Quickly going downhill - Anonymous employee Criterion Games Employee Review

- Recently there's been a mass exodus of high up staff, leaving the studio's future feeling uncertain. - Production is a mess: An almost overwhelming and suffocating amount of bureaucratic scrutiny on what work is going into the game, leaving very little room for real improvement or meaningful iteration in the project, whilst also expecting the moon on a stick. Meanwhile Production simultaneously seem to have very little idea over what is actually happening with features and things going into the game. What's worse is that Production often book in Retrospectives, gather feedback, and then don't appear to react to or address what people are complaining about. - A huge culture clash between a handful of studios who have been merged together: Criterion, Ghost Games, Codemasters Runcorn & Slightly Mad Studios (along with new hires who weren't previously working for EA) are all at odds with how best to do things, and no one seems to want to budge and collaborate on a better way of working because they are convinced their way is the best way. - Game leadership team can often be condescending and dismissive: throw their weight around with very little evidence for why the things they demand are actually what the game's players want. A lot of people with very little knowledge of crafts dictating poor ideas to experts, rather than experts being trusted to deliver the work. - The entire studio needs a serious amount of training on conflict resolution, constructive feedback and good communication. A lot of people are condescending, confrontational, accusatory and dismissive - and any criticism of this is waved away as "collaboration" or "the Criterion way".