Tonight's Dinner Conversation with My Brother Dex

For some life after Christmas can seem a little slow with a New Year's hangover and the rut of having to pay off the Christmas Visa after splurging a little more than you should have. I've just passed my first three months as Community Manager at EA Canada and the one thing my life is not, is slow.

I was having dinner with my brother Dex who came in from Toronto to do a photo shoot and we were catching up on each others' careers. He had moved out there to be closer to the fashion capital of the world, NY, as he's really gotten busy with his photography work and he was just in town for a bit to do some shoots here in Vancouver. As a fashion photographer I always thought he had one of the coolest jobs in the world...for obvious reasons

We both had this look of 'busy' on us as we chatted on different projects. I hadn't realized how many places I've had a chance to be involved with lately and how through my work, I've really had a chance to not only meet and work with some great people at EA, but also some pretty cool people from the gaming and sports community as well.

I mentioned having just returned from Orlando where I met up with the other Community team members and that lead to a talk about doing some more traveling (which I absolutely love to do) to Phoenix for the upcoming NBA All-Star Game in a couple of weeks.

Our plan is to hang out and follow Tim Ahmed the winner of the NBA LIVE Jersey Creator contest who created this year's Rookie and Sophomore Jerseys. Check out the coverage of him at Wed night's Knick's game where he got a chance to hang out and was even mentioned over the PA system with his jerseys. Cool stuff. Add this to covering our NBA Live Challenge Finals and it should be a great weekend in Phoenix.

We'll be hanging out this weekend and watching the Super Bowl with family and friends which, yes, even us folks in Canada do every year. I let him know that we had our Madden Bowl tonight and even showed him some footage from our new Inside EA SPORTS Blog where Raczilla has been posting pictures from all night. We checked out some of the pics and he thought it was pretty cool to see Evander Holyfield along with a handful of football pros chillin and playing some Madden. Congratulations to Tampa Bay's Antonio Bryant who took home the hardware this year.

He did critque some of the pics being the photographer that he is and I try to take some pointers from him as he's pretty good at capturing light in his shots. I guess it takes some steady nerves as well when you're shooting eye-catching beauties. I totally thought our guys did a great job with the shots and he's just a perfectionist

We talked about the upcoming Fight Night Round 4 Community Event and he got a kick out of some of the videos by our producers. He was pretty impressed with some of the early screens he saw of the boxers and even compared lighting to some of the stuff he's done with athletes sweating and how lighting is affected by that. I told him I'd reserve him a copy for his PS3 when the game comes out this summer.

He asked how the Canucks were doing. And that's pretty much when the conversation ended. That's another blog post altogether! I did mention that I do get a chance to hang out with the Canucks' Ryan Kesler who will be touring and checking out our facilities and doing a motion capture session at EA Canada. I'll be blogging and taking some pics for EASW, so that should be pretty cool too.

We flipped on the HDTV to catch a favorite of mine Stand By Me on the screen and I noticed him glance over with a pleased look on his face and a quiet nod.

For the first time it kinda felt that he thought that I actually had one of the coolest jobs in the world. I'd have to say it's still up for debate, though I am pretty grateful for the opportunities that I've got, since at the end of the day, I still get to go to work and pick up a controller from time to time as well. Who's luckier??

3-On-3 NHL Arcade

EA SPORTS™ Football World: Top 10 No. 3

EA SPORTS™ Football World: Top 10 No. 3

NHL 09 Top 10 - Jan 9 / 09

EA sk88z, I'm in the Game! - Jan 17/09

Another busy week for me as I had the opportunity to travel to Orlando to our Tiburon office where I had the chance to meet up with other Community Managers and our LIVE Production team who does a lot of our Top 10's along with other content that you see on EA SPORTS World. I had a chance to share some of the things I've done with the NBA LIVE team so far and discuss with them some of our upcoming plans with the NBA All-Star Game, Super Bowl - Madden Bowl, and Fight Night Community Day Event.

I've had some PM's about my career at EA Canada, and I'm happy to share some tidbits here. I started at EAC back in '04 as a QA Tester on Def Jam Fight For New York which I had a total blast working on. In fact a lot of the people on that team I still hang out with today. I honestly think it's one of the most underrated games ever to come out of the studio. It had a great fighting engine and some of the battles we had as a QA group were quite intesnse.

I moved on to other games such as NFS Underground II followed by a couple of stints on FIFA Street and even Cricket. I worked on the next iteration of FIFA Street as a Senior Tester as well as worked on handheld titles with NBA LIVE and SIMS 2 Pets. Quite a range of games though the main thing was that I had a great chance to work closely with development teams and learned the ins and outs of the game development process which is something that I'm truly grateful for.

