Pros
- Blue Bottle coffee and meals for free - Working with creative people - Choice of technology
Cons
- The meritocracy is flawed between game teams. Two people doing the same position, with equal proficiency are awarded differently by how well the specific game does financially. - Too many bosses. Often a person reports directly to their manager, but has "dotted line" managers, who often conflict with the other manager, providing tension to everyday operations. - Long hours, exhaustion, some mandatory weekends that are arbitrarily chosen. For example, your game team may announce on a Monday that x amount of people have to work that coming weekend. - Hard to have an outside life. With the long hours and short notice for overtime, it's hard to plan a life outside the company. - The game teams do not communicate best practices with each other. A game will be made, the issues acknowledged and then a new group of people will make a similar game, without using the learnings from the last game. - Different technologies used on different games, sometimes changed mid-project. - After a game is launched, it goes into cadence. The detailed prep work to launch the game doesn't carry over into the life of the game.