Pros
- It's a good stepping stone to gain some experience and access other companies. - The ambience is nice, with sometimes good variety of nationalities, you will get to practice your English.
Cons
- I sadly must say this company has by far the most pervasive and unhealthy environment for games development. - Most of the problem comes from the company structure. You see, the company is structured as a series of studios of varied sizes, in which all the production is done, and a central HQ. All decision power is in HQ. There is zero trust in the studios, so for every project there is a sizeable chain of supervisors that ends in the top guy (more about him later). All of this people have decision power, and are encouraged to make use of it so they can justify their positions. Most if not all of these people are fresh from business school with no experience in games, however they will be eager to teach you how to do your job with surprising arrogance. Suddenly all your experience and background means nothing: these guys know better. - A special mention must be done about the man at the top of the chain (I'm not talking about the CEO here). In the eyes of many, this man and his absolutistic attitude is one of main reasons why the company has been going downhill lately. This guy has absolute power over every project in the company. His name is feared (literally) and he will not hesitate to demand changes, ranging from minuscule subjective details to game-changing mechanics, at any time in the project (normally close to gold or any important delivery), with little regard to costs or deadlines. This guy can't be reasoned with, whatever he says must be fulfilled, even when it's obvious what what is requested is wrong and you will need to remove it later (if lucky). I think I don't need to tell you how disastrous this kind of "management" is to the quality of the games and the morale of the employees. Moreover, this leads to stupid situations like managers making studios run in circles trying to guess what the top guy will want (which he likely will dismiss and request something different entirely).