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!