Overworked and Underpaid - Avis employé Engineer HitPoint Studios

Positive culture, great benefits, good work / life balance, passionate team.

Very few companies like this in the area so it's hard to shop around for other opportunities.

A great group of people to work with. Everyone here is smart and dedicated, as well as generally liberal and open-minded. Creativity is fostered and rewarded and, like other small studios, you have a chance to try on a number of different hats and to give substantive feedback and be heard regarding creative decisions. Also, there's a wide range of projects going on at any given time including mobile games, AR apps, smart toys and other cutting-edge initiatives. Upper management works hard to make this a pleasant place to work and, despite the sometimes long hours that seem to go hand-in-hand with the games industry, work-life balance is respected and possible. Living and working in western Massachusetts is one of the factors that allows for a bit better work-life balance. In fact, I recently relocated to the area to be closer to the studio.

Largely a work-for-hire studio at this point, sometimes the clients can be hard to deal with. Although the internal HitPoint team are generally friendly and fun to be around it can sometimes feel like an us-vs.-them environment with demanding clients overriding the team's decision making or ignoring the team's expertise. Granted, this goes along with working with high profile external clients.