You can relax, It's not over.
Maxis & The Sims are far from over, according to the EA Careers Website After our recent report that EA is laying off some of their veteran employees working at Maxis, it seems that new positions h...
Forum Discussion
"bixters;c-16450293" wrote:"Erpe;c-16450211" wrote:
So you would set a graphic artist to do the programming, the sound or whatever just because the graphic artist had more experience with designing the graphics? ;)
The point is that there are many types of developers just like there is in a hospital where you wouldn’t like a medical doctor or a dentist to do heart surgery either. Look at http://creativeskillset.org/creative_industries/games/job_roles to see 12 different types of jobs in game development described.
Maybe EA needed more graphic artists instead of programmers or more programmers instead of game designers and producers or whatever. Even EA can’t give an experienced game developer a job which would have required this developer to have a different education.
That's not what we're saying at all. New employees should be placed where they're most experienced in all situations. But getting rid of experienced and knowledgeable employees, who have been with the game for 20 YEARS, seems unwise. They have the most knowledge about what SHOULD be in a Sims game and what has been successful in the past. The Sims team is not like a hospital or a regular business. It is very specialized for employees with specific traits who actually KNOW the game. The Sims is not some basic game where anyone can just jump in and know everything, it's much more complicated than most games. Getting rid of alumni who know the ins and outs of the game is foolhardy. These employees, instead of being laid off or voluntarily leaving, should have been promoted for their experience with the game into leadership positions. In leadership positions, these seasoned employees could train newer employees and make the game better for everyone involved.
What I am saying is that for simmers a developer is just a developer. But that isn’t true at all. There are artists who make the graphics. There are audio engineers who make the sound and the music. There are programmers who write code. There are producers who make sure that the progress goes according to plans and within the budget. And there are testers and so on. The developers are very specialized and can’t just be moved around to a different kind of job. But their skills and experiences can be used by EA in other games too.
Things just aren’t as simple as simmers most often assume.
