Electronic Arts, Inc. (EA) (NASDAQ: ERTS)[3] is an international developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers responsible for its games.
Originally, EA was a home computing game publisher. In the late 1980s, the company began developing games in-house and supported consoles by the early 1990s. EA later grew via acquisition of several successful developers. By the early 2000s, EA had become one of the world's largest third-party publishers. In May 2008, the company reported net annual revenue of US$4.02 billion in fiscal year 2008.[4]
Currently, EA's most successful products are sports games published under its EA Sports label, games based on popular movie licenses such as Harry Potter and games from long-running franchises like Need for Speed, Medal of Honor, The Sims, Battlefield and the later games in the Burnout and Command & Conquer series. EA also owns the world's largest video game testing studio, EA Canada in Burnaby, that houses more than 2000 employees and is also EA's largest in-house game development division.
EA reported a US$1.08 billion loss for the financial year ending March 2008. Revenue for the same period was up to US$4.2 billion, a 15 percent rise from the previous year's US$3.6 billion.[5]
Once you have the right team of employees in place, it is crucial that you do everything that you can to retain your employees. Oasis assists you with your Employee Retention efforts by offering Innovative Benefits Programs including a variety of medical and dental insurance, 401 (k) plans and Life Insurance. We even provide employees with access to an Employee Assistance Program, a Health Advocate wellness program and a Wellness coaching program, just to name a few. Additionally, we provide you with communication tools that include Employee Satisfaction Surveys and an Employee Newsletter. We can even provide you with Compensation Surveys
EA's annualized titles, its primary source of profit, have declined over the past two years," Wilson noted. "Although market share has not declined dramatically to date, in years such as 2007, which promises to have tremendous competition, it seems likely if quality does not improve. EA's aggregate review has also declined significantly in the past two years."
Wilson listed 20 of EA's recent annualized franchises, with averaged GameRankings scores by year across all platforms. For more direct comparisons, he also included scores for just the PlayStation 2 versions of the games. In nearly every case, the most recent version of an EA game scored lower than the version released in 2004. The company's NHL franchise maintained its 75.1 percent average across all platforms, while its MVP Baseball franchise notched up its multiplatform average from 86.3 percent to 86.7 percent.
As for which series were falling short, Wilson singled out "dramatic swings" in the average PS2 review scores of some of the company's top franchises. The analyst's numbers show that Need for Speed's averaged score has dropped 5.8 points, and NBA Live shed 13.1 points over the last two years. He noted that reviews don't always correlate to sales, but they tend to mirror a game's quality, which can affect its retail fortunes.
"The widespread industry belief is that one or two bad iterations can ruin the long-term value of a license, and we agree," Wilson said.
According to Wilson, EA has also missed some opportunities with its attempts to establish new franchises. He noted poor reviews of Superman Returns, Batman Begins, Marvel Nemesis, NFL Head Coach, and Arena Football in particular. And while The Godfather fared better with the critics than that batch, Wilson said the game's development and marketing costs kept it from meeting EA's profit expectations.
Wilson couldn't point to any one thing within EA that would cause a decline in game quality, but he said the company failed an attempt to standardize its studios on the RenderWare engine, was enduring "excessive employee turnover" that lowered the average experience level at the company, and that it has perhaps focused too much on quantity and not enough on quality.
Playfish develops games that allow multiple players to play with or against each other. Playfish games are largely distributed via social networking sites and can be played both online and on mobile devices. Playfish games are free but encourage users to purchase virtual goods such as better weapons or clothing as a way to upgrade the experience for the player. As of November 2009, Playfish games have been installed by more than 150mm users and are being actively used by 60mm users on social media platforms such as Facebook, MySpace, Google, Bebo, iPhone and Android. Playfish games are amongst the most acclaimed and popular online, including Pet Society, Restaurant City, Country Story and Who Has the Biggest Brain? Direct competitors include Zynga and Playdom. Since inception, Playfish had received $20mm funding from Accel Partners (Partner: Kevin Comolli) and Index Ventures (Partner: Ben Holmes). Playfish was founded in 2007 and is headquartered in London.
