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Several months ago I mentioned in a post that I was working on a game that featured an Oscar-winning actor in one of the roles. This weekend at EA Play 2017, EA revealed details about Madden 18, including a story mode which features Mahershala Ali, who won an Oscar for Moonlight.

I’ve been working on Madden 18 since mid-December in a temporary assignment to the team in Orlando. As this is their first year using the Frostbite engine, it’s been all-hands on deck to get this thing out the door. I do all my work remotely, which is possible since it’s all code and data. There’s actually quite a few people in Vancouver who are working on Madden 18 as well. What I’m working on specifically in the game isn’t too exciting however and it doesn’t really touch any of the story mode stuff.

My temporary assignment ends once this month is over. I wasn’t expecting to have a video game credit for this calendar year but I will now. As a software engineer, this is only the second time I’ve worked on an EA Sports title, the first being Fight Night Champion. Madden 18 is out on August 25, 2017!

This weekend kicks off EA Play 2017, EA’s own showcase of games to be released in the near future. The highlight of the three day event will be the opening press conference at noon PDT on Saturday. It will be there that people will get to see new stuff from games already announced (like Star Wars Battlefront II) and most likely reveals for games that have been kept under wraps until now.

At the beginning of the year, I wrote that I was temporarily loaned to another team at EA to help them with their game. This weekend, more details about that game will be released to the public. I’m actually not sure exactly how much info will be given but hopefully it will enough for me to safely write about it. If you remember, I mentioned the game features an Oscar winner. Perhaps by the end of the weekend, I can say more about that.

The press conference will be livestreamed on Saturday and I’ll be watching with great interest.

This weekend marks the unofficial start of E3 2017, which means it’s been about a year since I went to my first E3 in Los Angeles. Though I used my industry credentials to get in, I was not formally working at E3 so it was purely a vacation for me.

That was such a fun week. I went with my friend Garrett, who is also in the games industry. It was also the first time we traveled together. E3 this year is slightly different in that they will now officially let non-industry folks into the expo. Yes, prior to this, non-industry people still scammed their way in but now the flood gates are open. This may reflect upon me badly but I’m of the opinion it’s a better experience for industry people when the general public isn’t there.

Well, I’m not going this year but I’m sure there are quite a few people I know who are. I hope they have fun!

I didn’t realize it until tonight but today was my one-year anniversary of my return to EA as a full-time employee. If you’re keeping score, I came back as a full-time employee in June of 2016. Prior to that, I had a four month break where I did lots of traveling. Previous to that, I did a one-year contract at EA on the same team I’m on now.

If you add up all the stints I’ve done at EA, as both a QA dude and a software engineer, I’ve worked for the company about ten years now; a decade! My tenures at other companies don’t even come close to my time at EA. In terms of time, the next company clocks in at about eight months. Crazy huh?

Well, tomorrow is one year and plus a day of my current tour of duty. Perhaps, I’ll get poutine for lunch.

For several years now, this site has been hosted on GoDaddy. I know GoDaddy hasn’t had the best of reputations but for the little dog and pony show we run here it’s been fine. Unfortunately, it now costs twice as much to host with them compared to when I first signed up. I haven’t received any discernible improvements or feature enhancements with the added costs. If there have been, I don’t use them. So why pay more for the same service?

I went looking for alternatives and I found a host that costs half as much. Their uptime guarantee is pretty much the same as GoDaddy’s. My site isn’t really mission critical, so I can be very tolerant of even minor issues. If my site goes down for ten minutes, I don’t lose money or anything. I can afford to experiment with a new host.

My current hosting agreement ends in about two weeks. Before then, I’ll be starting the process of moving everything to the new host. Hopefully, the move should be transparent to you and the three other people who read this blog on the regular. Since this site is pretty simple, the move shouldn’t require that much work.

I’ll let you know when everything is done.

In my last post, I detailed my evening of discomfort and nausea where signs pointed towards food poisoning and future vomiting.

