5th Cell Media Reviews

When I was hired, I was promised 2 things, they don't crunch and they hire for life. Unfortunately both were gross misrepresentations of reality. My entire team crunched often, sometimes for a few months and sometimes non stop for more than a year. I've been in the industry a while and no other job comes remotely close to the amount of crunch I saw at 5th Cell. People are let go all the time, usually discretely after their part of a project was complete. Don't get any ideas that this is a stable company to work for. One thing that struck me most is that there is no company culture to speak of, let alone the fun atmosphere you come to expect working at a game studio. A lot of this stems from the fact that most hires are directly out of college and that none of the owners had ever worked at a game studio before. This led to many oddball rules like "no sandals because we're better than that" and "no using the game room during company hours." Pretty much expect zero perks for being employed here. Projects are pretty hit and miss. Most final decisions relied on the CEO, who worked sporadically. Tasks for programmers usually didn't come with much of a design, so you were left to make that up as you go. That can be fun, and could be seen as a plus, but you can expect the design to completely change and your work scrapped for something else. This is very common and part of what led to so much crunch. The project I worked on was completely redesigned many times and at all stages. 5th Cell is run by some pretty big egos. There's a very real sense of "us and them" mentality and a ton of company politics go on here. If you're in the "in" crowd or buddies with the owners then you'll get preferential treatment. They really don't like people rocking the boat, so if you disagree or try to change decisions made by the select few, expect to be booted once your usefulness on a project has run out.

The recent outpouring of negative reviews stems from a segment of a vocal workforce which is less experienced or never worked at a triple-A studio. The studio has taken measures to focus better on their management techniques by hiring stronger leaders amongst our team and stronger personnel in human resources. They have focussed their hiring to ensure there is more development experience and that candidates have a stronger cultural fit. Our leads are taking measures to mentor less experienced employees and to improve the communications gap we allowed to linger for so long. Things are not perfect here but they are improving as the people who have been so negative have left the studio. The sad reality is that those who are unhappy and have been trying to apply to other companies have not received an offer.