EA has declined to comment on the suit. But Rueff's memo appeared to respond to it, somewhat. "We consider our artists to be 'creative' people and our engineers to be 'skilled' professionals who relish flexibility, but others use the outdated wage and hour laws to argue in favor of a work force that is paid hourly, like more traditional industries, and conforming to set schedules," he wrote. "But we can't wait for the legislative process to catch up, so we're forced to look at making some changes to exempt and nonexempt classifications beginning in April."
Rueff's memo laid out other steps addressing work conditions. For example, EA has started a project to improve the development process. It aims, among other things, to "lessen the number of late-in-the-process changes, fire drills and crunches."
Rueff also noted that EA stands out as a giant in the field, with more than 5,000 employees. "We're doing something that no one has ever done before: No entertainment software company has ever scaled to this size," he wrote.
One EA software developer doubted that real change would come of the memo. He also took issue with the way Rueff discussed overtime laws. "It didn't make sense," said the employee, who is looking to leave the company. "It made it seem like they were trying to say they weren't breaking the law."
Another EA employee said he hoped conditions will improve but suggested that the company and its game developers are at fundamental odds.
The memo "shows exactly where the executives' priorities are. Their overriding focus is to build the largest entertainment company in the world, whereas most of the developers working for them (at least the ones I work with) simply want to make great games," the employee wrote in an e-mail. "Until the execs change their focus to making great games (unlikely) or the developers change their focus to expanding the organization (really unlikely), there's always going to be some significant personnel issues within EA."
Employees leave organizations for many reasons; oftentimes these reasons are unknown to their employers. Employers need to listen to employees’ needs and implement retention strategies to make employees feel valued and engaged in order to keep them. These retention methods can have a significant and positive impact on an organization’s turnover rate. Here we’ll take a look at some of these strategies.
According to strategic planning consultant Leigh Branham, SPHR, 88% of employees leave their jobs for reasons other than pay: However, 70% of managers think employees leave mainly for pay-related reasons. Branham says there are seven main reasons why employees leave a company:
Employees feel the job or workplace is not what they expected.
There is a mismatch between the job and person.
There is too little coaching and feedback.
There are too few growth and advancement opportunities.
Employees feel devalued and unrecognized.
Employees feel stress from overwork and have a work/life imbalance.
There is a loss of trust and confidence in senior leaders.
Turnover is costly. According to Right Management, a talent and career management consulting firm, it costs nearly three times an employee’s salary to replace someone, which includes recruitment, severance, lost productivity, and lost opportunities. Life Work Solutions , a provider of staff retention and consulting services, provides the following turnover facts and rates:
Over 50 % of people recruited in to an organization will leave within 2 years.
One in four of new hires will leave within 6 months.
Nearly 70% of organizations report that staff turnover has a negative financial impact due to the cost of recruiting, hiring, and training a replacement employee and the overtime work of current employees that’s required until the organization can fill the vacant position.
Nearly 70 % of organizations report having difficulties in replacing staff.
Approximately 50% of organizations experience regular problems with employee retention.
From these statistics it’s clear that it’s important to develop a retention plan to retain employees and keep turnover low.
Retention Methods
As explained by EA Consulting Group in a recent white paper, the dilemma facing organizations is whether to invest more time and money fine-tuning their recruitment strategy or to pay extra attention to retaining the talent they already have. Recruiting new staff is expensive, stressful and time-consuming. Once you have good staff it pays to make sure they stay (Main, 2008).
Think of retention as re-recruiting your workforce. Recognize that what attracts a candidate to a particular job is often different from what keeps that person there. While salary certainly is a key consideration for potential employees, pay alone won’t keep them in a job (Angott, 2007). Advantageous aspects other than strictly compensation attract good employees; something more than a number retains them. Today employees are looking for a career package, including a comfortable company culture, career path, diversity of responsibilities, and a work/life balance (Griffiths, 2006).
