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EA Chicago Studio To Close
Geoff Keighley, who is guest-editing Kotaku this week, has the official release from EA that their Chicago studio is closing. The 150 employees that used to work at the site are trying to be placed throughout the rest of the EA structure, while the games on tap for development there are currently on hold. The release is fairly terse when describing the reason the studio is being closed: "Each team is responsible for staying on a reasonable path to profitability. Sticking to that strategy is what gives us the financial resources and flexibility to take risks on new projects. Unfortunately, EA Chicago hasn't been able to meet that standard. The location has grown dramatically in the past three years while revenue from the games developed there has not. The number of employees has grown from 49 in 2004 to 146 people currently in the new facility in downtown Chicago. As it stands, EA Chicago has no expectation of hitting our profitability targets until FY2011 or later."
It says in the memo that they have 146 employees. But in the articles opening paragraph that they have 150+. If that's how they count, no wonder the physics for the vehicles in BF2142 are off.
DarkMantle I been bored, so I started a blog.
I was thinking about applying there someday.
Bummer.
One man's constant is another man's variable.
This is evident based on the fact that the Chicago Bears are doing horrible this year. Because the Madden series of games are such an integral part of the EA catalog, it only makes sense that they axe the city of one of the bad teams. If there was a St. Louis branch, that would surely have been closed ahead of the Chicago.
Now where will people in Chicago have to go for 100 hour work weeks?
EA middle managers regularly tell employees that the head office watches each studio's performance carefully. The subtext is of course that the least performing studios could suffer layoffs or outright be shut down.
I guess they weren't bluffing...
David takes on EA PHB's and learns the secrets to churning out crap, buggy games, just in time for xmas.
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"Sticking to that strategy is what gives us the financial resources and flexibility to take risks on new projects." It's strategies like this that ensure we have such original games from EA like [Famous Person] [Sport] 200X.
Which games/series were EA Chicago responsible for, in the scheme of things? I mean, it's EA, I'm not going to be really sad about one of their studios closing, but I'm curious if there's any direct reason I should care.
They didn't develop buggy games and slam them out the door fast enough. Let this be a lesson to the rest of you: Make crap faster.
-- If we were in any other industry they would've shot us a long time ago.
So - Pandemic and Bioware are bought for $860M, which amounts to over $1 million per person. EA Chicago, which advertised as late as October of last year that it's a happening place for high-tech game development, gets closed because it's not projected to hit its profitability targets.
Can I ask? What the fuck is going on at EA? Do they even have a clue what they want? All I see is EA shitting itself down the drain. The saddest part? The grunts - the devs, testers and other peons who slave in countless death marches - will get fired, while the execs will get millions in severance packages.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Within the EA Games Label, we are committed to running each franchise and facility as a city/state, teams with unique creative identities as well as responsibility for product quality, ship dates and profitability....Unfortunately, EA Chicago hasn't been able to meet that standard....
Is it just me, or is that snippet unusually frank for a corporate press release? Usually PR people try to spin this sort of news as the result of some kind of unexpected event that was beyond the company's control. This release says (in so many words), "The Chicago studio was so screwed up, it was unsalvageable."
Personally I find it kind of refreshing, given the normal levels of BS in these things.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
"Can I ask? What the fuck is going on at EA? Do they even have a clue what they want? All I see is EA shitting itself down the drain. The saddest part? The grunts - the devs, testers and other peons who slave in countless death marches - will get fired, while the execs will get millions in severance packages."
Won't someone think of the artists?*
*For this forum the above is also ironic.
If you look at the companies and facilities which have been centers of innovation over the years (Xerox PARC, 3M, IBM, etc.), you'll notice that most of those allow folks to work on something at least part of the time which has no present or foreseen future market value at all.
:-(
The idea is that something good *might* come from these apparently far-fetched projects.
This is also true for games and game-related concepts. If teams are expected to be profitable, essentially letting sales be the main determinant for their current actions, then most of the software that they will come up with will be little more than a derivative of existing stuff.
This is why we have game sequels ad Nauseum today.
I think they're shooting themselves in the foot.
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The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
It's easy to be frank, when you're blaming someone else.
Maybe its the fact that the high cost of business in this wonderful city I live in has driven out EA just like hundreds of other businesses. Property tax here has increased about 100% in the last few years as well as ridiculous other taxes that have been inflated by Emperor Daley and the Cook County Board Stroger Dynasty... having the highest sales tax in the nation apparently isnt enough, Daley wants to propose a tax on anything he can imagine... recently he even proposed an additional tax on BOTTLED WATER. I love this city but the Democrats here are destroying it...