My trip to EA Canada
 

Well, some of you may have read about it a little while ago, but I was invited by EASports to preview MVP '06 College Baseball, at their Burnaby studios in Vancouver, British Columbia. Now, many of you already know that I live in Massachusetts... so a flight to Vancouver, a two night stay, and then a flight back was rather taxing on my poor little body... but it was still fun. I posted this in my journal, so I'm just going to copy and paste... but it was fun:

So the MVP '06 Community day was this past Wednesday. On Tuesday, still tired from going to Florida over the weekend, I hopped on a plane from Providence. Went from Providence to Chicago, then Chicago to Vancouver, BC, Canada. Vancouver is huge, and it is a damn nice city. It's shaped like an M, the outer parts being residential/smaller business sections, the middle being Downtown, with water willing in the gaps. It's also surrounded by the Canadian Rockies on 3 sides. My hotel was damn nice, and everybody who worked there called me Mr. Murray ... it was weird. But anyway, I met up with the guys on the trip on Tuesday ... it was me and five others. I got a $40.00 steak and like ... $100 of beer all on EA when we went out to dinner. I took pictures of Vancouver / hotel, but thye came out shitty.

On Tuesday, we got on the limo and go to EAC: Burnaby, where MVP, NBA Live, Fifa, and the motion capping is done. It was cool.

The EA field:


Mountains, from the roof of EAC:Burnaby.



Panoramic of Burnaby, BC, as well as the Canadian Rockies... click for big.



Me and the lead coder playing coop.


More Coop, we're playing against those guys over there... Sean, on the left, is from Operation Sports... Josh on the right is from G4 TV and Tips and Tricks magazine.




For full sized pictures, as well as a bunch of others... go here:
http://www.osmar.net/nuke/modules.ph...lbum=24&page=1

For a preview of some of the features that haven't been covered by major news sources, go here:
http://www.osmar.net/nuke/modules.ph...ewtopic&t=1228

I got back last night at like midnight... I'm still tired from like 8 hours of flying, on top of a 4 hour layover in O'Hare ... and a number of snow storms. Though, on Wednesday, we went out to dinner after the community day with the project leader (Ben Brinkman) and the guy who ran our day (Darin Perfonis or something)... and our bill, amongst the 7 of us... was over $1000. We were all pretty shit faced... and Me and Damon got 2 steak dinners... Because it was only an 8oz steak, and it was 16 bucks, so when we were ordering it ... Nathan Farenthold was like "This guy wants 2 steaks, not one... 2 ..." so we got 2. Everybody else was married, with at least one kid,a nd either in their 30s or late 20s ... so it was sort of weird to still be in college... while they were talking about buying houses in Los Angeles and San Fransisco.

It was too much travelling for just the day ... but the next one in Atlanta should be good, I may end up taking a few more days and staying at a Courtyard or something. I've got some more in Montreal, Atlanta, Orlando, and the annual one in Vegas was moved to main campus at Redwood, in california ... where Tiburon is.... that'll be in June or July for Madden '07.

They gave me ... three games, an EA sweatshirt, an EA backpack, an EA baseball glove, EA baseballs... EA key things ... and other stuff. The glove is too small for me though, so if there are any left-handed people with hands slightly smaller than mine, you can have it. [this glove has already been reserved]

that's all. It was fun, I'm dead tired though. The next one ... I'm gonna need to stay there longer.

Glad you enjoyed our little backwater. ;)
How'd you get the invite, anyway?

I was the MySQL and PHP guy for MaddenPlanet.com, the largest Madden/EA fansite, when they'd have trouble... a regular poster there for a long time, so I was made a mod sometime ago. AndyP, the guy who owns and runs MaddenPlanet, got me setup as an EA Community Leader, which then gets me involved in these neat little things. So a few months ago, Nathan Farenthold, director of online marketing for EA, sends me an e-mail ... asking me whether I'm interested in going to Vancouver to check out MVP '06.... I definitely was, and the rest is history.

I really enjoyed Vancouver, it was a beautiful city... though too far away from home for me. The water was really good, too. Straight out of the tap and it tasted just fine for my tastes. I like the tap water in my home town but rarely any other places... this was like clear gold, nice and cold. The rockies were impressive too ... I had never seen them before so it was a treat.

i have to say i'm very jealous. sounds like an awesome time dude. did you talk any industry with them there?

A good amount.

A lot of developers, especially EA, are upset with Microsoft and many are blaming the short sales in 4th quarter on MS' shortages. A lot of companies invested a lot of money into developing for the X360, but because of Shortages, X360 software is selling poorly... On top of that, consumers don't want to buy software for the current generation because they anticipate owning an X360 shortly... and not wanting to have dead games sitting around. SO sales are way down and a lot of developers are pissed at MS for it.

Most people believe that the PS3 and X360 will mostly have the same amount of power... or games won't be all that much different. I had thought otherwise, figuring the PS3 would pwn the X360 in terms of power... but the guys at EA figured it'd be mostly the same.

Morale is generally low for most developers, right now, with the next gen coming out ... as it requires funding that a lot simply don't have.

Trying to remember what else ... When we were talking about industry stuff it was usually at the bar... and I got hammered both nights, so it's tough to recall.

any industry sex?

EA has been trying to fuck Ubisoft for sometime... but other than that, I haven't heard.

Thats way cool. I like the picture of the building with the "old" EA logo, with the triangle circle and square. Makes me nostalgic for my genesis.

That's awesome, Mike. Glad you had a good time.

Yeah, they still had all that retro stuff out there... like when you go into the complex, they have that same design greeting you at the door. Definitely a cool place to check out.

Very cool man, this needs to be highlighted on the front page...needs an update anyways..lol.