FBLA has its perks.
Yesterday, I tagged along on a MVFBLA excursion to EA Games, where we received a largely self-touting promotion of EA Games, its culture, and all the perks of being an employee. Their corporate culture, apparently, includes the belief that "it's important to be surrounded by games, so if there's a free space, we put more games in!" True to this mantra, arcade games are stationed at several open areas, the Mission Impossible building (so titled due to it being the location where the game designer teams are located), even has a huge glass-walled lobby with a chess board ingrained into one of the tabletops. Their "library" is a hoard of games, movies, and any kind of inspiration or background information necessary to game designers. They wouldn't want to be infringing upon copyrights while in the pursuit of originality, after all.
There are three buildings: Mission Control, Mission Impossible, and Mission [insert suitable name]. Mission Control is the place where the bottom-line matters; revenue, units sold, marketing, and other financial and public matters are handled here. Mission Impossible hosts the game designers of EA, grouped into "teams" that are rewarded when a game is successful. These employees are given a choice for what game they would like to work on -- perhaps those best tailored to their skill sets, or those that will enhance them. Some people work on the same game for years, others like to move around; however, there is no such concept as "tenure." What matters is what you can bring to the playing field today (haha, no pun intended) and not how long you've been with the company. Some may not agree with this philosophy, but whatever you believe, it makes for better ideas, and if you counter that employees have no sense of security and therefore no sense of loyalty to the company, well, EA Games' attrition rate is half that of other companies in the Bay Area, and besides, it's EA Games.
Anyway, we were led around by a confident professional discreetly chewing gum while expounding to us the glories of EA Games and their great market share. But one of the things she said that stuck with me is, "Can a computer make you cry?" It's referring to realism of gameplay, characters, graphics, etc. That's the question that EA Games first asked, 23 years ago, as a motley, ragtag bunch of disheveled young men began to work towards better sports games, and that's the question that they still ask, today, with the bestselling "Madden NFL" line and the almighty "Sims."
(Just a side note: "Madden NFL" is the bestselling game for high school boys in the US; "FIFA" is the bestselling game for high school boys worldwide; and "The Sims" is the bestselling game for high school girls in the US and worldwide.)
At the end of the trip, when our tour guide, a "Manager of Community Relations and Public Giving," passed out business cards, I realized that the idea I had during the tour, that perhaps The Prancing Pony could garner a tour of the facilities, was not unfounded. Of course, that depends upon the club's interest, as well as how legitimate of a club we seem. Besides, EA Games doesn't concentrate on a lot of roleplaying games. But what about Blizzard, or another one of those companies? Would they allow us a tour of their company, or are they not large enough to care about high school kids and their "community image"?
There are three buildings: Mission Control, Mission Impossible, and Mission [insert suitable name]. Mission Control is the place where the bottom-line matters; revenue, units sold, marketing, and other financial and public matters are handled here. Mission Impossible hosts the game designers of EA, grouped into "teams" that are rewarded when a game is successful. These employees are given a choice for what game they would like to work on -- perhaps those best tailored to their skill sets, or those that will enhance them. Some people work on the same game for years, others like to move around; however, there is no such concept as "tenure." What matters is what you can bring to the playing field today (haha, no pun intended) and not how long you've been with the company. Some may not agree with this philosophy, but whatever you believe, it makes for better ideas, and if you counter that employees have no sense of security and therefore no sense of loyalty to the company, well, EA Games' attrition rate is half that of other companies in the Bay Area, and besides, it's EA Games.
Anyway, we were led around by a confident professional discreetly chewing gum while expounding to us the glories of EA Games and their great market share. But one of the things she said that stuck with me is, "Can a computer make you cry?" It's referring to realism of gameplay, characters, graphics, etc. That's the question that EA Games first asked, 23 years ago, as a motley, ragtag bunch of disheveled young men began to work towards better sports games, and that's the question that they still ask, today, with the bestselling "Madden NFL" line and the almighty "Sims."
(Just a side note: "Madden NFL" is the bestselling game for high school boys in the US; "FIFA" is the bestselling game for high school boys worldwide; and "The Sims" is the bestselling game for high school girls in the US and worldwide.)
At the end of the trip, when our tour guide, a "Manager of Community Relations and Public Giving," passed out business cards, I realized that the idea I had during the tour, that perhaps The Prancing Pony could garner a tour of the facilities, was not unfounded. Of course, that depends upon the club's interest, as well as how legitimate of a club we seem. Besides, EA Games doesn't concentrate on a lot of roleplaying games. But what about Blizzard, or another one of those companies? Would they allow us a tour of their company, or are they not large enough to care about high school kids and their "community image"?