BS Studio Warning

#21 This all sounds incredibly familiar.

Andy is dead right, life IS too short. Learn from it, and move on.

#22 Good thing you got away Juan. -Sad though, that the world is filled with people like your ex boss who doesn't have a clue about what drives people to do the best work!

It's really really important that we're careful with jobs we like.
I also had a bad experience in my first in house-graphics job.
-First it took me some time to do graphics full time, because I was afraid of getting tired of it (if I got too many assignments that wasn't my style or the like.)
After high school and the army I did 5 years of factory work before I took a 3D graphics course and started full time in a small software company. There I had 2 wonderfull years doing graphics projects, teaching and assisting customers...

Then one day I asked if we could talk about my salery, so my boss called me to a meeting where he told me things were going the wrong way for the company finances and there was a "lack of customer projects" he had to let me go...

That was a bit of a surprise to me, and while being numb and irrational I later agreed to work freelance in the field (which was good since I got a lot of gas money refunded)

2months later I found another 3D job trough one of my students and I was luckily off the hook. (it pays off to be nice to people)

-A couple of months later my ex boss had the balls to call me and ask if I could teach his new 3D artist one of the programs I was using... I said yes, and was very careful to tell her everything that was bad about it, and I told her why I was fired. -She seemed too eager to get back to work to care...


All in all- Getting the right contract with a well defined job description is very important! And if you know the standard salery for something, then do not settle for less, not even for a trial period!!!

And if you want to start on your own then make sure to have a decent contract for people you employ, and most of all remember to get everyone who takes a peek at your projects to sign an NDA so that you can sue their A** off if they try to steal your ideas!

-Last year I was in a big indie contest with a grand price, and at least 20 teams turned in their design documents to the company responsible for the contest. And we, in our team, were surprised that some of the other teams didn't care much about the rights to their own product. The firm responsible for the contest signed an NDA for many of the teams though, and this contest really made people run amok, coding making graphics and music, but suddenly all info from the company stopped and we were all left with kind of a sore feeling in the lowest part of the back...

SO people, don't let anyone steal your ideas or your precious time!
The world needs creative people, not exploiting bastards!

Peter

#23 Good to see that people are understanding of the situation.

To go ahead and compound on what Mr. Sanchez has said, I too would like to offer up my experiences working with Blue Street Studios. (Juan was my art director, and my experiences were a little different from his).

First, I came fresh out of college without a job and without much money. My fiance, the wonderful woman that she is, couldn't continue to afford for us to live on what she made alone. I had gotten one-two other offers from different kinds of studios outside of the state I was living in at the time - but was reluctant to take them because I was still under lease at mine and my fiance's apartment. The job offer from Blue Street came at quite an interesting time, because it was a job in the video game industry and would be good experience.

Now, I'm not a tradional artist in the strictest sense of the term. It's not often that people of my profession (graphic design) get hired in for jobs in the gaming industry, unless of course it's to build websites and/or create user interfaces. I was tasked with making 2D assets - something the Art Director was confident I could do. So, I accepted the job and was given a week notice by the Creative Director/President to be in Huntsville and working.

I had to pack up all of my belongings and move as quickly as possible. When I arrived, the building that the company was in was run-down and decrepit. The area of town it was in was less than desirable. Now, these things are easy to over-look because yes, it was a start-up company and I knew precisely what that meant. The President/Creative Director seemed like a knowledgeable individual with good business sense. It is sad to say, that it took about a month for me to realize he was neither of these things.

Fast forward a month and a half into my 6 month run with the company. The President/Creative Director and one of the lead designers had some creative differences, and when the designer explained to the CD/President that he had no idea how to make a game - the lead designer was essentially pushed out the door. It became clear to me then that the President didn't like people who disagreed with him. He was very arrogant, and lacked any real common knowledge of what it took to make a game fun. Which is sad, when you stop and think about it, because the team that was working on the project was almost flawless. The major hang-up was one of the programmers who had no experience as a Lead, and virtually butchered a very good engine (Torque) - and would then blame why it happened on everyone but himself. The other two programmers hired at this particular business were amazing guys, with lots of intelligence and a true love for what they did. I bring up the point of the Lead only because it goes to show the incredible lack of understanding from the point of the Creative Director - who put a young man fresh out of college into the position of Lead and would then take his word over what everyone else said. It made working with these two particular people quite a chore.

From the first day I worked there, I never once saw the game play all the way through it's "completed" levels successfully. Every other day, we would hear that the build is broken. This made testing the game at any phase virtually impossible. The Creative Director would assign ridiculous milestones for everyone - saying things like, "The investors want to see this, this, and this." People would stay late on Friday and Saturday nights trying to complete these unrealistic deadlines. Sometimes, all throughout the night and into the very next day. When Monday came around, we'd learn that there was no milestone, sometimes the CD wouldn't even show up for work on those days. Sometimes, he'd pretend like it never happened.

We were tasked with launching a "Beta" version of the game that included a certain number of levels being completed. The idea, for those of you in the gaming industry, was that the game was virtually finished it was just lacking some bug related issues and polishing of assets. When Beta came and went, the game wasn't anywhere closer to being finished. The engine was a complete wreck, the storylines didn't make any sense whatsoever, and the game play was absolutely horrid. Anytime you could play the game, it was boring and monotonous. The idea behind it was excellent, but the application of it was so terrible that it felt like an amateur was behind the helm of creation.

