BioWare Reviews

Pros

Food, comfort, and happy people. BioWare is a comfortable place to work and a happy environment. You must find a healthy place in the corporate structure where creativity is allowed to thrive and corporate needs are sheltered by strong leads. There are some really creative people at BioWare, and it is an absolutely amazing environment to wet one's feet or season one's skills.

Cons

The large corporate mogul of EA opens doors but closes independent thought. Only on the micro-level may creativity thrive, for revolutionary ideas that can be iterated on rapidly in a small company setting turn into months-long trudge of certification, documentation, and stagnation. Long "assembly-line" like production pipelines turn great ideas into watered-down results, quashing the desire for creativity into production, as the outcome of both becomes identical.

Pros

Relaxed atmosphere, got to work with some brilliant people

Cons

Really makes me sad to see what's happened to this company. Only worked there for a short time before the layoffs started, but long enough to see what the problems are. Marketing is driving the business into the ground, making initiatives that make no sense. It's as if they don't realize their audience is gamers, and that's a fail right there. Management simply doesn't listen to the brilliant folks there. I don't know how many times I walked from a meeting shaking my head in complete confusion as to why rational common sense ideas were thrown out in favor of what the marketing head thought was best. I don't believe all game companies are run like this, even BioWare's other branches. But when you have EA looming over your shoulder insisting to see immediate increases in subscriber numbers yet cutting funding in all departments, coupled with horrible management, all the while listening to the marketing department instead of your core audience... yeah. You can see where that's going.

Pros

Great and supporting environment. The people mostly are excited about their projects. People try to be accommodating of real life. Bioware also creates great games consistently. Even the games that haven't sold as well are still respected. It's a great name to have on your resume. There are good opportunities to do cutting edge work.

Cons

Bioware has somewhat of a crunch atmosphere. Project schedules tend to run tight and there are year or longer crunches and sometimes perpetual ones with little breaks. Crunch has always been seen as necessary. In the past, there was a camaraderie that made this tolerable. It felt like the company had your back. By the time I left, there was a growing sense of uncertainty. It felt like layoffs could happen any time to anybody. Just one bad project and everyone would be out the door. Bio used to value people over projects, but now that seems reversed. It is possible that this trend will reverse again with shifts in leadership at EA, but be aware, I've heard of people move and then getting laid off within months. Also be aware that each Bio studio is different. Edmonton, Montreal, and Austin are all somewhat different.

Pros

Free breakfast catering and ice cream stocked weekly. Generally lax work environment. Decent pay. Hours aren't as overburdening as most other QA positions. Immediate supervisors were good people who respected the team.

Cons

Employs a ridiculous amount of contractors with almost no capability for advancement into full-time positions as the company is too stingy to pay for benefits. Regardless, employees are promised a chance of getting full-time if they work hard enough, which is a blatant lie: even my friend who was one of the most important tech staff in the studio, who often outpaced his full-time coworkers, was not brought on after the end of his contract. Most of the full-time staff looks down on the contractors and sometimes even takes credit for their work. Senior management almost never communicates or even acknowledges contract staff. Very cloak-and-dagger about unannounced information, to the point of management outright threatening employees that they would intentionally ruin their career in the gaming industry if they said leaked a word of new content. Horrible software and often dysfunctional hardware supported. Benefits are barely worth mentioning.

Pros

Great people to work with, good focus on work life balance. Very progressive in terms of people - very inclusive and goes out of their way to make sure that people feel taken care of. Felt like the top of the management tried to take care of all of the employees as a group.

Cons

Project-level leadership can act petty at times. Management shies from confrontation, which can result in employees feeling blindsided by things. When I was let go, I felt like I didn't really have a good metric of what it was that caused me to be let go - one manager was totally fine with me and gave me good reviews, while his replacement did not.

Pros

- Opportunities to work on famous and popular AAA franchises - EA's pay and benefits are tops in the industry - Good facilities with lots of perks - Inclusive workplace that values and promotes diversity - There's a sincere effort to ensure work-life balance, but that's the first thing to disappear when a project catches fire

Cons

- Studio leadership is untrustworthy, unaccountable and obsessed with politics - Bad creative and business decisions are allowed to survive for years and destroy the projects that get stuck with them - Sub-studios are the public scapegoats for the Edmonton mothership's failures - Constant high turnover at all levels, with many replacement hires being temp workers who don't receive any benefits - After years of high-profile failures, fans and EA have lost faith in BioWare and left its future in doubt

Pros

A very professional work environment made up of senior developers who have been around the rodeo a few times. Extraordinarily talented people with a wealth of ideas and aspirations. One of the best places for a work/life balance

Cons

There is often a lack of higher direction or, more actually, and difficulty locking down that direction. The management tries to include everyone, which is nice but can be detrimental when schedule pressure you to set a course and stick to it.

Pros

Great work environment. Everyone is hardworking and excited about the product. There are a lot of team buiding events that make the weeks enjoyable.

Cons

The only down side is that it is a volatile industry. Gaming companies have to stay competitive, and thuse there is a lot of transitions that happen within the departments, and between companies in the gaming industry.

Pros

Talented, passionate people all over the place. I particularly want to call out the embedded QA analysts (if you get a contract QA position I highly recommend pursuing any of these opportunities that open up) and our community/marketing teams which do a really great job of engaging the community and looking through data to make sure that we're using our finite resources to develop parts of the game that keep players happy. EA has great benefits - great medical/dental, 401k, employee stock purchase plan, charity donation matching, tuition reimbursement, active living benefit, free games, etc etc etc. EA has an 'evil empire' reputation, but they actually put a lot of effort in to taking care of their employees. You'll have coworkers all over the age/gender/sexual orientation/racial/religious/political/diet/brogrammerness/shoe size map. It's not an echo chamber. Not so much crunch time and boom-and-bust as other game studios. There aren't massive layoffs all the time and crunch time is kept pretty minimal compared to previous sudios I've been at. I'll second the reviews saying communication from studio management is abundant and informative. You always know what the studio's goals are and how your role plays in to it.

Cons

I agree with the reviews lamenting the contract vs full time split. There's a place for contract-to-hire, but when half your staff is temp segregating them is really demoralizing. Fortunately managment uses temp positions much more sanely now. The Heroblade middleware is pretty universally loathed. There are a lot of negative reviews for the contract QA jobs, and yeah those jobs suck but they just kind of suck everywhere. If you can land an embedded job you're going to have a highly respected role and challenging work that affords you a lot of autonomy.