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EA Spouse Outed
patio11 writes "EA Spouse, who sparked a revolution (or, at least, a wave of lawsuits and promises for improvement) in the game development industry with a blog post decrying labor practices at Electronics Arts, was outed as Erin Hoffman in a Mercury News article. She and then-fiance, now-husband Leander Hasty were plaintiffs in one of the lawsuits against EA and continue to develop games and be activists for better working conditions for game developers." From the article: "More than a year later, game developers have won settlements in three class-action lawsuits alleging EA created exhausting work schedules without paying overtime and successfully pressed employers to ease unrelenting workloads. And EA Spouse, whose true identity has been cloaked until now, is becoming a voice against America's culture of overwork."
Kinda dupe?
l
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/06/04/26/1733244.shtm
Whats interesting here is the guy used to work at taldren, who as I recall made Starfleet Command, and then went to work on Battle For Middle earth for EA.
SFC was seriously good, and BFME sucked big ones. So it seems clear even if it was not already obvious that working people to death WILL result in substandard dross games, even if they obviously have the talent.
Sadly BFME probably made mroe money, so the suits at EA who probably dont even like games dont give a damn.
Thank god I left that stupid industry to work as an indie.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
" And EA Spouse, whose true identity has been cloaked until now, is becoming a voice against America's culture of overwork.""
Yay! Of course the "culture of overwork" is ingrained in the American culture (work ethic), and is hard to overturn. So it will be awhile before we're like the Europeans.
Sleep deprived cranky game developers can't possibly be very creative, can they?
Also unrealistic deadlines have a negitave effect on creativity.
EA is a victim of it's size... they have a huge pressure to be sucessfull so huge in fact that they lose sight of what really makes games (and all art) great.
Great inventive games do not always sell a lot of copies and that is the real crime here... EA wouldn't make crap if people didn't buy crap and then complain about it (but not return it because the big chains have made quality of product not a reason for a refund... but that is a diffrent rant.)
Demand quality and don't settle for buggy incomplete games and this "problem" of overworked developers might just solve itself... or at least save gameing from a slow painfull death.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
...has been cloaked until now, is becoming a voice against America's culture of overwork....
I, for one, am tired of this culture of overwork in America. Occassionally I have to close my browser and answer a phone call. This is intruding into my social life entirely too much.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Work hard, millions on welfare are depending on you!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
It shouldnt be a surprise that if you want people to work longer than a 40-hour week but you don't pay them for overtime, that you will get an inferior result. What exactly is the employee's motivation other than termination? That's like a prison mentality, 'either break these rocks or we beat the crap out of you. Once you're done breaking the rocks, we'll beat the crap out of you.' Not much to look forward to except a delay of additional punishment in terms of more longer hours in the future.
Eventually people will favor creativity, and people like me will 'herd the cats' and make some sweet games. Until then, have fun with John Madden 20XX!
stuff |
Another frickin' EA story? ... Time to move on!
is becoming a voice against America's culture of overwork."
As opposed to the culture of entitlement in most european countries?
"alleging EA created exhausting work schedules"
Go to Japan, look at their insane schedules and crunch times, and tell me this isn't better.
Most people haven't seen the half of what Japanese game programmers endure. Yet they don't complain.
So doesn't that mean that, at the time, EA Spouse was in fact not a spouse?
The only thing I hate more than hypocrites are people who hate hypocrites.
And EA Spouse, whose true identity has been cloaked until now, is becoming a voice against America's culture of overwork." Does America really have a culture of overwork, compared to other countries? Sure, we may work harder then Brazil or France or something, but India, China, Japan, Korea, alot of places like that are kicking our ass because we tend towards laziness.
Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to conviction
Yah those Japanese, they stick it out, so why shouldn't we? They live in boxes barely the size of my closet, so why shouldn't we? They off themselves via stress-related suicide faster than any other culture, starting in grade school, so why shouldn't we? They have the second highest per-capita smoking population outside of China, so why shouldn't we? They show hardcore pornography (live and anime) on daytime tv, so why shouldn't we?
ok that last one I'd probably be fine with.
If you want to emulate another culture's work ethic, why not pick someplace in Europe? Four day work weeks, two MONTH vacations each year, and STILL hardcore porn on tv.
You want to work yourself to death for whatever shallow sucess you perceive is important to you, knock yourself out. Darwin awards workaholics as easily as guys playing catch with power tools.
"We don't want to be like the Europeans. Generally speaking, the US produces far more and creates much more wealth than most European countries."
