Interesting thing happened to me

Hey all!, glad to see the site back up. I had an interesting call last week on my messages from a Michael at EA games. Right out of the blue and for no apparent reason. Needless to say I was a bit curious when my wife told me about the message. I had to wait and return the call the next day, and was pleasantly suprised to find out that because I had registered a copy of MOH Spearhead almost a year ago, I had been chosen to come in and playtest an as of yet unreleased game!. He asked me what type of games I played and I responded First Person Shooters or nothing at all, and he was very happy with that response. I was also pleased to find out that their new Los Angeles headquarters was a mere 10 minute drive from my house. I immediately accepted and called my boss to arrange for a replacement for that day. (Keep in mind that probably cost me about 400 dollars on the old paycheck!).

I arrived at what looked like a spinky new compound, all glass and steel, and fenced in with it's own private soccer field, basketball courts,and plenty of security gates.Once I parked (valet parking garage!), I went up the escalator into a large plush lobby with, you guessed it, more security gaurds and a huge video display of giant proportions behind them running trailer loops of The sims 2 and Battlefield 2. The place was amazing, all these underdressed nerd types with ID badges walking casually around with an adjoining private video game lounge, a billiard room, fully stocked snack bar and the walls were lined with laptops, each running various EA games which you could step up to and play while waiting. After a few minutes and a quick sign in I was directed to another small room with a nice hand carved wooden sign which read "Medal of Honor Pacific Assault". IN there was a series of smaller rooms, each with a computer preloaded with a question and answer form. So it was Medal of Honor I was playtesting.

cool.

After a few more minutes, a well dressed felow came out and collected us together, and we headed out through a series of ID badge locked doors, to a room with about twenty computers, and a huge one way glass wall. We were told we were going to split up into two teams and playtest the multiplayer aspect of MOHPA. Three rounds of about 15 minutes each, switching sides after each round. Midway through the playtest we took a restroom break and were escorted through a series of Secrity doors(note: I could'nt seem to find any regular doors throughout the whole complex. Security was more like a top secret government facility. Crazy) We finished the playtest and went into another posh room and began a question and answer session with a couple of the games developer types. All simple enough. We were asked about the control interface, balance of power between American and Japanese sides, HUD layouts and such. They did'nt seem too interested in overall oppinions, as I had a few, but that was allright. Once finished we were directed to two large tables with great stacks of EA games, both PC and console related, and told we could pick any one we wanted. (A Reward!, hehehe.). I chose MOH Breakthrough, as it was the only one I didnt have. Then we were escorted back outside and set free. Overall I had a great time. The most intriguing thing I saw all night was the level of security within the building. Suprising. Anywho, I gotta run but I thought I'd share my experience with you all.

Lates!

Wow, its pretty cool of them to pick random customers for playtests :smile:
I'll be honest - I'm not a big EA fan, for the reason that they seem to
be
getting too big and assimilate a few too many smaller companies in
order to push out sequels or other mass market tripe (with some
exceptions) - but
I'd still have been thankful for an experience like that you just had.

So that's where valve's security ended up! Maybe I'm just a nerd but that place sounds like heaven. And you make $400 a day?! Who's your boss, Ron Jeremy?

Craziness.

I actually got the experience of a random call from EA as well a couple months ago, maybe a month before I moved up here. Paul Grassi, I think the name was, but I could be wrong. Designer there mentioning possible openings on MOH:PA (I think) and the LOTR strategy game. No idea how he found me, but he was reading my site as he called and then noticed the Raven thing. Doh! :razz:

Sounds like a pretty cool experience you got there, though not sure I'd want to spend too much time under tighter security than Los Alamos... not that THAT'S saying much. :biggrin:

So that's where valve's security ended up! Maybe I'm just a
nerd but that place sounds like heaven. And you make $400 a day?! Who's
your boss, Ron Jeremy?

Probably not or he would have done the playtest standing up.

Actually, now that I think about it, that security makes perfect sense. We're talking a QA department, not the development areas, and thus have much more potential for security leaks or people wandering around seeing the wrong things, etc. It's not surprising a large publisher with as many titles to handle as EA has would have something like that, though it still sounds a bit excessive. I'm assuming the luxury amenities are for the full-time testers who get to work all sorts of crazy shifts - I'm pretty sure both EA and Activision, possibly others, have QA departments split into continuous 8 hour shifts all 24 hours of the day. I know at least one of them does, but I can't remember which one I was reading the job info for...

I hope their developers aren't under that much security; I think that'd be too intimidating to get any work done :razz: I mean, security is one thing, but feeling like a prison is another! :smile:

Damn, EA actually playtest their games? :razz:

I'm surprised they didn't make you sign a non-disclosure agreement.

It actually sounds like this wasn't a play test. It sounds more or less like a tell-everyone-this-game-rocks-test. They're releasing the game in less then two weeks, what could they possibly change within a three week period? I mean, at the time Juim was "play testing", EA was probably beginning to print the cds and packaging material for shipment.

They probably did this because they want your (continued) business, and figured that you'd spread the word.

Oh well, I'm looking forward to MoH:PA. Great series. However, Breakthrough is okay. Spearhead is so much better (the best so far, period). (and the only console versions that are any good are the PlayStation ones (MoH and MoH:U).

Or maybe I'm wrong, who knows, EA is an enormous company.

Sounds like it was ease of use (default control setup decent?) and
balance (team weapon balancing) issues only, as those can be changed
with ease.