As rude as that is to say - it's in fact true. The CD was an amateur - he didn't understand things like the art pipeline or the spiral process. Anytime he would try and come up with some sort of process for logging assets or changes, he wouldn't follow through with it and the entire system would collapse. Or, the process he did come up with was unrealistic and tedious, and would miss out on several important pieces of information - negating the entire reason for the process.

Now, all of these things don't seem so terrible. I'm sure everyone has had bosses that are absolute failures at what they do. Some of them may be resilient or uncooperative when it comes to listening to other people, some may even have shown such a high level of arrogance that listening to them can make a persons ears bleed.

What truly adds insult to injury is not only how this man ran the creation and direction of the video game, but his business practices were even worse. The biggest thing that stood out for me was a lack of pay, and I'm not referring to a few days or a week. There were periods where we went months without a paycheck, but we were still expected to show up and perform our duties. The Creative Director would assure us that the money was coming, but he always would add in at the end of those statements, "I'm not promising you anything". His arrogance and uncaring attitude for his employees caused a shift in loyalties and respect. It's difficult to respect someone who leaves you without pay for a month and then takes a five-day vacation with his family. I realize the world doesn't stop because of this, but it does prove that he cared more about himself than about his employees.

To boot - he was also breaking the law in regards to our pay. Now, the law says that if you are a salary employee, you are to be paid an X amount every week like clockwork. It doesn't matter if you work 10 hours or 100 hours - you are still paid the same. You can't collect overtime, obviously, but you also can't be paid under. When I was out for a few days as a result of being sick, I wasn't paid for these days (the company did NOT offer sick days). From home, I asked the President over instant messenger what I was classified as, a salary employee or an hourly employee (because I was worried about him doing just this, as others had told me he had). He would not answer me where it could be recorded, and instead waited for me to return to work a day or two later. We spoke at length, and he told me that he wouldn't pay me for not showing up to work, he didn't care what the reason was. So, I proceeded to ask him about overtime, and he told me that he doesn't pay overtime.

#24 To make matters even worse, the first stint where we went without pay I went inside of his office and questioned him about it. I confronted him because I expected a pay check for working. Call me ignorant, but I had always assumed this was how the world worked: You work, you are paid. The President sat back in his chair with his arrogant grin, almost as though he were superior to the young man sitting in front of him and stated to me simply, "I can't guarantee you I'll pay you on time. I can't guarantee anything. You should just get used to it.". He also told me that "everyone in this industry expects it." - and what I pointed out later was that I have friends who work in the gaming industry that are always paid on time, and that's simply a fact.

All in all, this man's shady business practices became even worse. I later discovered that some people were being paid, while others were not. Some people had been promised to always get paid, while the rest of us suffered. This fueled the fire for my anger and disdain for the company, the industry, and the President/CD. He valued some employees higher than others, and seemed to think that all but a few were truly expendable.

Now, throughout all of this - I had become both jaded and stressed. I was trying to refine my online portfolio to get another job elsewhere, but was having to move back to my home state to be with my fiance. We were going through difficult financial trouble as a result of this man's inability to pay me on time. Honestly, my work ethic dropped to almost nothing. I'd sit for hours and stare at my computer, perhaps partially in defiance and the rest in absolute anger. I'd watch movies and not complete any work - why? Because, the CD thought it was more important to be arrogant than it was to care about his employees. Had he taken an interest in us and in our situations, perhaps had he not tried to act like he was a big-shot game designer/producer/president and had been more humble, he'd still have an art team, and we'd all have been working hard because we shared a common goal. We didn't: His goal was money, our goal was creating something awesome. Perhaps that's what he just never understood.

We all virtually walked out unanimously. I still have not collected all my pay from this man (he still owes me for the hours he took out of my paycheck), but I feel like I'm in a much better place - not only by being back home, but being away from someone who seemed to make it his mission in life to milk something for all it was worth, run over whomever he could to get where he wanted, and wash-rinse-repeat.

All in all, this was a very valuable experience that I came away with, no matter how stressful or crappy. I would like to suggest that all of you that are in situations similar to this one - please get out before you let people like the CD ruin your dreams for greatness in this industry.

The President/CD of Blue Street Studios didn't deserve to have the team he did - and he proved it by treating them all like they were worthless. In fact, the game would have shipped and probably would have been a success if the CD/President had of just fired himself, and let all of us do our jobs.

So, end rant - thank you Garage Games for understanding. :D

#25 To those who are deciding to get out, you're not going to get a bad reputation for dobbing in an employer who is cheating his workers. So if you've got the guts, stand up for your fellow workers rights and do the right thing.

Talk to your employer first with courage, because that will often empower you, you become the noise maker, (and sometimes you become most valuable employee all of sudden). From that position you can keep demanding fair and equal pay conditions for your other colleagues.

So be the hero for your colleages if you can - and don't fear losing your job, because if the conditions are crap it aint worth "working for da man" - life is too short - have fun in your job - don't suffer for your art (be it programming or art or design). Don't stay because of fear, that's not a way to live.