I have been working at Capital Games full-time for more than a year

Sacramento is a great city and the office is in the heart of midtown. Lots of activity and great eateries in the area. Some truly passionate and dedicated individual contributors. The staff here actually plays the game and cares about its success. The kitchen is stocked once per week with a variety of snacks, drinks and dinner options (if you're working late). Not as robust as a silicon valley company but good relative to the area. Super fun IP – reminding yourself that you work on a Star Wars game everyday gives a sense of pride and accomplishment. Occasional off-site outings like going to the movies, bar-cade and holiday parties. Leadership seems to genuinely care about player sentiment and will course-correct when necessary. Game doesn't employ fleecing tactics like MZ titles. Players can truly be free-to-play if they wish and still have fun. Financial stability of a publicly-traded worldwide publisher. Working in Unity means that skills will be transferable to future projects and other studios (even with the engine's noticeable blemishes). Good environment for junior talent to get their feet wet.

Cons

These critiques are meant to be constructive. I want for this studio to succeed but there needs to be an acknowledgement of the problems at the leadership level – stop pretending that everything is perfect in all-hands meetings. I am willing to update this review in the future when improvements are made. Lack of studio harmony. Senior leadership struggles to make all the pieces (art, engineering, design, product etc...) work as one coherent unit. Stop treating them like silos that only a handful of managers are allowed to talk to. Micromanagement is off the charts. As leaders, it's your responsibility to unblock us and ensure that we can execute. It's not your job to keep halting projects so you can tell us how we're doing it wrong. This is the #1 contributor to putting releases “at risk”. Backdoor meetings. The inner circle (consisting of 2-3 producers) lock themselves in a room and then emerge to dictate, “this is what you're doing!” Not including studio specialists in decisions about the work that they will be doing shows a blatant lack of trust in their abilities. Too many last-minute changes. We understand that occasional changes need to be made without warning, but this happens MULTIPLE TIMES with EVERY RELEASE! Also, many times the leadership neglects to update the jira tickets, which adds to further downstream confusion with QA and GBS. Lack of team-building exercises. Please go and read the countless articles that Google has published on what makes a great team. Then do that. Questionable office attire in management. It's a sad state of affairs when the rank and file put more thought into their appearance than the management. There are a number of employees that clearly make a real effort to dress for success. Meanwhile, most of leadership looks like they just rolled out of bed and couldn't care less how they are viewed by their subordinates. I'm glad that you're comfortable, but how is this supposed to be inspiring? Referencing the non-retaliation policy (you know who you are). Come on... everyone knows that a manager can find plenty of ways to make your life miserable while circumventing this policy. The fact that you even mentioned it should be a clear sign that you need to prove that action will be taken if we bring you dissenting feedback directly. Don't just say it, prove it. Human Resources is a ghost. I have yet to see or hear from our HR department at any meetings (to my best memory). You're supposed to be the voice of reason when there's unrest.