What's Bad For EA Is Bad For Vancouver

Andy Chalk

One Flag, One Fleet, One Cat
Nov 12, 2002
45,698
1
0
What's Bad For EA Is Bad For Vancouver


The city of Electronic Arts [http://vancouver.ca/] has canceled plans to open a new operation in the city while rumors fly about the possible closure of another.

Burnaby [http://www.developmag.com/news/30972/EA-Black-Boxs-fate-uncertain] as a result, if it's not dropped from the EA lineup entirely.

Meanwhile, the publisher also revealed that it has killed plans to open a new studio in Vancouver as a result of slow Christmas sales and the overall sluggishness of the economy. Planning for the new studio began about a year ago, company rep Colin Macrae said, but EA has now leased the 20,000 square-foot premises to another tenant. "These are challenging times, they're uncertain times for our industry and across the board," Macrae told The Globe and Mail [http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081211.weavan1211/BNStory/Technology]. But he emphasized EA's commitment to the city, adding, "We continue to be firmly rooted in Vancouver."

We've contacted EA for comment and will update when more information becomes available.


Permalink
 

CoverYourHead

High Priest of C'Thulhu
Dec 7, 2008
2,514
0
0
I kind of feel bad for EA, just when they were starting to improve upon their gaming franchises and adding so many great ones, they're getting hit brutally hard.
 

SomeBritishDude

New member
Nov 1, 2007
5,081
0
0
CoverYourHead said:
I kind of feel bad for EA, just when they were starting to improve upon their gaming franchises and adding so many great ones, they're getting hit brutally hard.
Thank you! I thought I was the only one who saw the mindlessness of this. EA stop pumping out shit. They get punished for it. Don't expect anything remotely intresting from them for awhile.
 

cleverlymadeup

New member
Mar 7, 2008
5,256
0
0
that sux for them but with the times it's expected really

geek cred if you can translate it without using an ascii translator
 

El_Chancho_Grande

New member
Jul 4, 2008
2
0
0
The problems at EA Blackbox have little to do with the recession.

If there are significant layoffs at EA Blackbox, it will be good for the startups and medium-sized developers in the city. Radical, Backbone, and a few others have been laying people off this year so the talent pool is filling up. It's going to be harder for the average workers to find jobs. Engineers will come out better than artists because there was a shortage of engineers before the layoffs began.

There's been a trickle of people leaving for Montreal lately. House prices are insane in Vancouver so the cheap house prices in Montreal are tempting people away. Combined with the layoffs, it might turn into a steady outflow of people.
 

mark_n_b

New member
Mar 24, 2008
729
0
0
El_Chancho_Grande said:
The problems at EA Blackbox have little to do with the recession.

If there are significant layoffs at EA Blackbox, it will be good for the startups and medium-sized developers in the city. Radical, Backbone, and a few others have been laying people off this year so the talent pool is filling up. It's going to be harder for the average workers to find jobs. Engineers will come out better than artists because there was a shortage of engineers before the layoffs began.

There's been a trickle of people leaving for Montreal lately. House prices are insane in Vancouver so the cheap house prices in Montreal are tempting people away. Combined with the layoffs, it might turn into a steady outflow of people.
Backbone = not existent in Vancouver anymore. Shut down a half a year ago. As for the black box potential closure, that is very likely to do with Need For Speed not performing since the time of Game Cube. It makes it an easy target during economic cuts. It's just a satellite studio anyways, with like eight billion of them shutting one down doesn't really impact the grander entity of EA anyways. I know maybe two EA employees that work at BlackBox, and they don't really think of themselves as "EA" employees. May as well work in the Burnaby studio, it is a fortress of a facility.

Rumour has it Relic is looking to hire about a hundred new heads over the first half of 2009 on its upcoming projects.

Vancouver will be fine, the Olympics are coming causing the real estate spike you mention and ensuring the economic stability of the city for quite some time to come. Programmers are always in demand in gaming, they are a rare breed of individual anyways, and game companies under-pay programmers quite noticeably (programmers, you could make $15 to $30 grande more a year working on bank databases or word processors), but I doubt EA's hardships will do anything significant for the start-ups in the city.

What I'd like to know is what you're basing your Montreal guff on though. Over the past two years I've only known three industry pros to have gone from BC to Quebec, and one of them came from Quebec to work in BC in the first place.
 

calolziocorte

New member
Dec 20, 2008
1
0
0
"Vancouver will be fine, the Olympics are coming causing the real estate spike you mention and ensuring the economic stability of the city for quite some time to come."

mark_n_b, you have been drinking the koolaid, dude, although you have apparently not paid attention to the disaster that is happening in Vancouver right now. Your assertion that the Olympics will 'ensure' economic stability is grossly exaggerated. The main boosts such as construction projects are almost all completed. Real estate was a bubble that is now burst with sales down 70% last month from November 2007. Real estate prices are already down 14% from peak, 8% in he last 2 months, this is a disastrous unwinding rivaling brutal US markets. Layoffs are just starting and companies like EA firing people is all part of this unwinding, Vancouver Real Estate will not be fine, by extension, the city that operates by selling each condos will most likely also not be fine.
 

ElArabDeMagnifico

New member
Dec 20, 2007
3,775
0
0
CoverYourHead said:
I kind of feel bad for EA, just when they were starting to improve upon their gaming franchises and adding so many great ones, they're getting hit brutally hard.
Eh, doesn't matter, they will find work elsewhere.

lets keep metaphorically burning EA to the ground!
 

Jursa

New member
Oct 11, 2008
924
0
0
EA needs to realize that there's one thing a game company shouldn't make enemies with, and that's the bloody gamers...