Re:Game Industry Work Conditions (Score 2, Interesting)

Well I worked for two very large game companies, one founded by ex-EA members and one not... And I think you're wrong.

If you're sleeping at the office to hit your milestones (something I did for six titles straight), it's a sign that your schedules are completely fricken off. If you work 12 hours a day on a project for two years, that means the game actually took three years to make but they only paid you for two.

Don't get me wrong, half the time it is the developer's fault for lacking discipline (feature creep will hose you). But at a company like EA, I highly doubt this is the case since the trend these days at large publishers is to have the producer/director make all the calls. And 90% of the time this person is a hollywood-wannabe with no concept of implementation details ("Yes Mr. Producer, adding a motorcycle level to our martial arts game will probably take more than two days and will push us off schedule").

What is actually most shocking IMHO about the situation is that EA is the only company I know of where non-dev people also suffer from long hours. I know people at EA in other departments who work long hours without overtime as well.