Inside the Studio: Industrial Toys

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Inside the Studio

Industrial Toys joined EA Studios two years ago with the continued focus of bringing new game concepts to life. Here’s a look inside the studio and how they’ve dealt with the transition to working from home during the pandemic.

As a studio, Industrial Toys is “mobile to the core.” Instead of simply bringing games to mobile devices, the studio’s mission is to create core-gamer experiences designed specifically for the unique characteristics of mobile devices.

The studio delivered this in their two Midnight Star games, and is now working on an innovative new project. A studio packed with industry veterans who have worked on some of the biggest franchises in gaming, they’re now at EA where they are thrilled to join the ranks of many legendary studios.

Based in beautiful Pasadena, California, the developers enjoy the great food and sophisticated amenities of a big city with the lower costs and reduced traffic of a smaller town. Between CalTech, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and design schools like ArtCenter, Pasadena is a small town that punches way above its weight in brainpower. There’s a large pool of tech talent here that is a great resource to draw from.

“We’re working on the most technologically advanced mobile game ever made, and we need a large team to do it. The studio is poised to make a huge impact in the shooter space. We shipped some innovative features with the Midnight Star games, and there's so much more that we are looking to do,” said Director of Operations, Brent Pease.

Transitioning to Working From Home

After tracking the spread of COVID-19 since mid-January, it became clear in early March that there was a high likelihood the Industrial Toys studio would need to transition to a work-from-home status. The management team began planning to shift the studio to work from home by assessing each individual’s preparedness. Fortunately, 75% of the studio was already set up to work from home for at least one day a week due to the flexible nature of normal operations. The team took into consideration all aspects of what working from home would mean to their employees - from ensuring they had a dedicated work area to proper equipment to considering who would be most susceptible to the realities of being isolated. “This allowed us to tailor our response to the specific needs of each employee. Within five days we had 100% of our employees ready for work-from-home and a plan to ensure everyone would be physically and mentally healthy,” said Pease.

Thanks to their heroic IT department who quadrupled VPN capacity overnight, assisted with transitioning all equipment to home use, and continually answered questions, Industrial Toys had almost no technical problems during this transition. “Our success is also due to the creation of our Happiness Team. We had a dozen volunteers to foster inclusion, cohesion and happiness by hosting daily games, contests, yoga and group film viewing,” said Doug Zartman, Community Outreach Specialist.

One unexpected and highly positive outcome has been a surprisingly fast expansion of the studio. Even with the challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic presented during these uncertain times, Industrial Toys has grown by more than 30% since mid-March and continues to grow. Please check out Industrial Toys’ open positions: https://www.ea.com/studios/industrial-toys/careers.

“This is the first place I’ve worked where I'm first and foremost an engineer - the fact that I'm female is a non-issue. It’s purely about your talent and what you contribute, which is welcome.” Karla Kraiss, Gameplay Engineer

“Working at Industrial Toys is a fun, collaborative environment for making games. The people are fantastic and little groups spin up all the time to support people's hobbies - board games, triathlons, escape rooms, and my personal favorite, the Industrial Rollers, our bowling team. Beware of the bags matches at happy hour, lest ye find yourself shouting to the heavens after a devastating loss.” Jay Pecho, Technical Director

“Every day here is an exciting learning experience to develop your skills alongside some seriously talented game developers. The studio offers weekly happy hours, a lot of studio activities, and has a gorgeous view! What more could you ask?” Josh Delson, Assistant Producer

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