2. Page 3 Welcome to EA
Page 4 Interview tips
Page 5 Your guide to videogames in stats
Page 6 EA at a glance
Page 7 Our Leaders. Setting the bar high
Page 8 Our Locations. Truly Global
Page 9 Our tEAms: EA Games
Page 10 EA Play
Page 11 EA Sports
Page 12 An insight into EAi
Page 13 Global Publishing, CDS, Corporate
Page 14 What’s next for EA?
Page 15 Our people
Page 16 Our values
Page 17 Nurturing your career
Page 18 Our community. Have your say!
Page 19 Why join EA? A summary
Page 20 What others say about EA
Page 21 EA’s culture. We love what we do
3. Welcome to EA
EA was founded in 1982 by individuals with a deep passion for making games. Many things have
changed over the years as the gaming industry — and the company — has expanded immensely, but
we are still driven by the same passion for developing, publishing, and distributing the world's best
games. Our future looks even brighter as we embrace an online connected generation.
EA has an amazing tradition of game-making and a rich and diverse portfolio of products. Our most
recognizable games include The Sims, the top-selling PC game of all time; great games in the EA
SPORTS line-up like Madden NFL Football, FIFA Soccer, and Tiger Woods PGA TOUR Golf;
groundbreaking racing games like Need For Speed and Burnout; action-packed first-person shooters
like Dead Space, Medal of Honor, and Battlefield; extremely cool music games like Rock Band; games
based on major film franchises like Harry Potter; fun and accessible family games including Hasbro
games; online casual games at Pogo.com; and mobile phone games including Tetris and Scrabble.
And that's just a small sampling of the breadth and depth of the EA portfolio.
Our history has been one of great success, and our future looks even brighter. We hope you enjoy a
successful interview experience with us and are one of the select few who join our talented and
energetic staff at one of the many great EA locations around the world as we shape the future of
interactive entertainment. And be there as we write the next chapter of the amazing EA story.
This interview pack gives you an insight into EA, our history, our leaders, our great games, our
culture, our compensation package and how we nurture your career success, plus great interview
advice. Reading and understanding this interview pack will stand you in great stead for any EA
interview. By the end of this pack we hope you share our enthusiasm and hunger to be part of our
growth plans.
Who would have thought that creating fun could be so much fun?
4. Interview Tips
We won’t ask you to run through fire but EA’s interview process will be challenging as we look to hire only
the best people. To maximize your experience with EA, we suggest that preparation is key.
There are a number of helpful areas you can get to know EA including:
- www.insideea.com Our blog site which gets under the skin of life at EA
- www.jobs.ea.com Our jobs site and so much more. Great employment information.
- www.ea.com Learn about our latest games
- www.info.ea.com Detailed corporate info on EA
Some advice we would offer includes:
- Ensure you know the time, location and who is interviewing you. Plan your journey.
Turn up 10 minutes early
- Dress casually. We are more interested in your ability than your clothing.
- Master your basics. Ensure that you can articulate:
- The decisions you have taken on your career path to date
- Your successes and achievements across your career
- What challenges you are looking for from your next role
- Why you want to work at EA
- A demonstration of an understanding of our industry and our competitors
- Your strengths and areas of improvement
- Be prepared to ask the interviewer questions. This is your opportunity to impress with your knowledge
and research into EA and our industry.
- When in our interview, it is key to relax and be yourself. Our interview style seeks to be informal. Our goal
is to better understand you, your career path to date and your goals for your future career.
- Our interview will seek to explore your behaviour in specific situations and review your career to date. We
are looking to match you against EA DNA and seek to see a good fit with EA.
- Specific disciplines may have different assessments (i.e. Programmers may be asked to take a written test).
- Being interviewed should be slightly challenging and our interview team aim to stretch you. But our goal
is for you to have a great experience and if we fall short, please do let us know.
5. Game Industry Revenue
The games industry is growing. We feel EA is only just scraping the potential of what we can achieve.
