Knowledge Adventure Reviews

Pros

Fully stocked kitchen, fun activities throughout the year. Fellow co workers are friendly and easy to get along with, a lot of talented and passionate people. The brands are all fun to work on. Benefits are great, fully covered medical, vision, and dental, 401k, etc.

Cons

Executives bite more than they can chew and are always making promises they can't keep and end up taking it out on their employees. Management has made their employees cry many times as they belittle them and use gaslighting techniques to manipulate them. Nepotism runs rampant, and you can see the clear preferential treatment for those related to the CEO. They hire and under pay interns and expect them to do work that would not be considered intern work anywhere else. Management embraces key words and run with them without having any knowledge of the field. They micro manage and do not trust their employers, it creates a toxic environment for everyone and the tension can be felt on a daily basis. Management talks bad about their employees to each other and try to cultivate a solitary environment so no one can discuss their experience with each other.

Pros

*Counts as experience *Room to for self-growth as long as you are self-motivated *May have opportunity to work on project that has potential *Kitchen is well stocked *Work/Life balance is good

Cons

*Egos with major lack of technical/artistic knowledge *Exec/Upper management catches on to industry keywords and then tries to force it without understanding game dev *Low wages compared to industry but large wage gaps between people doing the work and exec/upper team *Hiring interns to do work that definitely wouldn't be considered 'intern' anywhere else *A fair amount of nepotism

Pros

There are some truly incredible people who work there. Everyone in the trenches are incredibly passionate about their projects. I learned a lot while I was there. Usually, there is not a lot of overtime or weekend work. So it is pretty easy to sustain a good work life balance. They have softball teams and other recreational activities fairly regularly. So there is a good amount of time to bond with other employees. Working on DreamWorks projects are a lot of fun. Benefits are pretty good. Full dental, vision and health insurance are covered.

Cons

Executives don't communicate with the team. The system in place keeps them from participating in development until the last second. Resulting in delays and the development team having to rush to complete the project. They are disrespectful to their employees and to each other. I watched the executives make employees cry multiple times because they belittle their employees’ expertise. I sat in a meeting where they talked trash about each other behind one another back. This is incredibly immature and inappropriate in the workplace. Especially for someone who is suppose to be an example everyone else should follow. Since they don't actually know their employees, or what they are capable of, they are unable to place them in positions which make full use of their skill set. This hurts the company and makes the work not meaningful. Additionally, the pay is far below the average across all positions.

Pros

Fun activities (that add hours to your work day), free snacks, great healthcare benefits and 401K matching

Cons

They've all been said here before. No real long-term planning, selling out the JumpStart brand to try and make a quick buck, disappointing revenues on terrible products for years and years. I worked here for over 7 years and received one pay raise, was laid off with no explanation or justification. Totally stalled my career/life growth. Biggest waste of 7 years...

Pros

Some genuinely nice people. Fun events. Great place to be an intern or a producer. The school of dragons product could be huge given the correct attention to quality and resources allocated.

Cons

Aiming high but shooting low. CEO selling goals the company can't reach. Design dept needs to be allowed to develop and be given the resources to produce the quality products. Huge reliance on reskinning previous products. Heavy reliance on incompetent outsourcing adding unnecessary stress for the entire team and much wasted time. Much of the game design and major design decisions being done by producers and exec team - not a company to be a designer.