Category: Uncategorized

I just got back from the wrap party. It was pretty damn good. There was lots of food and it seems like almost everyone attended. For the last hour, it was open bar too. Lots of people took the day off tomorrow, which means it’s a four-day long weekend for them. I, however, have an important 11am meeting tomorrow instead. I need to go to bed.

Tomorrow is the wrap party for Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville. I’ve lost track of how many wrap parties I’ve been to but I make it a point to go to every single one that I’m invited to. It’s a huge endeavour to make a video game and it’s gotten more difficult as time progresses. I think it’s important to celebrate with my colleagues that we made a tangible thing that people can go and experience. It is no small feat and I’ve never lost sight of that.

To us! Thanks to everyone on the team who put in an amazing effort to get this game out the door!

I almost bought a new keyboard on Amazon tonight because I thought my current keyboard is old and dirty. To be honest, I have no idea where this keyboard came from. I might have picked it up for free from work. It’s a bit grimy but not totally disgusting and more importantly, it still works. Am I missing out on cool RGB lighting? Are there keys that feel better to the touch? Perhaps I need to have programmable macro keys.

I’ll probably succumb to my capitalistic tendencies and get the new keyboard later this week.

If the Internet is to be believed, it was the coldest October in the greater Vancouver area since 1984. The average temperature was 8.86 degrees Celsius. I actually saw frost on the ground on some mornings last month, which is a rarity here in this city. This week won’t see too many chilly nights but I wonder what the rest of the month will bring.

For the last month or so I’ve been working on loan to another game development team based in one of our California studios. Today, I was informed that temporary loan will end soon and that I will be re-assigned to yet another team, the people who make FIFA.

Many details are still up in the air, including how much longer I’ll be working on my current assignment. I’ve been hearing the FIFA team would like me to start work as soon as possible but my release from my current temporary assignment needs to be negotiated. I won’t be present during these negotiations but it’ll be interesting to see how things play out.

I’m also uncertain what role I’ll be taking on while I’m on the FIFA team. I’m hoping it will be something that sets me up for success and can leverage my existing knowledge of the Frostbite engine. They wouldn’t have selected me for this unless they thought I’d be of use, at least that’s my thinking.

The one thing that I do have clarity on is that the temporary assignment will be for just under a year. I’ll return to my “home” late summer of 2020 or early fall of the same year.

Admittedly, I am a bit wary of what is to come. In experience, I haven’t had too much success in these temporary assignments to other teams nor in situations where I’m working on a sports game. Neither has led to much enjoyment and I feel like these past situations did not set me up for success. I’m hoping this time will be different.

So I have some friends who live in Northern California and if you didn’t know, the local power utility, PG&E is actually having scheduled power outages that lasts for days in some cases. This is to prevent wildfires from happening because it’s been proven that the power company’s equipment has caused fires to start in the past. That’s a crazy situation.

One of my former co-workers and friend, went three straight days without any power. He does not live in the bush or anything. He lives in a regular suburban area, dense with people. A whole 72 hours without any power. Imagine if that was you. Three days without power is a very long time to not have electricity if you think about it.

We may complain about B.C. Hydro once in a while but they’ve never had to shut off the power purposefully for thousands of people for days on end because their equipment was lighting the land on fire.

In the above video, YouTube sensation and chef Andrew Rea makes a recipe from a video game made by my employer, Electronic Arts. In Apex Legends, a character named Mirage references his favourite pork chops and the recipe itself is listed on a loading screen.

Rea attempts to make the recipe as accurately as possible, leading to… well, let’s just say that sometimes game developers should stick to making games.

On Sunday evening, I sent an e-mail to the strata property manager, where I detailed how I was trapped in the elevator on the weekend. He responded by saying he e-mailed the regional manager of the company that made the elevators in my building. He asked for an explanation for what happened this weekend and how we can prevent this from happening again. I’m not sure if he’ll share with me what the manager responds with but at least I made my concerns known.

If I do get a follow-up, I’ll write another update.

