Playground Games reviews

- Bullying culture - seen a lot in management - Superstar divas - it seems the higher up the roles you look people turned into a diva/snob (Leamington mentality) - Crunch meant late nights and no weekends. Upper management saying “we don’t encourage crunch” but offering money to buy food to work late - Sucking up to management should of been put on the job description (the browner your nose the further you will make it up the roles) - Unclear communication during reviews and performance meetings - one moment your lead tells you “we see you as a [next role], you have hit all the marks” then someone higher up would say “yeah you are hitting all the marks, let’s put out a couple DLCs and then we can give promotion” why would anyone wait 6 months for a promotion they are told they should have? - Promotions aren’t handed out to people who keep their head down and do their work well meeting deadlines etc. You either need to cause a scene, get that brown nose ready or threaten to leave to be given a promotion - Design lead(who then got promotion to creative director) had no consideration on the engineers, they should work longer hours rather than cut or push back their precious features - Two studios but no clear details being told about what/how the other is doing. 5 years later and still no sign of Fable??? How long before a proper studio with proper tech take the title and deliver the game? - Originally “ask me anything” sessions were anonymous but as soon as the questions got too hard for upper management they remove anonymity. This meant instead of questions about wages/crunch/better work life the questions became “you are amazing?/ something pointless just to get your name read out” - Turnover was awful, swapping experiences engineers with a couple graduates because they struggle to hire anyone with experience - Wages were low but increased by a “bonus scheme”, paid out over the year to keep you around. The cost of living in Leamington and house prices meant people are forced to live further away in other towns - Remote work was refused as an option going forward. During lockdown Forza 5 reached the same metacritic as Forza 4, proving that WFH didn’t hinder the project in anyway. I guess management need to be seen walking around the office to help their egos - The company offers in house role swaps but be warned…by doing so will cause your lead to get upset and start treating you differently - Old tech that doesn’t work and constantly needs working on to place more and more tape in order to keep it together - When the team was thin and full of graduates, the only way to learn and improve as an engineer was to ask the lead for other ways of doing a task in the hope of learning a more efficient way… instead review feedbacks were “stop asking me how to do a task and just do it” this was a reason for holding out on a promotion… heads up that person is now chief engineer…god help the team - When you hand your notice in you become nothing to the company. Treated differently from leads but expected to work/crunch through notice period

- Tools are a wreck, stubborn engineers keep it from progressing; - One of the studio founder is patronising and has a passive aggressive attitude; - Too many silly rules, like "no breakfast after 10.30"; - Bathrooms are disturbing just to see; - Old school management, coorporate, elite; - Some senior staff worked here for their entire career and have no clue how things are done in other studios/have no intention to learn new softwares/techniques; - Royalties bonuses system is becoming unstable due to a change in the dinstributor business model, would not count on that when considering an offer; - People don't take sick days very easily (guess why), spreading germs and making everyone around them ill. Some people is afraid to speak as they fear they might be fired or penalised. Generally people seems happy, but when you get to know them individually you see the discomfort and lack of hope. Loads of people lost their passion due to the faulty tools the company keep using, which makes their dream job unnecessarely frustrating. For this reason some department is overworked to exhaustion (environment artists above all). The tools will ruin your experience at PG even further. You will spend most of your day dealing with crashes, bugs and obsolete/time consuming procedures, rather than focusing on content creation. Even if you can deal with it, you are stopping your professional growth the day you join, as you will be working for 2 to 4 years with a tool that is 10 years old already, potentially on 1 single project. On a side note, if you are considering to relocate to Leamington Spa, think again. The area is extremely expensive (more than London). Don't get fooled by the lower rent prices. Bills, taxes, transports, everything is 50 to 150% more expensive than the capital, despite what the recruters will tell you. Surely someone will still enjoy working here, maybe for a lack of opportunities or just because they found their heppy place, and there are certainly worse places then this, but as a AAA studio in the Uk, this is the most disappointing i have ever worked for.