he is now paying the price. And if you do not like the way EA makes games I have news for you, they are not the exception, you might want to find a new hobby.

Soop

Skunkape wrote: »

And if you do not like the way EA makes games I have news for you, they are not the exception, you might want to find a new hobby.

Yeah, you're right, let's just ignore this problem, there's clearly nothing we can do about it.

El Skid

There seems to be a bit of cognitive dissonance with this one.

"I heard about EA's practices and decided that I didn't want my health ruined". Great stuff!

"I then went somewhere worse and decided not to keep shopping around to find someplace that was better".

...That last bit isn't so good. There are jobs out there for companies where crunches are an unfortunate exception and not a rule- even in the software development industry. If you've already gone out of the games industry, just suck it up and take your head out of the "oh god I'm so busy" hole it's in and look for another position. You may or may not have to make sacrifices, but you don't have to do that crap long term.

Stormwatcher

This is a TALE, not an exhaustive investigation of all things remotely related to the event at hand. It would be awesome if we could read and debate these snippets of game-making without so much nitpicking and judgementalism.

Also, the EA_Spouse thing was pretty fucking huge at the time, it would be very scary to take an offer on EA around them.

Neuroskeptic

EA_Spouse was right, and so was EA_Louse, who predicted that SWTOR would not be very good.

Neuroskeptic

So this guy passed up a job based on a message board post?

Crazy - he should have relied on trusted old media such as books, or runes of warning carved into bones.

forty

I used tea leaves to decide my career path.