Could be great but isn't. - Anonymous employee NaturalMotion Employee Review

1.0
6 Aug 2014
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Okay for a first job - People are nice - Great staff - really talented people - Ambitious - Open to ideas and changes, but mainly because they don't know what they want to begin with - Work/life balance normally isn't too bad - HR was supportive - Approachable CEO - Company parties/treats

Cons

- Management is patronising, unstructured and highly egotistical - Strong sense of hierarchy - it's not 'safe' to make suggestions - Office politics - Dodgy business ethics - Highly indecisive (constant loop of re-iterations/starting from scratch/canning projects) - No compensation for overtime, except take-out for dinner (their logic being that you're doing it by choice, not because the project had poor time/resource management) - Felt more like a soulless office than a creative studio and it functioned this way - Poor feedback/neglectful - Pay, benefits and raise opportunities are rubbish compared to other companies. - Blatant favouritism - Company morale is extremely low

Explore other reviews about NaturalMotion

4.0
23 Oct 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Good Business Good People Good sallery

Cons

No Negatives to report

2.0
14 Oct 2017
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

When I first started at the company they had big goals, a strong management and leadership team and the ability to follow through. The working environments were great, teams strong and overall feeling was positive and everyone looked up to Torsten and his vision of the company.

Cons

The longer Zynga were involved, the worst things got. The exec team distanced themselves and became passing faves for studio updates and bought very little faith in the future, with all their focus being on the London studio, leaving the people in Oxford feeling left out and disenfranchised. I told they eventually jumped ship entirely, leaving management with terrible people skills and zero ability to inspire. The company then became management heavy with huge trust issues. The talent were no longer trusted and therefore their opinions were ignored, which lead to messy projects and unhappy working environments and work force. Frank Gibeau bought hope, but sadly too late and now news that Oxford is closing when it was once the centre of the whole company. Losing Morpheme is a huge shame and left many people who had been loyal to the company for many, many years without jobs or hope of a future. There is still a great pool of talent there but sadly, management personnel purely out for themselves and not willing to push the ideas that they have and expose that talent.

10
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