What's encouraging about Riccitiello's city-state model is that allows for more creative freedom at EA's various studios, and that ultimately leads to happier employees. "The people that are closest to the projects are now more in power than they were before, which is why when you give people that kind of freedom and power they are generally much happier in their work environment," Toledano explained.

Obviously one of the big issues with EA Spouse dealt with quality of life for EA employees. While the survey did not focus specifically on quality of life, it did offer some insight into changes at the company, and EA feels that it's definitely improved. "The work experience isn't negative right now; it's positive. When we dived into what we can do better, every survey popped up with, 'I want to be paid more.' ... But in terms of work/life balance, we didn't have a huge negative there, but it wasn't in the high 90s either. It's hugely better than it was three years ago. But as people we're always struggling to make sure to have a balance, and a lot of that is an individual decision. So as much as a manager at a company might say to people who make games 'Go home,' sometimes they just don't," Toledano said.

"So we are definitely a company right now that says, 'We are not going to require people to come in and work beyond hours that they should be giving.' So we're doing better in that area. ... For example, one of the questions was, 'My work schedule allows sufficient flexibility to meet personal needs' and that was 80 percent favorable. We're not in a bad place on this survey. We were in a bad place three to four years ago. There's simply no tolerance at EA today for what was going on during EA Spouse."

As further proof that EA's city-state model is working and is yielding more confident employees, Toledano also pointed to newly integrated EA studio, Pandemic. We talked to Pandemic President Josh Resnick back at the D.I.C.E. Summit, and he is clearly a believer in EA's vision.

"...we're absolutely part of a greater family now within EA and I definitely get it now, thinking about the other studios within EA and helping them and taking advantage of the synergies in terms of what they're doing and what we're working on, just like what I was doing with BioWare before," Resnick commented. "But now I just have this wonderful luxury of focus. Not a lot of companies get that luxury just to focus on making great games. So that's what I love about this new partnership with EA; I get to be Pandemic, I'm totally independent, I have full creative control over the products we work on and what we're doing and when we release them, all of that kind of stuff. The vision is still ours; we own that. But now we have the support of an amazing company like EA and I get involved into these wonderful things that EA has to offer."