So, we had the ship party for our game tonight, and I’ve gotta say, I was really let down. Our executive producer was falling-down drunk, so drunk that he could barely coherently read the “awards.” It was just embarassing, and showed a real lack of respect for the team, to me. On top of that, the whole team “awards” thing was just a management circle-jerk, and so poorly thought out, it was simply astonishing.
Basically, our management team was removed, to go to another project. Everyone above a particular level was excised to move to this other group. And almost every one of them got an “award.” Upper management rewarding middle management, or the new team rewarding itself. It was just really painful to watch a falling down drunk guy giving himself a pat on the back. It was like a bad (or maybe good) episode of The Office, and I lost a whole hell of a lot of respect for the guy.
That’s not to say some of the awards were undeserved – a lot of them were. But some of them were absolutely insulting, to me, and I expect, to the team. And particularly given that the vast majority of these awards went to people who went with management to the new team, well, it really felt like a hearty “fuck you” from the now-departed “leaders.”
Well, fuck them – seriously. We had more than a few people not in management, myself included, absolutely bust fucking ass to make a great goddamn product for these guys, and this jackass gets up on stage to drunkenly wank his friends? Marvelfuckingous. The lack of acknowledgement of contributions outside the management team was insulting, and the drunken idiocy doubly so. Color me really fucking unimpressed.
Interesting. Your company doesn’t respect or treat its employees well? Hmmm… first I’ve heard of that. I heard it was just SWELL to work there.
😉
In any case, they sound like a whole box of tools. As much as I fucking hate my job, the one thing they aren’t guilty of is congratulating “non-management” folks. Indeed, they bend over backwards to thank “the team” even if a lot of the team didn’t contribute all that much.
The fact is _everybody_ contributed and they all deserve recognition.
Your management sounds like a bunch of clueless fuck ups.
Aw man, that sucks. I was hoping that the truly asinine stuff there was just a result of the Boy’s Club of the previous management group, and things were going to be better with that removed. The more I hear, though, the more it sounds like it’s all just rotten and needs to get wiped out.
Maybe there are some people still around there who’ve got the right idea about what the company and the games are all about. People talk about Emeryville and the Spore project as if it were Sanctuary from Logan’s Run, and I wonder if it’s really better of if the whole industry is now being controlled by soulless pricks.
I don’t know about you, but I’m remembering how I chose to get into videogames because it was kind of like movies but not as gross and corrupt. Are there game companies around that aren’t controlled by complete tools?
The management this year was as Boy’s Club as the previous – the only difference were that SB & FA weren’t really present during development. SA ran the show, for the most part, and during development it was good, but the problem was that the upper management of the team is really “tight” in a way that’s sort of incestuous and Old Boy’s Network feeling.
Not that I have a problem with most of the individuals involved, but as a management style, it feels very exclusionary, and stratified. And towards the end, when they *did* get moved to a different project, the self-congratulatory tone the whole “awards” proceeding took, well, it was a little tasteless.
I’ll be curious to see whether Spore’s actually better – I don’t know whether you’ve heard, but Mr. Hootchminson’s on that project now, so I suppose we’ll see how that goes. Man, I wish I could work on that project – it’s both sort of a great project to be attached to, sounds a hell of a lot more interesting than revision 5 of the current game, and it’s all of 5 minutes from my house. Alas.