Game maker sheds industry's negative image: Burbank firm repeats on best workplace list.

In late June, Ted Price attended an awards ceremony in Washington, D.C. for the representatives of small and medium-sized companies recognized for being among the best to work for in the nation.

He met people from the service sector, accounting firms and manufacturing companies, industries more traditional than the one Price runs. This firm has made its success based on a dragon named Spyro and a robot named Clank

When it came time for Price to tell what his company Insomniac Games does, the reaction he received was beyond enthusiastic.

"People seemed envious of us because it is in some respects like play," said Price, president and chief executive officer of Burbank-based Insomniac. "We work hard but what we are doing at the core is creating fun. Sometimes it is easy to forget what we do is fairly unique until you have the opportunity to talk with people outside the industry, working in accounting, perhaps, or in a job that doesn't allow them to express themselves so readily."

For two years running, the Society for Human Resource Management and the Great Place to Work Institute included Insomniac Games among the 25 best small companies to work for in a list released in the spring.

The two organizations have compiled the list for only three years, so for Insomniac to be listed twice, both time within the top five, indicates it must be doing something right in an industry where long hours, unpaid overtime and stress is not uncommon.

Insomniac employs 155 people spread out over 37,000 square feet of low-lit space on the fifth floor of an office building not far from the Bob Hope Airport. Price's corner office, with blonde-wood desk and table and green-upholstered couch and chair, looks out over the city and the Verdugo Mountains in the distance.

In including Insomniac on their list, the SHRM and the Great Place to Work Institute cited the company's benefits, which include 100 percent of health care premiums paid for by the company and two weeks off following the completion of a game, and an environment rewarding hard work with happy hours, video game tournaments, and trips for hiking, skiing and wine tasting.

While companies can nominate themselves, two-thirds of the final score is based on employee surveys and one-third is based on an audit of the company culture.

"Our lists are very employee-focused, employee-centric and the employees saying this is a great place to work," said Lisa Ratner, a senior project manager with the Best Companies Team at the Great Place to Work Institute.

Price, along with two partners, guide Insomniac Games from a strategy based on the tenets of independence, quality over quantity in limiting itself to developing one or two titles at a time, collaboration, communication, innovation, and efficiency.

Much of that strategy evolved from the company's early days, when Price and Alex Hastings, now the chief technology officer, assembled their first game, a first-person shoot 'em up titled "Disruptor" and hawked it to game publishers around California but met with indifference.

The pair then found luck through a contact at Universal, where they signed a three-game deal that led to the creation of games featuring a dragon named Spyro, and Ratchet and Clank, an interstellar mechanic and his robot.

Sony deals

Following the end of the Universal deal, Insomniac aligned itself exclusively with Sony to develop games for its PlayStation console. Upcoming games are "Ratchet and Clank" and "Resistance: Fall of Man" for the PlayStation 3.

"The games they release, particularly the Ratchet and Clank series, are pretty highly rated," said Simon Carless, editor in chief of Game Developer, an industry trade publication. "They are some of Sony's best family entertainment games."

Unlike the larger gaming companies where a lead designer helms a title, at Insomniac all employees are encouraged to give their input. The company's size also makes it possible to make changes needed to meet the fickleness of players and keep up with technological innovations.

"We learned early on that it has to be a group effort for projects like this," Price said. "Making a game is much more complex than people imagine because there are so many moving parts."

The flipside to game development lies in the hours it takes to create and assemble the storylines, images and music, hours that Price describes as "notorious."

"There is always the temptation to keep working longer because you keep tweaking the game to make it perfect," added Carless, of Game Developer magazine.

Industry problems

The floodgates of discontent on the part of game developers and their families opened in late 2004 through website discussion boards and legal action taken against the gaming companies.

A class-action lawsuit alleging unpaid overtime against Electronic Arts--the largest game developer in the world--was settled for $15.6 million in late 2005, and in April a second lawsuit filed by software engineers was settled for more than $14 million. Similar legal actions have been taken against Vivendi Universal Games and Sony Computer Entertainment America.

A study by the International Game Developers Association from 2004 found that 35 percent of respondents to a quality of life survey said they worked 65 to 80 hours a week during crunch time, while 13 percent responded the average crunch work week exceeded 80 hours.

Price concedes that a challenge to the overall gaming industry is balancing work life and home life and that not even Insomniac has perfected that balance.

But the company has taken steps to get its employees out of the office, offering a two-week break following a production cycle and recently instituting a seniority rewards program with a free vacation getaway complete with Insomniac monogrammed luggage.

"We know people work hard; they really put their heart and soul into these games," Price said. "They make a lot of sacrifices to make the games so we try to return the favor."

BY MARK R. MADLER

Staff Reporter