During the Summer of 2013, I interned at Electronic Arts in Redwood Shores as a Software Engineering Intern with a focus on Gameplay User-Interface features on The Sims 4. It was a full circle experience. The Sims was “the game” of my childhood; the one I played most often. Now I was getting to contribute to the latest installment of the game.
While I was there the engineering team met a big deadline, so we were all treated with a 3-day hackathon (we could code anything we wanted into the game, as long as it got support from the producers & designers of the game [to make sure it was appropriate for The Sims]). I took the time adding features and special objects to the game that I know the little me would have loved and obsessed over.
It was a great experience. I could see this being my job in the future. It wasn’t really a “job” in the normal sense where people dread going to them. I am not a morning person. Not at all. All my courses this semester are in the afternoon. But I was continually waking up at 8am to head into work and staying at work until 7pm. (As a reference, most engineers didn’t get into the office until 10am and then stayed at work until 7 or 8pm). Anyways, long story short I found myself trying to spend as much time as possible working on the game. It was this summer on The Sims 4 that I knew that I wanted to make video games for a living and that I wouldn’t be happy doing anything else.
EXPERIENCE
MORE INFO, PHOTOS & VIDEOS TO BE ADDED POST GAME RELEASE 😉
While I was there the engineering team met a big deadline so we were all rewarded with a 3-day long hackathon. I contributed to multiple features during Engineering Team’s Hackathon.
Hackathon participation included:
– Receiving Producer support on features and created design documents for features
– Coordinating features with several other engineers on the team
– Assisting Producers with adding content to the game, which included adding of some Easter Eggs
– Receiving art support to add special object to game (Hackathon was suppose to be limited to engineering only)
– One feature’s tech has been reused to implement a planned game feature
Thanks to Rincon Del Simmer for the find!
