Cons
There is a lot of shadow crunching going on. Typically, you are not "forced" to work but no one else is going to do your work for you so if you are not on deadline that will reflect bad on you, even if the deadline is completely unrealistic. Most of the time the tools are broken and they are a hassle to debug. A lot of times something breaks and it can take several hours to get fixed. You never know if you made something wrong locally or if something with the engine/editor itself is broken. The pipeline is messy at times and very unorganised. People can add or remove things without your knowledge because there is a lack of communication between stakeholders and no one is held responsible. Too often middle management and company leadership is bottlenecking production with vague ideas or goals. Some decisions make zero sense and hurt the overall production and no one is held responsible if it doesn't work. There resides an arrogance in the company, based on historical achievements from previous games in the earlier DICE era. This is toxic and is often used as a morale booster when things go sour in the community. Art trumps gameplay every day of the week. Always.
Multiple failed projects. The studio has not been successful at anything other than supporting other studios. (DICE Sweden) There is a clique here that consists of people who have been here since before the studio took the "DICE" name... They are friendly to your face but ultimately only look out for each other and will turn on you if they feel threatened in any way. Unfortunately management allows this as they are part of it. Slow career advancement partially because of the issue above. Also they will tell you that you're getting a promotion for years before actually going through with it. Few transferrable skills as an artist - you are either strictly working with Frostbite or 3D art (mostly photogrammetry) and they don't really like it if you try to do both. So good luck going somewhere else only knowing how to do one of those things. Leadership is not great at decision making or being accountable.
Creative leadership appears totally clueless. More often than not, their vision raises eyebrows, questions, and concerns. They push their ideas through anyways. Be prepared to work on systems you do not believe in, but leadership is convinced will be a smash hit. Studio leadership appears equally clueless or simply incapable of reining in creative leadership. The result is creative leadership is free to run amok with no oversight. Talking to studio leadership about issues will have them agree with you, only for nothing to happen. EA leadership either signs off everything without much scrutiny or are being kept in the dark on the problems the studio is facing right now. Leadership can make huge blunders but are forgiven and even promoted for the next project. Lower ranking employees can be stuck for years asking for a new role. Leadership conveniently holds meetings for themselves during playtests. Not surprisingly, they appear to be very disconnected with the state of the game. Developers also participate less and less because they know their concerns will not be addressed anymore. Bonuses and annual reviews can appear to be based on throwing darts. The quality or quantity of your work is not obviously reflected in your bonus which can range anywhere from 50 to 150%. Politics seems to play a bigger role than competence. For years, some designers accidentally had salaries significantly lower than other designers with comparable backgrounds, experience and titles. The editor for Frostbite is difficult to work with and feels like it is 15 years old. Basic file operations can take minutes, simple actions like copy and paste do not work reliably. Many people have left over the past couple months. It will be difficult to find potential replacements and get them up to speed. Talent loss may never recover. The studio has become much less open recently. You used to be able to submit anonymous questions for studio meetings. This is no longer possible. Contractors stay contractors forever.
Mass exodus of talent - lots of people leaving (senior people - some who have been there for 15+ years). It is apparent that there are massive gaps that will be very difficult to fill. Extremely political environment. DICE is unique in that they line managers who manage the talented people on the games - responsible for things such as performance reviews, staffing etc. Great in theory. Unfortunately very few of them have worked on games and have a very limited knowledge of the area they are responsible for. When it comes to an annual review they cannot judge the quality of the work for themselves so use the 'opinions' of others to judge leaving you open to political maneuvering from people who should be working with you. If politics is what motivates you then you will enjoy and thrive in this environment. Infinite contracts for contractors - they keep on renewing every 6 months and never take contractors on permanently which is bad for morale. Silo's - lots of different groups working on their own goals with very little communication or cooperation between them. Lack of strong leadership - lots of talk but plans invariably don't last longer than 6 months without changing Over reliance on a few people - while most people don't need to crunch it invariably falls on a few to burn the midnight oil and pull things together and those are the ones who suffer the most
Advice to Management
Recognize that you are a big part of the problem and the culture you have created is toxic
The game studio is divided in siloes that don't share the same goals. This leads to dysfunctional communication, lack of progress, as well as a lack of a clear vision. Strong presence of office politics; persuade the right people, "play the game", and pretend like any issues are non-existent to maintain a facade amongst people. "Buddy politics" & nepotism. If you're friends with the right people and if your partner needs an internship, this is the place to be. Crunch and crunch. Studio claimed to have stopped crunching when I joined, but the crunch was inevitable from the start. No paid overtime of course. Lack of ambition. Whenever I found poorly architectured and written code the response was often "wouldn't be the first time, so be it" or "oh it's just an assertion". "This should really be refactored, but..". As a junior, I wanted to learn and felt I had to quit if I didn't want to be institutionalized like the seniors. Can't retain developers. Many quit so often that you barely get to know them. One reason they can't retain developers is that they don't care if their employees are happy, they wouldn't move a senior in my team after 10+ years so the dev quit. So much experience and knowledge was lost with every senior leaving. Short term thinking like this hurts the studio in the long run. Tries to build an image of being a super healthy company that has a collective bargain's agreement with the union but doesn't follow the collective bargain agreement and don't care about its sentiment. Managers said they own me in the current position I'm in, won't move me or let me control my own paths - as if I can't work with my dream position at another company. Managers have been belittling, telling me I'm naïve to think the world could be a better place, as well as telling me that the grass isn't greener on the other side. The grass was greener on the other side. I had to leave as quickly as possible. Come here if you want your passion to die.
Cons
* If you don't want to make Battlefield for the rest of your life.. don't come.
* Design discipline is weak and treated as second class citizens. Everything is run by various art departments. Sometimes it feels like people are more concerned about their portfolio reel / nice looking trailer than they are creating a fun and engaging GAME. * EA as a publisher gives great security and comfort. But they won't give a studio more than 2 yers to make a game. You won't see too much innovation in terms of genres or design coming from a studio like DICE. you will most likely see Battlefield with maybe a new mode every two years.
Advice to Management
Focus on gameplay and design. Your games are gorgeous, but that won't keep players playing for a long period.
