Storm8 Reviews

Cons

Storm8 has been having trouble finding another hit success game since their initial success. We recently went through a massive set of layoffs and we're struggling to find something to really get behind and make amazing.

Cons

Storm8's biggest fault is its dichotomy of thought. On one hand they want to make great games and push forward into the mobile market, and on the other they fear change and lack the courage and ability to take risks. Any risks. Almost every design decision is data-driven. The result is the company is stuck in an evolved-but-still-fast-follow mindset which makes creating original games impossible. Some of the company's most original design achievements occurred during the yearly hackathon, and those projects will unfortunately never see the light of day. Everyone at Storm8 is capable of doing so much more.

Cons

There was little to no career advancement, and absolutely no faith placed in the creative talent. I watched some of the best designers I know get sidelined into disillusionment. Poor treatment of designers makes for poor products. Turns out one can not make a hit mobile game based on data alone.

Cons

Everyone has a voice but some folks might be intimidated by the data- and results-oriented team. Everyone is expected to stretch across not only their own discipline but also others, e.g., engineers should also have good PM sense

Cons

Incapable management. Shorted sighted CTO Chak.

Cons

Clueless leadership and terrible process. Their resistance of new ideas and ignorance of market trends means this company can't make a good game to save their lives, and it's not because they don't have talented employees.

Cons

Company vision is neither clear or promising

Cons

Gaming it just not what it use to be so the industry is fading fast

Cons

Company lay-off hopefully will grow again

Cons

-The company suffers from poor creative direction. They got lucky very early on with a few initial successes, but never knew what to do next and didn’t know how to adapt to a changing market. First they tried re-skinning their own games to replicate early hits. When that didn’t work, they fell into a cycle of “fast-follows” (clones) of competitor games, relying too much on metric data, but not really understanding the reasons why a particular game was successful. The heads of the company won’t take any meaningful creative risks; they won’t pursue any game concept that hasn’t already been proven out as a market success. If you want to make interesting or innovative games, this is not the place for you.

- Poor foresight / overall planning. Often times, the year would be closing out and the top leadership had no real idea of what the company roadmap was for the next year, or worse, preferred to keep it secret from their employees until the very last minute.

- Poor career advancement opportunities. It didn’t really matter how well you did on your performance reviews or if you consistently followed through on managerial goals/directives. You either had to be really chummy with your department head or threaten to quit before your desire for promotion would be taken seriously.