For example, Playfish would point to over 500 million current Facebook users, with 15 million playing
Restaurant City. Growth potential is evident. Despite tough economic times, the games industry
shows its resilience and exciting potential. Did you know….?
In 2008, Game Sales Grew 23% in North America; 18% in Europe
In 2009, Industry Growth was 5%
Consumers See Value in Games w/ 100+ Hours of Play
Games Routinely Out-Gross Top Films, Albums, Books
Global Retail Software Sales
(USD in Billions)
$49.6B
Online and Digital
Packaged Goods $40.6B
$25.8B
$18.5B
CY03 CY06 CY09 CY12E
Prediction: Videogames will be to this century, what television was to the last.
6. EA at a Glance…our explosive history
EA was formed in 1982 and ever since we have delighted at being the leader in thrilling the world with
cutting edge Interactive Entertainment. We look forward to sharing a deep and rich history with you.
But let’s start with some simple bullet points and overview of our company milestones.
• Almost 30 Years in Operation • #1 Market Share in North America and Europe
• FY10 Revenue >US$3.7B • 8,000+ Employees Worldwide
• Strong Partnerships: MTV, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo
• Exclusive Partnerships: FIFA, NFL, ESPN , Hasbro
• Distribution > 70 Countries • World’s Largest Studio Operation
7. Our Leaders - setting the bar high
John Riccitiello, Stephen G. Bene
Chief Executive Officer Senior Vice President, General
Counsel and Corporate Secretary
Frank Gibeau, Eric Brown
President, EA Games Label Chief Financial Officer
Peter Moore Gabrielle Toledano,
President, EA SPORTS Executive Vice President of Human
Resources
Joel Linzner Ken Barker
Executive Vice President, Senior Vice President, Chief
Business and Legal Affairs Accounting Officer
Rod Humble John Schappert
Executive Vice Chief Operating Officer
President, EA Play
Label
Setting the agenda for Gaming
8. Locations
EA is truly a global company with offices and development studios located across the world. We are proud
to be a large company which provides our staff with more opportunities to exercise their talents across
different worldwide locations. We ensure that all employees at all locations are underpinned with the best
tools, investment, support and great facilities to work at, all of which enhance creativity and team spirit. By
uniting our locations we generate the passion to create great games which fulfils our quest to entertain.
EA's Game Development Studios
EA operates its global headquarters in Redwood Shores, California. In addition, EA has worldwide studios in
the following locations:
United States: Canada:
Visceral Games (Redwood Shores, California) Bioware (Edmonton and Montréal)
EA Salt Lake (Salt Lake City, Utah) EA Montréal (Montréal)
EALA (Los Angeles, California) EA Mobile (Montréal)
Maxis (Emeryville, California) EAC & Black Box (Vancouver)
Mythic (Fairfax, Virginia)
The Sims (Redwood Shores, California)
Tiburon (Orlando, Florida)
Austin (Texas)
Playfish, (San Francisco)
Europe: Asia:
Bright Light (Guildford, U.K.) Hyderabad, India
Criterion (Guildford, U.K.) Shanghai, China
DICE(Stockholm, Sweden) Seoul, Korea
Phenomic (Frankfurt, Germany) Melbourne, Australia
Bucharest, Romania Beijing, China (inc Playfish)
Playfish (London &Tromso, Norway)
Worldwide Publishing Offices Australia; Austria; Belgium; Brazil; China; Czech Republic; Denmark;
Finland; France; Germany; Greece; Hong Kong; Hungary; India; Italy; Ireland; Japan; Mexico;
Netherlands; New Zealand; North America; Norway; Poland; Portugal; Russia; Singapore; South
Africa; South Korea; Spain; Sweden; Switzerland; Taiwan; Thailand; United Kingdom
9. Our Teams: EA Games
The EA Games Label is home to the largest number of EA studios and development teams, which
together create an expansive and diverse portfolio of games in such genres as action/adventure,
role playing, racing, and first-person shooter. In addition to traditional packaged goods games, the
EA Games Label also develops massively-multiplayer online and Play-4-Free which are persistent-
state virtual worlds where thousands of other players can interact with one another.
