Life in EAQA

I've started eating regularly after 2 years of starving myself at AI, lol. As much as I sound like I'm joking, it's definitely weird feeling hungry and often. Every morning, I make a pit stop at EAt, which is the cafeteria at work. And I always have the same thing - two sausages, one hash brown, sometimes some bacon, and whatever the special of the day is. I still eat the lunch my mom packs for me and then when lunch time comes around, I go off and buy more food. And coffee ... having free Starbucks coffee in the office does NOTHING for my coffee consumption. Yeah, life in the office is definitely better than any other job I've had.

Training came to an end last Tuesday, and Wednesday was my first real day of work. I've got a workstation consisting of a TV, a computer monitor, a thin client server and a Nintendo Wii. The game I'm testing at work is FaceBreaker, a cartoony boxing game by EA but it's NOTHING like Fight Night. I can't discuss the details here due to the terms of my contract, but I will say it's a fun game. It's fun enough on the Wii, but graphically inferior when you compare it to the 360 and PS3 versions. If the controls are intuitive enough for fighting game fans on those versions, I just might consider getting that game. It's not due out until November so I've got some time to wait.

Our team testing the Wii edition of FaceBreaker seems to be newly formed. The previous team working on it was dispersed, sent off to work on other teams. So whatever work they did, we continued. And when I say we, I mean 5 of us including our assistant test coordinatior. Initially, 4 of us from our training group were assigned to the game but then one of them got transferred to another team, which left 3. Then we got a permanent replacement, which turned out to be another AI student who was supposed to graduate with me last quarter, but Jason failed him.

So there's the 5 of us now, including the ATC. Every morning after breakfast, I grab a vanilla flavored coffee from the in-house Starbucks and go outside for a smoke where I usually run into Sara, Matt, Tricia and George - the smoker crew of our training group, lol. I'd they the five of us have gotten to know each other relatively well ... better than the rest of the training group, anyway. Even after we've been split up into separate teams, we still meet outside during breaks.

First thing I do when work starts is sign out my copy of the game and start testing it. Any bugs I find, I'll submit it. This is besides the task list that's given to us - and the purpose of this task list as I understand it is to make sure everything is running fine. If there are any bugs found as a result of running those tasks, the bugs need to be linked to those tasks. During training, I found it really confusing at first, but now as I'm getting more practice, it's making more and more sense. When the first break comes, I meet up with the other smokers as usual and talk about nothing and everything at the same time. Break ends and I head back inside, make myself a coffee and get to work. And when lunch time comes around, I usually sit with whoever I can find. Sometimes its Mike (another character artist) and the smokers, and sometimes it's the usual AI crew (Shiach, Gray, Loi, Steve and Nearing). Then when its over, back to work. This repeats till the end of the day when I usually bus home with Sara - she lives in the Coquitlam/Port Moody area too.

Now that I'm recalling the past week, I'm realizing this is getting really routine, and there's really nothing much to talk about. Whatever bits of information I'm leaving out because of my contract isn't even really that exciting. I suppose I could go on about that too ... But knowing now that I've finally gotten my foot in the door at EA, I'm trying to decide what my options are for getting that artist job. They told us that EA hiring managers are more likely to look at Volt employees because they're familiar with the organization. But I haven't yet met anyone worth knowing who is directly employed by EA. My ATC is the one who writes up reports on my progress so he's the person I have to convince that I'm a good employee. Then if Sanaz is convinced I'm great, she'll forward me onto the EA hiring managers. That's a really long path *just* to get an interview. That's why I'm considering other options as well, which pretty much ends at going to whatever company meetings I'm allowed to show up to. Anyway, 3 days into my job, it's hard to say what I can do at this point. I'll have to get a feel of the job and the company a little more before I can decide what the next move should be. Till then, I'll be writing this blog up as usual.