I went to bed that evening feeling quite tired but as I mentioned, the nausea seemed to subside slightly. It got to the point that I was able to fall asleep. I woke up feeling much better though I was slightly dehydrated. The nausea was gone and I was able to go to work without any problems. I didn’t have to vomit, which is always a plus in my books.

I’m still not sure what caused me to feel ill in the first place. Now I’m all suspicious about that pho place. Even though their pho is just average, I think I’ll stick to that now, instead of trying their lemongrass chicken again.

After work I went and had dinner with a friend. Said friend lives quite close to me so we decided to go somewhere near both our homes. We settled on a pho place that is relatively new. I’ve been there twice before. Their pho is quite average and for some reason their beef slices are tough and chewy. How difficult is it to use beef that is sliced thinly? Every other pho place seems to be able to figure it out. This time around I decided to have lemongrass chicken and rice instead. It was pretty good. Dinner ended and my friend and I parted ways.

I spent most of the evening playing video games. Toward the end of the evening I wasn’t feeling so great. It took me a few minutes to realize what the discomfort was. I was feeling nausea. Whatever it was, it was coming from the upper part of my chest. I’ve had food poisoning and norovirus enough times to know how it starts and it always starts with nausea. I began to burp a few times too. That usually doesn’t happen so long after dinner. For me at least, burping can and has been a precursor for my body getting ready to purge itself through vomiting.

It’s been about three hours since the symptoms first appeared and I feel slightly less nauseous now, though I wouldn’t say I feel awesome either. A concern is that my upper back is now very tight and a bit sore. This is really difficult to explain but there have been times where I’ve had food poisoning and norovirus and for some reason, my back muscles tighten up and get sore. I’m not sure why that happens. It could be because I’m dehydrated. I haven’t been drinking a lot of water tonight.

If there is some good news in all of this, nothing is wrong with the rest of my digestive system. There has been no extra farting tonight and I certainly have not been peeing out of my butt. The next twelve hours will be very important. If I really do have some food-borne illness, it will most likely prevent me from sleeping. The last time that happened, I could get comfortable enough to fall asleep. I was in a lot of discomfort and eventually got up from my bed, and then forced myself to vomit into the sink. I instantly felt better and was able to sleep after that. Will this repeat itself tonight? Who knows?

I’ll update everyone tomorrow.

In the late afternoon today I received a studio-wide e-mail from facilities warning employees about reports of a bear wandering near the campus. Our studio was built on forested land and the back portion of the campus is next to undeveloped land with nature trails that people use. It was this trail area that the bear was originally spotted, which makes sense since it would be familiar to the bear. The warning told employees to stay out of the trails and that general area until further notice. On sunny days, like today, it’s common for some employees to take a quick walk through some of the trails for a break.

I’d never heard of a bear in this area before so I wasn’t sure of the veracity of these sightings today. It turns out there was indeed a bear in the area. News reports and video from an area adjacent to the studio show the bear in a tree. Conservation officers had to tranquilize the bear and take it away. There have been no reports about what they’ll do with it. Crazy!

On the weekend I inadvertently jetlagged myself by staying up until 5am both on Friday and Saturday nights (or more correctly Saturday and Sunday morning). I’ve been playing The Last of Us Remastered on PS4 and I was near the end. The gameplay and narrative are thrilling, which made me want to play on for hours at a time. I would get to the next segment of the game and I said to myself I would quit here but then I wanted to know what would happen next, so I played on. Before long, I could hear birds chirping outside and the sky started to get light again. That the sign I really need to get to bed.

Unfortunately, I did this two nights in a row, which most likely has moved my body clock to want to sleep as the sun rises. As I need to go to work Monday morning, I bet I’m going to feel pretty crappy tomorrow when I wake up. I don’t regret it though, I finished the game this evening and it is one of the best games I’ve played in my long years of playing games. I’d recommend it to anyone.