The EA Games Label portfolio includes several established franchises such as Need for Speed,
Battlefield, Mass Effect, and Medal of Honor. In addition, the EA Games Label has launched new
franchises including Dead Space, Mirror's Edge and Army of Two, and has additional titles in
development. The EA Games Label titles are developed at the following studios: BioWare (located
in Edmonton and Montreal, Canada and Austin, Texas), Black Box (located in Vancouver, Canada),
Criterion (located in Guildford, England), DICE (located in Stockholm, Sweden), EA Los Angeles, EA
Montreal, Visceral Games (located in Redwood Shores, California), Mythic (located in Fairfax,
Virginia), Phenomic (located in Ingelheim, Germany) and EA Partners. The EA Partners group teams
with external game developers and third party studios to provide these partners with a variety of
services including development, publishing, and distribution. Current EA Partner studios included
MYV/Harmonix, Epic, Grasshopper, Respawn, and Valve.
10. Our Teams: EA Play
The EA Play Label creates and markets games and experiences that are easily accessible, inspire
creativity and fun, and transcend core video game culture into a world of engaging and relevant
entertainment for people of all ages. Everyone is the EA Play Label consumer - from seniors to tots to
experienced gamers to those who have never played a game.
The EA Play Label includes The Sims Studio, MySims, EA's Hasbro, Maxis and Casual Studios. The Label
creates games based on original IP and licensed IP, with titles such as Harry Potter, BOOM BLOX, and
many more.
The Sims has sold over 100 million units world-wide since it was originally launched in 2000. A
significant factor in its success has been the regular introduction of expansion pack with new content
and gameplay features that can be purchased and used in connection with our core products, The
Sims and The Sims 2. The Sims 3 shipped in June 2009 along with an all-new online store and new
community features. In addition to expansion packs, the Sims Studio also developed several console
products, most notably MySims and SimAnimals on the Wii and DS.
In August 2007, EA entered into a strategic relationship with Hasbro through which we can create
games based on a significant number of Hasbro's classic board games and toys, including MONOPOLY,
SCRABBLE (North America only), YAHTZEE, TRIVIAL PURSUIT, NERF, G.I. JOE, and LITTLEST PET SHOP.
11. Our Teams: EA Sports
The EA SPORTS Label brings together a wide collection of sport-based entertainment experiences
marketed under the EA SPORTS brand. EA SPORTS games range from simulated sports titles with
lifelike graphics based on real-world sports leagues, players, events and venues, to more casual
games with arcade-style gameplay and graphics. Our EA SPORTS franchises include FIFA Soccer,
Madden NFL Football, Fight Night, NBA Elite, NBA Jam, NCAA Football, Tiger Woods PGA TOUR, EA
SPORTS MMA, NHL Hockey, and EA SPORTS Active. Games are developed at our EA Canada
(located in Vancouver, Canada) and EA Tiburon (located in Orlando, Florida) studios.
In addition to packaged goods games, the EA SPORTS label offers online-only gamers and
entertainment. In Korea, EA SPORTS currently offers EA SPORTS FIFA Online , a free-to-play online
game in which players may purchase additional in-game content from us (we refer to these
consumer purchases of small elements of additional content as "micro-transactions"). We expect
to introduce other online games under the EA SPORTS brand in the future. EA SPORTS also seeks
to increase its global presence through the introduction of new web-based communities centered
on our portfolio of sports games.
12. EA Interactive: Leading the Digital Revolution
A key growth area is EA Interactive, (EAi), comprised of Pogo, EA Mobile, our newest acquisition Playfish
and our focus on Premium Downloadable Content (DLC)”
Highlights:
Pogo: - Club Pogo has 1.8 Million Subscribers
- Developing as a gaming and social networking Platform
EA Mobile: - Continues to be the world’s #1 mobile games publisher
- #1 publisher on the App Store
Playfish: - Playfish leads the social gaming industry in innovation and creativity with award-winning,
category-defining games designed for friends to play together.