On Saturday evening, I was trapped in an elevator for the second time in my life. If you’re curious, I wrote about the first time in this post.

This time around, it was about 7pm, I had decided I wanted a coffee after dinner. To treat myself, I was going to get a Starbucks. Before leaving my apartment, I debated on whether or not to order my coffee using the app on my phone, so it would be waiting for me when I got down to Starbucks. I made the decision to hold off, just in case something delayed me. That would be a wise decision as I would soon find out.

Earlier in the day, my building was down to one elevator as the other one was apparently out of commission. As I waited for the elevator on my floor to go down, I was surprised to see the elevator that was supposedly “broken” stop at my floor, doors open, beckoning me to go in. I paused for a bit but I thought that if the elevator was in service and showed up on my floor, that would be a sign it was all fixed.

I stepped inside, pressed my desired floor, and was looking forward to having a nice coffee soon. The elevator descended eight floors when it suddenly lurched and the brakes were applied very quickly. I was alone in this elevator. It had stopped on the 20th floor. I waited to see if it would continue it’s descent, either in a normal fashion or in a free-fall. A minute of waiting yielded nothing. I wasn’t going to the lobby but I pressed that floor anyways. The button did not light up. None of the floors lit up when I pressed them.

I probably waited another two minutes before I decided this elevator was indeed stuck and nothing I could do inside was going to change that. So, for the second time in my life, I pressed the “help” button inside a stuck elevator. The call was answered after the second ring, quite quickly to my surprise. The person on the other end said hello and I told them I was stuck on the 20th floor. They asked me to press the lobby button for ten seconds. I did so but nothing happened. They then asked me to press the “door open” button for ten seconds as well. Nothing again. At this point they said they’d get back to me in a minute but not before making sure I was ok and not suffering from any immediate problems. I said I was fine.

The call ended and I waited for about a minute. The speaker on the panel came to life again as there was another person on the line. I didn’t know that you could actually call into the elevator and initiate the call from outside. That was interesting to learn. I didn’t know if this person was at the elevator company or downstairs in the lobby. The new person asked for my name, wanted to know if I was still doing ok, and offered to call or text someone on my behalf. I told him my name, said I was doing ok still, and no, I didn’t need him to call/text anyone because I had my phone on me (which had signal).

This new person told me that I was the second person to be stuck in that elevator today (more on that later). A service person (possibly two even) were enroute to the building but they were about 15 to 20 minutes away but once there, they would do everything possibly to get me out right away. After making sure I was ok again, they told me they’d check in with me in about five minutes. They then hung up.

I was left to just wait. Five minutes passed but no new call came. I could hear the other elevator moving up and down next to the one I was trapped in. Five minutes became ten. I checked my phone and it was down to 46%. I decided I probably needed to ration my battery, just in case. I wasn’t going to waste it playing games or being on the Internet. I put my phone on airplane mode so it would have to keep sending out signals, which would save a lot of battery.

Ten minutes became fifteen and nothing was happening. I debated with myself about sitting down but the carpets in these elevators are super gross, so I kept on standing. At the twenty minute mark, I swear I heard some sorta banging or some indication that there were people just outside the door, working on something. I didn’t hear any voices however and no one called out to me. Five minutes later the elevator started moving without any warning at all. It went down one floor and stopped at 19.

The doors opened and a nicely dressed couple was about to step into the elevator. I explained to them they probably didn’t want to use this elevator and where I’d been for the last 30 minutes or so. They heeded my advice and all three of us took the stairs down to the lobby. I was expecting to see some repair dudes there but I saw no one.

I still hadn’t gotten my coffee and after being trapped, I really wanted one. Thirty minutes later than I had expected, I was on my way to Starbucks. When I returned to the lobby with my coffee, the offending elevator was sitting with doors open at the lobby, locked out from being used. I still didn’t get any explanation as to why that elevator was allowed to be put into service, trapping two people on the same day. If the elevator isn’t fixed or unreliable, it shouldn’t be allowed to be used. I will ask the strata council or the property manager for an explanation.