Pros
-The space is nice. -Snacks and 50 cent sodas -Bagles and fruit on Fridays -Will get dinner for people staying late -A good entry position to gain experience as a coop before joining a bigger profile studio -1P partakes on community efforts. Encouraging involvement with schools, kids, and making a positive impact in the community. -Small teams let you carry a lot of the responsibilities of the project. Making a bigger impact. -Some really talented people that carry the company and its successes. Stick to them and you will benefit. -Upstate New York is beautiful. Having access to a lot of nature all year around without a long commute.
Cons
-The unwillingness of Production to accept change has been the ultimate factor in 1Ps downfall. It is believed that 1P can keep just doing the same thing without revolutionizing and redefining itself. Looking at 2 years worth of products for a specific client, and not being able to distinguish which ones comes first, and which one is the latest is prove enough of this. -With outdated tools, pipelines and thinking, all this leads to work to be frustrating. The solution to this is always to add more man power and take resources from other projects to patch things up. Leaving other projects without resources and creating another fire. -Lack of set roles lead to confusion, while people in higher roles can be incompetent about what projects really require and always eye balling it. This is the only place i have seen that sets as lead someone that just came out of college. -The lack of well established and experienced people in charge made difficult decisions always land on the CEO. Which tended to lead to frustration and no creative workflow. At the end of the day it was always her decision, even when she had no real experience or knowledge on the field at hand. Even when you had facts, plans and a thought process that could be up for discussion, this was always diminished by the CEO. -CEO has proved to be passive aggressive, manipulative, and abrasive. With off the record 1 on 1s that end up being insulting. There is no open dialogue, but just a barrage of "how she is right", instead of asking for perspective and reason. -1P can't keep good talent aboard. Leading to junior employees to take over roles that they are not fit for. This is due to Production finding challenging work and projects, earning employees respect through listening and appreciation. With some instances of people taking credit for other peoples work. -There is no dialogue or transparency. Everything is always masked with "good intentions" through company meetings. The company is small enough where being upfront is a better approach. Since its easy to figure out what is really going on by just paying attention. -No trust in employees. This being a big factor, where people are not recognized or appreciated for what they bring to the table. Often dismissed because the CEO disagrees, or someone in Production doesn't like the idea. -Trusting that projects will go easy because we get assets from clients. So many projects have failed and turned into a nightmare because Production expected the project to be easy. With no real insight into what these assets include, they take on a project for scraps, only to find that the project was a whole lot demanding. On plenty of occasions more than one person would raise concerns about this, only to be dismissed by Production. -1P is a production house. It takes any work, gets paid sub par and is expected to do wonders with a poor budget and time. This is called "1P Culture" and is expected of everyone to just accept it and do what they have to do. Crunching is determined to be part of "Game Development" and will not accept that crunch happens when bad planning is present. -Priorities are not set properly. They pay more attention on Shipping Parties than actually getting good internet, equipment, and tools that can help with game production. Computers were second hand and could barely run programs properly. Memory space was just 250 gigs, on projects that ended up surpassing that much data through the repository. -1P takes attendance, and doesn't look at the contributions of people and their merit. It is more important for them to have a rigid schedule, than the overall performance of individuals. -Your opinions are not important. Even tho they claim that they welcome opinions. People at 1P are more afraid to speak because of the fear of being turned down by the CEO and Production. -No Vacation time -1P is located in Troy NY. Even when the town is growing and upgrading, its still important to recognize that 80% of it is the ghetto. With severe extreme weather. It has been stated by several employees, that they find it very uncomfortable to walk the streets of Troy, without having someone yell or stalk them. -No real privacy. Having people sit in the middle of busy paths that can be distracting. -If you have previous experience, be prepared to be the one that has the most experience. Most employees are fresh out of college, leaving you to fend for yourself and look for ways to improve on your own. -No encouragement to improve, no raises or extra benefits for doing a good job. Several successful projects, acclaimed by the client and no recognition from Production. -There is no game studio community. So if you want to expand your talents in the area, there is only VV or 1P. -1P finds it hard to justify using latest programs, so you might end falling behind on the latest trend of skills, software and pipelines. This includes you doing more work to make up for not having those to your disposition. -A big sense of complacency impedes people from wanting to grow as a company, and really develop and identity. A cutting edge that can define and sell the company for something special, and not just only the cheapest developer around. -Lack of Quality Assurance not only in playing the game, but set standard on quality overall. This comes more often from the team, than this driven by production and being part of the goals of the company.