- The company is changing the way people play games by creating more social and
connected experiences.
- To date, more than 200 million Playfish games have been installed and played by millions
of people worldwide.
- Playfish games are amongst the most popular and acclaimed games online, and include:
FIFA Superstars, MyEmpire, Pet Society, Restaurant City, Hotel City, Country Story and Who
Has The Biggest Brain? Playfish has development studios in London, San Francisco, Beijing
and Tromso, Norway.
DLC: - EA is committed to the creation of Premium Downloadable Content (DLC), that extends
and enriches the lifetime of a game.
13. Our Teams: Global Publishing
DRIVING EA WITH CUTTING EDGE MARKETING, SALES & DISTRIBUTION STRATEGIES
EA Global Publishing undertakes strategic planning, field marketing, sales and distribution in Asia, Europe, Latin
America and North America.
The publishing team is home to a range of exciting career opportunities including devising marketing strategies for
all the EA Labels. Marketing roles include PR, advertising, online marketing and general product marketing amongst
others. Sales specialists can work in Account Management and Key Account Management. Distribution roles possess
a unique challenge especially given EA distributes to over 70 different countries.
Whatever your specialization, EA Global Publishing is renowned for its dynamic and cutting edge approach to
ensuring EA remains market leader and if you thrive with responsibility, autonomy and risk taking, you will find a
natural home here.
Central Development Services
SUPPORTING EA BY DRIVING QUALITY STANDARDS
Central Development Services includes the Quality Assurance team (game testing), Localization, External
Development, Product Certification , Customer Support and the Motion Capture team .
With over 650 employees, the team serves all the product teams globally and is based in studio locations including
Redwood Shores, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Montréal, Tiburon, Guildford, Madrid (Localization), Singapore
(Localization), Bucharest (QA), Hyderabad (QA).
The team accounts for over $100m R&D spend and is transforming the way EA works, driving higher quality and
significantly lower costs.
The team offers a range of excellent career opportunities, such as: testing games (in order to find bugs and quality
issues), localizing games and ensuring games reach differing locations cultures and languages, ensuring EA products
are released at the highest level of quality and gain approval from the hardware manufactures (Sony, Microsoft,
Nintendo), and creating realistic and believable character motion and animation through the latest Motion Capture
technology including UCAP.
Corporate
DRIVING CHANGE & SUPPORTING EA MARKET LEADERSHIP
The EA Corporate team supports the business in many ways and includes:
Human Resources & Talent Acquisition are seeking to attract and retain the best talent in the market and ensure
that all staff feel empowered and motivated to make a difference in their career. Their support ranges from career
development support to ensuring motivation through incentives, compensation & benefits.
Facilities seeks to ensure that all staff work in world class workspaces and feel inspired in creative working
conditions
Corporate Communications manages public relations and external communications for EA
Finance encourages EA to perform to the best of its ability and tightly monitor and control costs while driving
better efficiencies and quality across the board.
Legal Affairs maintain compliance in all relevant laws, crossing many geographical and legal boundaries.
Business Affairs provides EA investors with up to date information into EA activity and business affairs.
IT provides world class technological support to EA business units.
Each group provides a raft of career challenges. EA values its Corporate services highly as a driver for change in the
business. If you seek empowerment and freedom to excel, EA Corporate should be home to your talent.
14. What’s Next for EA?
New Franchises
New Properties
New Platforms
New Online
Experiences
15. What makes EA great? That’s easy - our people
Why did you join EA?
EA was by far the most professional of the gaming
companies I spoke to, and had the most ambitious vision of
the industry. And I was a huge fan of titles like FIFA and Sim
City.
Why did you choose to work in gaming?
I love videogames, and i joined EA in 1999 just as the world
was waking up to the industry being a real business, not just
a niche hobby for teenagers. I'd previously worked in the
JB music business for seven years and could see that while
music was in decline, gaming was on the rise.