Here are some effective methods employers utilize in order to keep employees happy and part of their organization instead of looking for employment opportunities elsewhere.
Originally, EA was a home computing game publisher. In the late 1980s, the company began developing games in-house and supported consoles by the early 1990s. EA later grew via acquisition of several successful developers. By the early 2000s, EA had become one of the world's largest third-party publishers. In May 2008, the company reported net annual revenue of US$4.02 billion in fiscal year 2008.[4]
Currently, EA's most successful products are sports games published under its EA Sports label, games based on popular movie licenses such as Harry Potter and games from long-running franchises like Need for Speed, Medal of Honor, The Sims, Battlefield and the later games in the Burnout and Command & Conquer series. EA also owns the world's largest video game testing studio, EA Canada in Burnaby, that houses more than 2000 employees and is also EA's largest in-house game development division.
EA reported a US$1.08 billion loss for the financial year ending March 2008. Revenue for the same period was up to US$4.2 billion, a 15 percent rise from the previous year's US$3.6 billion.[5]
Once you have the right team of employees in place, it is crucial that you do everything that you can to retain your employees. Oasis assists you with your Employee Retention efforts by offering Innovative Benefits Programs including a variety of medical and dental insurance, 401 (k) plans and Life Insurance. We even provide employees with access to an Employee Assistance Program, a Health Advocate wellness program and a Wellness coaching program, just to name a few. Additionally, we provide you with communication tools that include Employee Satisfaction Surveys and an Employee Newsletter. We can even provide you with Compensation Surveys
EA's annualized titles, its primary source of profit, have declined over the past two years," Wilson noted. "Although market share has not declined dramatically to date, in years such as 2007, which promises to have tremendous competition, it seems likely if quality does not improve. EA's aggregate review has also declined significantly in the past two years."
Wilson listed 20 of EA's recent annualized franchises, with averaged GameRankings scores by year across all platforms. For more direct comparisons, he also included scores for just the PlayStation 2 versions of the games. In nearly every case, the most recent version of an EA game scored lower than the version released in 2004. The company's NHL franchise maintained its 75.1 percent average across all platforms, while its MVP Baseball franchise notched up its multiplatform average from 86.3 percent to 86.7 percent.
As for which series were falling short, Wilson singled out "dramatic swings" in the average PS2 review scores of some of the company's top franchises. The analyst's numbers show that Need for Speed's averaged score has dropped 5.8 points, and NBA Live shed 13.1 points over the last two years. He noted that reviews don't always correlate to sales, but they tend to mirror a game's quality, which can affect its retail fortunes.
"The widespread industry belief is that one or two bad iterations can ruin the long-term value of a license, and we agree," Wilson said.
According to Wilson, EA has also missed some opportunities with its attempts to establish new franchises. He noted poor reviews of Superman Returns, Batman Begins, Marvel Nemesis, NFL Head Coach, and Arena Football in particular. And while The Godfather fared better with the critics than that batch, Wilson said the game's development and marketing costs kept it from meeting EA's profit expectations.
Wilson couldn't point to any one thing within EA that would cause a decline in game quality, but he said the company failed an attempt to standardize its studios on the RenderWare engine, was enduring "excessive employee turnover" that lowered the average experience level at the company, and that it has perhaps focused too much on quantity and not enough on quality.
Playfish develops games that allow multiple players to play with or against each other. Playfish games are largely distributed via social networking sites and can be played both online and on mobile devices. Playfish games are free but encourage users to purchase virtual goods such as better weapons or clothing as a way to upgrade the experience for the player. As of November 2009, Playfish games have been installed by more than 150mm users and are being actively used by 60mm users on social media platforms such as Facebook, MySpace, Google, Bebo, iPhone and Android. Playfish games are amongst the most acclaimed and popular online, including Pet Society, Restaurant City, Country Story and Who Has the Biggest Brain? Direct competitors include Zynga and Playdom. Since inception, Playfish had received $20mm funding from Accel Partners (Partner: Kevin Comolli) and Index Ventures (Partner: Ben Holmes). Playfish was founded in 2007 and is headquartered in London.
