The Life of a Fantage Employee

Yes, this is one of those super long, “serious posts” about Fantage 🙂 Click here if you haven’t seen my first one.

Recently, I came across a link from a site called GlassDoor that contains reviews written by past Fantage employees. It was informative and depressing. Here are some screenshots, just in case they are ever taken down. Click to enlarge. You can read these yourself at http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Fantage-Reviews-E407395.htm

  

From this point on, everything is my opinion only. Numbers in parenthesis are used to cite the picture I quoted so you can refer back to it.

The stuff I underlined in red are the things that really angered me and caused me to look down on the members of the “senior management,” as they called it.

“Insane deadlines” (2)
This was a common point among most of the reviews. I was especially unhappy when I read the part about staying until 1 AM and not being paid overtime. I feel really bad for all the times I complained about the events being late, because the employees were most likely working like crazy for hours already.

“Your well being and opinions are of no concern to the upper management” (2) and “narrow-minded and does not like change” (3)
I’m actually not surprised. Our opinions are of no concern to them either. The closest we’ve ever come to “voting” is Vintage Gold, and it’s really obvious that it’s not even a real vote, it’s fake. How can you call something a business when they don’t even act like a team?

And pretty much everything in the 4th picture, which I outlined in red.

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The stuff I underlined in blue are things that, under different circumstances, I would have found quite humorous. But in this case, I found it extremely depressing.

“Frowned upon to be remotely happy (laughter will get you into trouble” (3)
I guess this Halloween celebration back in 2013 was a very rare occasion for them then (I got this picture from the Fantage blog)

“the building has electricity, AC, and heat??” (4)
Clearly this worker was racking his/her brain to find something positive to fill in the “Pros” section.

“V.P. always sleeping at the desk encourages employees to relax as well” (5)
I think it’s so sad yet slightly funny that this employee found a positive way to explain the VP’s laziness, instead of adding it to the Cons list.

“so they watch you like 3rd graders” (5)
Indicates a huge lack of trust. Wait, so is this all the upper management does? Sleep, and watch the employees work? I hope that’s not all they do…

“They will give you a computer” (7)
*table flip* I’m so done with this…

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Last, the stuff I highlighted in yellow are the only things that didn’t make me cringe. I found it really uplifting that five out of seven reviewers said that the co-workers are “good to work with” (1), “amazing” (2), “friendly” (5), and “[help] you get through the day” (5).

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To reflect, it seems to me that us criticizing Fantage as a whole was really unfair. In fact, it was even selfish, because the employees sound more victimized than we are.

To be fair to the upper management though, I wanted to put these things into consideration as well:

Without the strict, inhumane, yet firm hand of the upper management, would Fantage have collapsed long ago?

Can these reviews be 100% reliable, as they are completely anonymous?

Are the reviews biased, as they were written by people who were fired?

I also want it to be taken into account that some of these reviews were written two years ago. However, even as I’m trying to assure myself with this fact, I still don’t find it very comforting. Two years ago (which is really not that long ago, even this blog is older than that), Fantage was really different, BETTER. We, as users, didn’t feel as pressured to always buy things, and the company didn’t seem as desperate to get money. This was back when there was NO Gold, NO bonus level medals, NO SS Items, NO Cody’s Combos, NO MyMall, NO Vintage Gold, nothing but fun, unique events. It shocks me that, even during this bright period in Fantage’s history, the employees were already THIS unsatisfied. I imagine things only went downhill from there.

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Last (sorry this is so long), to make things absolutely clear, I didn’t post this so you would start hating the Fantage upper management (since when has hating done anything?), or praise me like some sort of humanitarian. I posted it so we can all change our perspectives and act more fairly towards the company who has provided us with a game that entertained us for so long. I think the upper management, as bad as they sound, are just trying to keep a business going (although they could do it a lot better, based on these reviews).

I’m getting pretty old to be playing Fantage, I stay only for blogging, but I still think it would be wonderful for them to pick themselves off the ground so the next generation can enjoy it as much as I did when I started playing four years ago. Hopefully, someone from the upper management will read this. I’m still convinced that someone from Fantage does read this blog, since they’ve done several things I’ve suggested in the past (maybe it’s a coincidence).

Even if they don’t read this, at least your perspective will have (hopefully) changed 🙂