Why did you join EA?
I had heard great things about EA from some colleagues, but I
was blown away by the people and facilities when I came into the
studio for the interview. During the interviewing process I also had
the chance to learn enough about the people, product and
projects to ensure I believed in the vision the company was
headed and my role in helping to shape online.
Why did you choose to work in gaming?
I'm addicted to working in a fast paced and dynamic environment,
plus I've always been an advocate for online connectivity in all
forms.
Therefore, when I decided to move back to Canada, I had focus
on the gaming industry so I could bridge my prior online and
software development, and program management experience on Denise
a new platform.
Why did you choose to work in gaming?
I enjoy working in a fast-paced, creative environment, and I
wanted to work on all the interesting issues that are unique
to the gaming industry workforce.
What do you love about your job?
Thats easy: the people. The people I work with are smart,
interesting, hard-working and passionate about what they
do. They make EA a fantastic place to work. I also enjoy the
Rich
tricky and challenging legal issues that arise in the
workplace. It keeps my job exciting and it makes the work
day fly by.
Describe life at EA.
Life at EA is high-energy and fun. I can rarely anticipate
Chrysty what my day is going to be like, which is both the best and
most challenging part of the job.
16. Our Values – The EA Actions
Values are more than a list of words. Our values permeate throughout all layers of the
organization, from the CEO to the newest graduate intern. These values underpin our
desire to be the best at what we do.
“The EA Actions open a new chapter at EA to define the kind of company we all want to work for
and how we want to work together. It’s a call to action for what we must do moving forward.
John Riccitiello CEO EA
Learn and Grow Think Consumers First
Work hard, play hard Listen and respond
Develop yourself and Deliver beyond their expectations
others Build lifetime customers
Measure your
improvement
Share knowledge
generously
Be Bold
Go Big
Be Accountable
Take the right
Deliver on commitments
risks
Always do what we say
Back our bets
Play our positions
Lead
Deliver and reward results
Act with Integrity
Do the right thing
Trust others and support their Create Quality and Innovation
decisions Deliver products and services that
Be transparent surpass expectations
Be relentless about improving quality
Take creative risks
17. How do we ensure you grow and love your work?
Our goal is to make the world's best interactive entertainment. We recognize that what makes us a market
leader is our great people. This fuels our desire to make EA a great place to work and to ensure all have equal
access to the best career development.
Our goal is to ensure that your time working for EA is both rewarding and fun. Top of our agenda is ensuring
that we continue focusing on the key areas that make such a difference to working lives, including:
Career Development: Job enrichment comes when people are motivated by their work and have clear
career paths that they can follow, tied to their performance. We have mapped out
most job family disciplines at EA and have detailed the level of responsibilities and
capabilities for the roles in order to provide this information to employees seeking
new work opportunities and advancement.
Good Managers: Being managed by a great manager makes an enormous difference to an
employee's work experience. This is why EA invests in ensuring managers
understand how to develop staff and practice effective people management.
Culture of Clear, transparent communication is critical. This includes communicating goals
Communication: and expectations, offering regular performance feedback, and praising good
efforts and results. Communication has to be two way.
Diversity: It is critical that our workforce reflect our customers — those who play our games.
We are committed to continually encouraging women and people from diverse
backgrounds to think about a career with EA. Different thinking and experiences
helps us all think more openly and get to more creative and global outcomes.
Work/Life Balance: We all have relationships outside of work and recognize the challenge of work/life
balance. Specifically at EA, we have invested considerable time ensuring that the
pre-production planning occurs, resulting in more predictable game development
timelines. We continue to do this better and better every day.
Rewarding Results: Ensuring employees have a motivating compensation and rewards package
aligned to performance and results is critical. This alignment of rewards with
performance and results creates a high performing culture of success. We have
tried to tie our compensation and other employee recognition programs to the
outcomes that drive personal and company success. The highest performers
should get the greatest rewards.
