EA's Open Day

EA's open day
Well I've just come back from a day at the EA studios in Chertsey, south of London - I was invited to attend as I'm looking for jobs for the moment as dev lead/producer type roles. I'm still working on my own projects with others, but voila.

So I ended up traveling all the way from leeds down to london, took a while, but it was alright. Got to the studios at 2pm when it started - with over 180+ students. While the main presentations where not for me, as EA was targeting them for people that we animators getting into games or whatnot, or people going into uni with the aim to end up in games, EA was showing what standard they should be at. Very good stuff for them.

I was more interested in the setup of the studio and how everything went and chatting to developers. While I'm actually under NDA with EA now (oh no another NDA) what I saw was pretty amazing stuff! While a lot of people have a negative view of EA, I saw from the inside a world that is really supportive of people and it's environment. Check out EA Studios to really get a feel for what they offer and their environments. What was cool was I remember working for the Belgian national TV on a game show and hearing of the new studios and thinking they were nuts - but I was always curious. Their place is really lovely, waterfront, fire place, lots of light and the dev teams seems really so happy to be there, the vibe was great! I ended up meeting with the Exec of the harry potter franchise, that was a nice little chat. I saw some devkits which were urm.. oups can't tell you much - but you can imagine they are all you want to make your games on!

While their main Chertsey studios are more corporate, I really like that setup. It's a clean and healthy environment to work (I can only imagine) but their equipment and people really makes them make good games. Even if you don't like their games for whatever reason, you have to look in terms of their achievements and quality. From my experience with the console games, theirs bug level are fairly minimal and they always provide a lot of casual fun. You can pick up Burnout and have a great bash. Heck I'm still playing Burnout 2 loads. This is not to say everyone else's stuff is crap, I've visited many studios over the last two years, but I must say, I'm a strong believer in creating an environment where you developers have the ability to breath, relax and flex their creative muscle while producing great products. It's like having a big house, with a massive lounge for everyone and chilling. You need the sofas, the tvs and space for everyone. EA provides this nicely. I'd love to visit the MS Game Studios to see how they would compare.

Bon, Bon.. thought I'd share the experience.