Since when was my main goal in life declared to be wealth creation, instead of something a bit more hedonistic and less puritan?
I mean, if you want no vacation time a year, go ahead. I'd much rather have a couple months of paid vacation to work on my hobbies and ideas. Google seems to understand, with their hobby Friday model.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Wow that is quite a load of BS you just pumped out there. Europeans are more productive per hour?
Then why do they all come here? Why do they all buy American products over their own?
Why are their products not as good?
You're just full of it today, aren't you?
In other words, a voice working hard to make sure we're as much like Europe--with half the productivity and none of the job growth of the U.S.A.
You don't wanna work lots of hours, then go get a job where you don't have to work lots of hours.
Sheesh.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Some very silly people use money as a measurement forgetting totally that money does not have the same value. 1 dollar in say New York has a totally different value then 1 dollar in say Greece. Hell everyone knows this is even true in far small areas like say New York vs Hicksville.
So any comparison between the money produced by either economy is silly. Even more if you realise that even in europe working hour practices are different. The brits for instance lean far more to american working hours.
So who is right?
Funny thing but one of those wise lessons from american sitcoms/dramas is that nobody on their death bed ever regretted not having spend more time in the office.
If you do not live to work then surely the only sensible number of hours to work is the amount you need to be able to afford to live right?
So how much do you need to live? This can get very funny. It starts simple. Cheap supermarkets are open from 8 to 8 in Holland. (Can't say for the rest of the world so don't attack me for that). There are a few that stay open later but they typically charge more and only carry the brand names (wich are more expensive) and don't have sales. The cheapest places to get food however is the market wich opens officially at 8 but is usually closing as early as 16:00.
So now you get the following effect. If your unemployed you got the least amount of money BUT have the time to shop at the cheapest place, the market. If you got a 40 hour 8-5 job the market is out so you need to shop at the regular but slightly more expensive supermarket. More money but your also spending more on food. Now if you work longer hours and can't make the regular opening hours you need the special stores at train stations. More money offcourse in salary but your food expenses shoot up. Work even more and you won't even have time to cook and eating in restaurants or takeaway really becomes fucking expensive.
Kids follow a similar pattern. The more you work, the more you make but also the more you spend on childcare. I had one co-worker who flatly refused to work on a friday (4 day contract) unless the company paid him double since that was his day to take care of the kid and if he worked on friday his entire salery would go to childcare meaning he effectlivly worked for nothing AND missed out on spending time with his child.
Same with other stuff. You can eat better cheaper and healthier if you can shop for fresh food every day. Don't have the time? Pay more AND pay for a huge fridge and the electricity.
The above is not just crap made up by some slashdot idiot. The effect that being going from unemployed to employed while leading to an increase in salary actually ends up with the person having less money is a big problem for countries with a decent social security system.
Some of you may even have experienced the effect of a promotion and payment increase actually ending up with you having less "free" money because all of sudden you need to buy rounds not of beer but whiskey or wear real suits or chip in for golf clubs instead of mousemat birthday gifts.
Whenever I see someone defend a 80 hour workweek because they are more productive I don't even bother with trying to reason that such a person will be too tired at work to do a decent job. I just wonder how that person finds enough free time to actually have some fun. Congrats that you earn twice as much as me. I will be sure to envy you while I am sitting with my feet up in the sun after a short day at work.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Why havent they made a union? that should fix the problem pretty quickly.
There's as fairly informative essay on work patterns I read recently.
"On the other hand, the "market" for free time hardly even exists in America. With few exceptions, employers (the sellers) don't offer the chance to trade off income gains for a shorter work day or the occasional sabbatical. They just pass on income, in the form of annual pay raises or bonuses, or, if granting increased vacation or personal days, usually do so unilaterally. Employees rarely have the chance to exercise an actual choice about how they will spend their productivity dividend. The closest substitute for a "market in leisure" is the travel and other leisure industries that advertise products to occupy, our free time. But this indirect effect has been weak, as consumers crowd increasingly expensive leisure spending into smaller periods of time."
It's taken from a book by a Harvard sociology professor, Juliet B. Schor.
I think it summarizes the weird dichotomy I see here. Some yanks just can't get enough of that 9 to 5, like it's their way of buying a stairway to heaven or something. I'd rather enjoy my time off, but if I were to live in the US, I'd have no real way of enforcing this since employers discourage less pay for more time off.
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Does anyone else find it annoying that the majority of the posts on slashdot assume you know what the post is about before you read it?