Hire Right: Hiring the best talent and providing a work environment where they can do their
best work generates a winning culture and a winning company. We will always
focus on the values that are important to EA and ensure we hire the best. One thing
that employees always say about Playfish is that they are working along side great,
talented people every day. This is one of the biggest drivers of employee
satisfaction.
18. Be part of our community & have your say
EA is an open transparent company that loves to engage with the global community. That’s why we have
a highly active presence on a number of social networking sites. Our goal is to peel back the layers of
the onion and show you deep Inside EA. You know all about our great games but now we are truly
revealing our inner core. You can learn more about the people behind the games; learn how games are
made; see how we have fun making games; how we seek to motivate staff; where we go in our spare
time; see inside offices across the globe; in fact nothing is off limits. Have your say...and join our Social
Networks.
Head to our blog site at www.insideea.com and truly
The Blog get to hear the latest news about EA.You can even is
the centrepoint of our Social Media.
The blog site
sign up to receive a daily e-newsletter
Become a ‘Fan’ of ‘Inside EA’ and join 120,000 other
fans in fun and informative discussions.
EA has two LinkedIn discussion groups. One is for our
professional community, where engaged and deep
discussions take place. The other is for EA Alumni.
Our YouTube Channel, ‘InsideEA’, not only includes our latest games
footage and releases but exclusive videos by staff about life at EA.
Some very cool and fun videos. We also included some of our
training videos and presentations for you.
Look out for us on Twitter. Our Tag is ’Inside_EA’. You
can join us in fun, fast and entertaining conversations.
19. Why join EA?
1. You will work on world-class games from day one.
EA has a huge portfolio of 'AAA' titles. You can contribute to a hit game from day one.
2. You will work with and share ideas with the best people.
You will work with creative, innovative people (some of whom are Academy Award winners). EA
employees are passionate about playing and making great games. We learn from each other by sharing
ideas across the company.
3. Our philosophy is one person can make a difference.
EA is a hugely successful company with a culture anchored in a strong entrepreneurial spirit. This means
anyone in the company can make a difference and have a real impact.
4. EA is a global company and this provides many career opportunities.
EA is a large global company, which gives you the opportunity to add to your skills and experience by
working on different games in different locations around the world. Each team has its own unique feel
and culture, which contributes greatly to creating a diverse global culture.
5. EA is a highly ambitious company.
EA continuously pushes the limits of interactive entertainment by pursuing innovative opportunities on
all gaming platforms and in all markets. We never stand still and are always looking for exciting new
opportunities (for example, online gaming, growth in Asia, next-generation consoles and making casual
games that entertain and appeal to a wider audience).
6. Our aim is to provide ongoing opportunities for career development by encouraging employees to
take responsibility and providing dedicated training and development.
We provide an opportunity for career development across numerous game teams at locations around
the world. We offer a range of excellent training and development programs that provide ample
opportunity for everyone to learn new skills, reach their full potential, and get the most out of their
career at EA.
7. You have the opportunity to entertain millions of people.
Our primary goal is to entertain millions of people around the world and we have a lot of fun doing it.
It's a great feeling to see your game become a bestselling, critical success.
Good luck in your interview and welcome to EA’s World. ENJOY
20. ....
....but don’t just take our word for it
EA voted #1 at 16th EA voted second place in
Annual Orlando Sentinel best company to work for
top 100 for Working in Vancouver
Families
EA recognised as one of EA voted #39 in the Black
the Best Companies to Collegian list of Top
work for LGBT Equality Employers
USA 56,000 Students Polled at 345 Leading US
Universities. EA voted number 8 in top 100 IT companies
Prestigious Student to work for
Universum Awards for top Sweden: 16,791 University students polled across 34 top
universities. EA Dice voted number 5 as an IT Employer of
Student Employer 2010
Choice.
UK: 11,637 students from 65 leading universities
were polled. EA voted number 15 in the engineering/IT
category
