Compulsion Games reviews

- ownership - trust - human aspect/culture - collaboration - indie creativeness with AAA means - leadership - growth - flexiblity (work hours, WFH, abroad remote work, unpaid leave)

No company is perfect, and more than that, no company is perfect for everybody. Compulsion is aware of that and try to stay true to its vision of game dev as a human first approach even if it means less than optimal ways of producing games which is not to everyone taste. To understand Compulsion, you need to understand that this studio is full of people who love the act of making games and they like to do it amongst like minded people. You comes here because you like trying new ideas, you like creative and messy processes for concepts that are not yet fully figured out and might be dead ends. And you like creating your own tasks instead of following instructions. This is not everybody’s dream job as it requires being comfortable to be proactive in an a pretty lose environment, on top of being a good communicant. It means taking risks and exposing yourself, navigating the unknown all the time. Also, sometimes that shared love of game making gets in the way of releasing said games: The very non-confrontational atmosphere leads to feature creep and a lack of reality check. It’s not a stepping stone in your career in order to have a nice "Xbox Studio" line in your CV, it’s a human experience. Let’s give some more details: - The studio is respectful of its employees: - Salaries are above the market (not the very best ones but not far from it either), adjusted to the inflation and the market (no need to ask for a raise to your boss) and bonuses are very generous. - As much Personal days/mental days/PTO as you need to. And they are actually used (few people on any given day) and strongly encouraged. Your health and peace of mind matters. - Very flexible hours. You are treated as a smart adult and they trust you to do your work. No tracking (outside of the rare overtime) - The autonomy also extends to your own growth. No manager telling you the 3 weakness/area of improvements that you need to work on for next year. You need to be proactive and self-aware. - Hybrid work where you don’t have to ask or declare in advance if you work from home or at the office - People are respectful of each other: - You can tell that people genuinely enjoy working with each other, don’t hesitate to send funny messages, join the social events, etc. - Some people agree to come to the studio (when not full remote) on the same day, etc - You see ex-employees popping up pretty often to say hello and keep in touch - The interesting stuff: - Total creative freedom. No marketing/investor/publisher asking you to add a multiplayer mode last minute or to change the game type of game to something with a bigger potential market. Failures are your own. - Limited headcount. For everybody to have an impact, you can’t grow too big as it would result in unwanted bureaucracy. But it limits the scope of the game we can make as a result. - 50% of the studio are ex-indies (Enormous creativity, fast iteration, short term focused) and 50% are ex-AAA/AAAA (disillusioned by the lack of humanity/autonomy/impactfulness seen working on giant projects, in search of a new sense of purpose in this industry) - 1 month of outside-of-Canada remote work (nice during the long winter) + 2 weeks where the studio is off (everybody is offline, no temptation to read you emails or the chat. You don’t need to prepare for it, nobody will requires you work while you are vacationing) - Toxic and/or difficult to work with people have been let go. Even old timers. Even in difficult timings. The health of the group is prioritize over individual talent or project priorities. - Your autonomy also comes with support from your leader as well as the group. You are not alone, but you are expected to be self-driven.