Feedback from recent alums employed in Electronic Arts, a game company

This report was prepared by Rick Parent.

On the evening of Thursday, Oct. 16, 2008, Electronic Arts (the game company) gave a dog and pony show on campus hosted by a new student-game club. The EA rep was looking to for potential hires and will be back to conduct interviews in November.

EA's rep brought a couple of CS alum with him to talk to the students, EB (2006) and JC (1994). Neither EB nor JC concentrated on graphics here although each had take a couple of graphics courses.

I thought I'd pass along a couple of comments made at the meeting by the alums about advice they were giving the current students.

• Breadth is important. games encompass many aspects of computer science (databases, networking, hardware, AI, algorithms, ...) so they encouraged students to take a wide variety of classes - and not trying to get each and every graphics course.
• CSE 680 was mentioned as valuable course when thinking about the complexity of an algorithm being used.
• The Resolve sequence was noted as being very good for the 'contract software' approach used (while 'resolve' itself elicited some hisses and boos)
• The EA rep emphasized that the game industry needs CS types because each game contains a fair amount of custom programming (relying on only a few 'standard packages' like physics and sound engines).

Approximately 200 students attended the presentation.

--Rick Parent