Following some time in QA, I was an assistant in the Marketing department at EAC working on college sports as well as on NHL. Again, some great experiences as it broadened my understanding of the development cycle post submission and into the publishing realm. I grew to learn about what it meant to truly appreciate the consumer's point of view as well as understanding how important it is to adapt to the changing times especially when it came to the video game industry which doesn't necessarily respond like most industries.

This past week, I met our LIVE Production team and fellow Community Managers from both Europe and Florida who manage our Soccer titles and NA Football titles as well as Tiger at Tiburon. It was an opportunity to do some serious planning and to hash out how we're going to bring our games and the experiences creating and playing these games to you, our community.

Content-wise, we have plans for Live events and instant communication to truly bring our fans into the process. In my experiences at EA, I've always been one that is really excited about gaming and until you get inside and see that it's a lot more than just programming a game and putting it out, that in fact the people behind the game are as passionate about the game and fans of the games they make, sometimes it's hard to appreciate the roles these people have.

From upcoming tournaments to articles about our gamers, we will continue to scour the community for ideas and our star players to talk about them. Make sure you check out our featured profiles as we continue to grow our specific EA SPORTS World Community. This week, to follow along on all our simulations, predictions, and news articles, go check out my tweets on Twitter and make sure you add me. We've got some cool stuff planned and we'll be utilizing Twitter in many different ways to bring you closer to the action.

For now, still planning our big Fight Night Round 4 Community Day event next month along with gearing up for some serious NBA LIVE Challenge competition as that gets going this weekend. Grand Prize of $25K in cash and prizes is quite something this year! Get signed up and maybe I'll see you in Phoenix at the Finals!

NHL's Top 10 Saves of the Week

Dec 26 Youtube NHL Top 10

Busy first week back at EAC - sk88z's Blog - Operation Sports

Originally Posted on Operation Sports

Talk about a crazy first week back at work here at EA Canada. As a first blog post here in OS, I wanted to share a little of what I do in my day-to-day as a Community Manager. I really do think I have one of the sweetest gigs around and I consider myself pretty lucky to work with the talented people that I do.

Fight Night Round 4 - I'm in the midst of putting together our Community Day event near the end of February and putting out invites to EA Fight Night fans. I'm a huge fan of the game myself and really excited about having some of the community come on in and check out what's in store.

If you haven't yet chimed in on the Ali vs Tyson debate, check it out on the official website: Fight Night Round 4 and talk about it in our forums (as well as on the OS ones of course). I'm looking for an OS representative as well (non-editor) so if anyone is interested have one of the OS editors here send me your info.

NBA LIVE - I've been working with the NBA LIVE team who I know are present on these boards quite a bit. I think it's great that they are out in the community talking and listening to the fans and from what I can tell from their planning, the game is going to, once again, make some huge strides.

We've just launched our NBA LIVE Staff Group Page where, along with here, I've asked them to talk about their behind the scenes look at the game as well as talk about who they are in general. Check out Jeff Antwi’s look at some of the talent from a recent Motion Capture session, Ryan Santos’ Sneak Peek at some of new kicks that will be in the game, Marcus Stephenson with another look at Dynamic DNA, and Gameplay Designer Mike Wang tells us about his holiday break.



NHL - On behalf of the team, I'm excited that OS has recognized the hard work that the team has done over the past year(s), and thank the editors for work they've done. Being recognized by the gang here for the SPOY is some huge recognition and I know the team will be pleased to hear that they're the recipients of this year's award.

For those of you that are interested, there were also a couple of Q&A's on the upcoming 3 on 3 NHL Arcade game soon-to-be released. Check out my Q&A with Matt Mahar and ESPN's Jon Robinson's Q&A with Matt and David Littman.

I've also began to Simulate NHL Games of the Week and you can check out our first round of sims to see if you agree with what NHL 09 predicts.

NCAA Basketball - Looks like the voting is just about all counted up for the EA SPORTS Toughest Places to Play contest and if you haven't had a chance to vote yet, I'm told they'll be shutting it down this weekend. I've also been told that I may have a chance to visit a couple of the schools to write about it so I'm personally really excited about that! Take me to UCLA!!!

Make sure you also check out Producer Novel Thomas' handy work in his Hoops 101 videos that give you the edge in the game. I'm working with them as well to get their Staff Group page up, though I know that the team has a lot of presence on these boards as well and I know they've had a lot of interaction with you folks already.

I'll come back from time to time to share my thoughts & rants with you as I know that the hardest core fans are here at Operation Sports and I wanted to acknowledge that and share a little of what goes on here at EAC. Feel free to message me directly or leave me comments and I'll do my best to respond to them. In the meantime, I'm prepping for a trip to Orlando next week to meet up with my fellow Community Managers from around the world and plan our ideas for the upcoming quarter.

I can't wait to get out of the snow and into some warm Florida sun!!!