Raptorous.net

Yup, so it's been another... 7 or so months. I've moved on from IBM, and went to work at EA as a Technical Artist. EA, or Electronic Arts is located in California (Bay Area to be specific.) It was in a nice office park, with sunny skies, green grass, and beautiful lagoons. Typical California weather. The office building new and clean looking (altho quite dark on the inside, which is pretty typical I hear for studios)

I worked on MySims Kingdom, a new Sims title for the Wii. It's a sequel to MySims, which came out just last year.

I was quite happy to get a job as a Technical Artist, since that's the kind of position that I've always wanted to be. I wrote tools in Python for Maya and C# tools to help with outsourcing. I also helped out with helping artists with technical issues and checking their work for technical soundness. I debugged shaders and contributed on development of new ones.

It was actually quite a nice job. My first game gig, it and it wasn't the crazy crunch filled atmosphere that I half-expected it to be. I never stayed longer than I wanted to, and there definitely was a sense of camaraderie amongst the team members. It was true that everybody on the team seemed to be nice people. My boss was especially nice to me, and was very protective of his team members from other departments in the team. Even when there was tension between others in the team, I would somehow feel separated from it.

I've learned quite a bit about game development and gotten valuable experience interacting with people on a large team. I've made some cool friends, and valuable contacts in industry. Working in a big team certainly made me feel like I was part of a big thing. Working towards a very real and clear goal with 70 other people is pretty motivating in and of itself. You don't quite feel the sense of ownership that you do with smaller projects like Bluegrass, but the end product will reach many more people.

I do miss Boston still, it was quite a fun and exciting city. Easy to get around and not too big, it was the perfect sized city. The Bay Area is like a sprawling crowded suburb. The focus is on the suburbs a little bit more, and even though it's easy to figure your way around, it's quite a pain to get from one place to another. Makes me want to move to Japan where you can get to anywhere with the train. Still, California does have its perks, like having a huge selection of Japanese food right outside your door is quite awesome. There are a huge amount of asians here compared to the East Coast. Unfortunately, California can't make decent pizza. That was quite sad. I will miss my Villa Pizza in Holmdel, NJ.

Labels: EA, technical art, work