EA has declined to comment on the suit. But Rueff's memo appeared to respond to it, somewhat. "We consider our artists to be 'creative' people and our engineers to be 'skilled' professionals who relish flexibility, but others use the outdated wage and hour laws to argue in favor of a work force that is paid hourly, like more traditional industries, and conforming to set schedules," he wrote. "But we can't wait for the legislative process to catch up, so we're forced to look at making some changes to exempt and nonexempt classifications beginning in April."
Rueff's memo laid out other steps addressing work conditions. For example, EA has started a project to improve the development process. It aims, among other things, to "lessen the number of late-in-the-process changes, fire drills and crunches."
Rueff also noted that EA stands out as a giant in the field, with more than 5,000 employees. "We're doing something that no one has ever done before: No entertainment software company has ever scaled to this size," he wrote.
One EA software developer doubted that real change would come of the memo. He also took issue with the way Rueff discussed overtime laws. "It didn't make sense," said the employee, who is looking to leave the company. "It made it seem like they were trying to say they weren't breaking the law."
Another EA employee said he hoped conditions will improve but suggested that the company and its game developers are at fundamental odds.
The memo "shows exactly where the executives' priorities are. Their overriding focus is to build the largest entertainment company in the world, whereas most of the developers working for them (at least the ones I work with) simply want to make great games," the employee wrote in an e-mail. "Until the execs change their focus to making great games (unlikely) or the developers change their focus to expanding the organization (really unlikely), there's always going to be some significant personnel issues within EA."
Employees leave organizations for many reasons; oftentimes these reasons are unknown to their employers. Employers need to listen to employees’ needs and implement retention strategies to make employees feel valued and engaged in order to keep them. These retention methods can have a significant and positive impact on an organization’s turnover rate. Here we’ll take a look at some of these strategies.
According to strategic planning consultant Leigh Branham, SPHR, 88% of employees leave their jobs for reasons other than pay: However, 70% of managers think employees leave mainly for pay-related reasons. Branham says there are seven main reasons why employees leave a company:
Employees feel the job or workplace is not what they expected.
There is a mismatch between the job and person.
There is too little coaching and feedback.
There are too few growth and advancement opportunities.
Employees feel devalued and unrecognized.
Employees feel stress from overwork and have a work/life imbalance.
There is a loss of trust and confidence in senior leaders.
Turnover is costly. According to Right Management, a talent and career management consulting firm, it costs nearly three times an employee’s salary to replace someone, which includes recruitment, severance, lost productivity, and lost opportunities. Life Work Solutions , a provider of staff retention and consulting services, provides the following turnover facts and rates:
Over 50 % of people recruited in to an organization will leave within 2 years.
One in four of new hires will leave within 6 months.
Nearly 70% of organizations report that staff turnover has a negative financial impact due to the cost of recruiting, hiring, and training a replacement employee and the overtime work of current employees that’s required until the organization can fill the vacant position.
Nearly 70 % of organizations report having difficulties in replacing staff.
Approximately 50% of organizations experience regular problems with employee retention.
From these statistics it’s clear that it’s important to develop a retention plan to retain employees and keep turnover low.
Retention Methods
As explained by EA Consulting Group in a recent white paper, the dilemma facing organizations is whether to invest more time and money fine-tuning their recruitment strategy or to pay extra attention to retaining the talent they already have. Recruiting new staff is expensive, stressful and time-consuming. Once you have good staff it pays to make sure they stay (Main, 2008).
Think of retention as re-recruiting your workforce. Recognize that what attracts a candidate to a particular job is often different from what keeps that person there. While salary certainly is a key consideration for potential employees, pay alone won’t keep them in a job (Angott, 2007). Advantageous aspects other than strictly compensation attract good employees; something more than a number retains them. Today employees are looking for a career package, including a comfortable company culture, career path, diversity of responsibilities, and a work/life balance (Griffiths, 2006).
Here are some effective methods employers utilize in order to keep employees happy and part of their organization instead of looking for employment opportunities elsewhere.
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