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Glass Door: Updates
electrumleopard
Member Posts: 88 Arc User
I made a thread late last year about Cryptic's Glass Door reviews. Lately with game state being improved I wanted to check up on the business side to see what, if anything changed. Keep in mind these are "Anonymous" so they might not be a authentic Cryptic employee. Also let me know if this would be better suited in Ten Forward.
Jun 24, 2015
“Great Company, so-so publisher ”
Former Employee - Anonymous Employee in Los Gatos, CA
I worked at Cryptic Studios full-time (More than a year)
Recommends
Positive Outlook
Approves of CEO
Pros
Great wages, good community, good people.
Cons
Perfect World (their publisher) is not the best around. Their studio in Redwood City is an inefficient mess, and it tends to impact Cryptic employees more than it should.
Advice to Management
Work to further shield employees from PWE's mistakes.
Jun 15, 2015
The thing about Management being "clique-y" and "blame games" makes me hunger for details.“Was good at beginning, and then.... ”
Former Employee - Anonymous Employee in Los Gatos, CA
I worked at Cryptic Studios full-time (More than a year)
Doesn't Recommend
Negative Outlook
Pros
- great employee benefit, a lot of company outings and holidays
- got work around some very talented people
- co-workers in the same team or department often become friends for life
- pet friendly, gamer friendly
Cons
- poor management.
- poor planning, poor communication, and despite many company meetings and post-mortems to address the issues, they were never improved. Same mistake will keep happening over and over and over again.
- horrible management personnel and is very clique-y, if someone doesn't like you on a personal level for any reason, you have no advancement opportunity even if you've done great work and has helped the development on multiple levels (even with people from multiple disciplines to back your work). It's often one way communication and it will stuck somewhere and never goes through. It somehow felt very unprofessional.
- blame games happen way too often.
Advice to Management
please improve your communication, and be professional doing it too.
Jun 1, 2015
For those not versed in dev talk "Technical Debt" is when bugs and coding things that need attention don't get addressed they become larger more difficult problems down the road. Like the recent server latency fixes. Maybe Borticus can explain it better.“Cryptic Art Department ”
Current Employee - Anonymous Employee
I have been working at Cryptic Studios full-time
Recommends
Positive Outlook
Approves of CEO
Pros
Very friendly, low stress, highly collaborative environment. Great area, talented team, fun work place.
Cons
Sometimes the project scope can be mismanaged, but this isn't usually a problem. Tools are pretty dated, lots of technical debt.
Advice to Management
Try to listen to new opinions, and don't be afraid to take chances on new projects or new ideas.
Jun 11, 2015
“Been looking rather grim ”
Former Employee - Anonymous Employee in Los Gatos, CA
I worked at Cryptic Studios full-time (More than a year)
Doesn't Recommend
Negative Outlook
Pros
It's a non-mobile, PC (and to some extent, console) game company that's been around for quite a while despite the tough times.
The atmosphere is casual, gamer-friendly, pet-friendly, and people often take on cross-disciplinary responsibilities (it's a pro if you want to be more involved, but a con when it results in being forced into a role you don't want for a very very long time like it did for some…
Cons
Poor management, very outdated tech, frustrating proprietary tools, as well as the attitudes from management that makes mediocrity thrive. Also, lack of leadership within each department--especially art and production.
Being a game studio, it's understandable that there are crunches every now and then. What's frustrating is that most of the crunches could have easily been avoided, and those who crunch aren't rewarded. Despite post-mortems, same thing happens over and over.
Some of the managers are terrible when it comes to performance reviews; they just don't seem to care or appreciate all the extra time and effort you've put in to meet their demands. Needless to say, compensations aren't great.
Advice to Management
Pay attention to the people. Reward the ones that are talented and work hard, and promptly get rid of people who are not. Listen to what people are saying. Holding post-mortems won't change anything if you don't listen.
Jun 9, 2015
Looks fake. Good for a laugh though.“Awful Company ”
Former Employee - Senior Developer in Palo Alto, CA
I worked at Cryptic Studios
Doesn't Recommend
Negative Outlook
Disapproves of CEO
Pros
They have an office I guess?
Cons
Worst management I've ever encountered
Terrible project planning and foresight
Knee-jerk style development driven by invisible heads without accountability
Lied about office location, salary/bonuses, genre of game, etc. Overall just a greedy, untrustworthy organization
Advice to Management
Leave the company
0
Comments
I do take this with a grain of salt, because it could be disgruntled gamers that take the opportunity to bash Cryptic/PWE for some slight or another.
That said, if some the OP's post is true, it does cast a light at certain things lately...
But as I said above, take this with a grain of salt, as it might not be 100% accurate...
My character Tsin'xing
Got a CSI expert in here *eyeroll*
Overall these reviews are fairly positive of Cryptic with most of the ire directed at the publisher. I think the main gripe based on what's presented here is they're running too lean with their hardware and software and timetables.
My character Tsin'xing
My character Tsin'xing
Could be the coding engine (or whatever its called) that Cryptic uses for their games. It could be really not up to date and that's why they have problems with it.
Support 90 degree arc limitation on BFaW! Save our ships from looking like flying disco balls of dumb!
My character Tsin'xing
Yup, when I took the position of Scenes Of Crime Officer (SOCO) in 1997 I had to learn all about handwriting analysis along with everything else, it's not hard when you know what to look for, it's all in the patterns.
I'm awestruck that anybody takes it seriously. It's the job hunter's version of Metacritic.
Think I read it on Twitter, but one of the devs said they work on hardware from the last decade.
That is very old equipment these days.
My character Tsin'xing
Thats entirely your subjective opinion. For me the game didnt improve, the opposite (maybe because i look for quality, not just more and more and more non sense content).
I don't believe a single word of the above. I do think that there are excessive grind, no endgame content but repetitive (=/= repeatable) content, lag and rubberbanding issues on top of a rather unstable client...
...some devs who enjoyed saying free insults to PvPers... still can't figure out why they did that. Silence is usually better.
I do have a veeeery negative idea about STO, but it isn't coming from random online websites. You can show me sites talking negatively about STO, but I wouldn't change my opinion for the worse. You can show me sites talking great about STO, but I wouldn't change my opinion for the better.
I tend to believe what I see with my eyes, not what others allegedly reports.
/thread