Last Thursday I went on a trip to Electronic Arts for a career exploration field trip and the buildings they had there were impressive to say the least. On our tour we saw a personal gym for employees, arcade rooms, pool tables, a volleyball court, a Starbucks cafe and even a company gift shop. Yet surprisingly there was a lack of cubicle farms on our tour of EA and instead we mainly had a tour of their company history. On your way past the entrance and gift shop there was a motorcycle full of dents and scratches, our friendly tour guide explained that the motorcycle was used by an employee to test drive for a game they were working on. The test drive ended in a crash and the driver was mildly injured, the motorcycle was left as a reminder to have professionals do the driving.
I had a good time visiting EA and I’m sure that most people on the trip appreciated the discounts on games at the gift shop. I thought was interesting was that in every building you walk through there was at least some type of advertisement, such as game banners or commercials and what I thought was more interesting was the presentation they gave. The presentation was about the process of how they make their games starting from a concept to deciding if it is marketable to development to testing and finally advertising. I learned that it takes a lot of people with a variety of jobs to complete a game. If I ever do decide to go into the gaming business I now know that I have different options I can decide on that could possibly take me to a company like EA.
