Tag: Day2

Day 2

Today Shane and I met around 8:45 to dri

The incredibly cool campus, as well as the testing facility where we had the play test.

ve down to Crossroads Boulevard so that we could visit Epic Games. Upon arrival we were greeted by a man named Steve Polge. He walked us through the super cool campus that featured a two story high character from one of Epic Games most recent games, a climbing wall in the main relaxation room, a slide to get from the second floor to the first, and multiple testing rooms for outsiders to come in and test the newest builds for the games.

After the initial tour we got to go back to Mr. Polge’s quarters where he along with his 20 man team are working on the upcoming Unreal Tournament which is currently in Pre-Alpha stages, it was really interesting to see how even such a huge company has such small teams creating games that aren’t all that popular just yet. Mr. Polge was the lead of the team in creating the game, and he was in charge of overseeing what happens. The team, however, also has many different sectors. They have QA’s, an animator, graphic designers, coders, and artists. Each of which work together to create the final version of the game. Throughout the day we learned that each member is only efficient of all of the other members work together. There were times throughout the day that members of each of the fields had to work on tasks that were meant to be done by one of the other fields. This turns out to be very common, understandable, considering how small the team is and how much is to be done in order to eventually produce the game.

After a bit of testing and gameplay, Shane and I were taken to lunch by Mr. Polge, he asked us a few questions about our backgrounds in the field, as well as anything new that we learned or any suggestions that we have for the game. It was cool to learn about how he started out in the field and what interested him originally to stick with Epic Games, and specifically unreal tournament.

After returning back to the facilities from lunch we went back to testing the game, looking for bugs, and also finding new possible changes. It was cool because this time we got to tryout a different game mode and actually play with each other.

Lastly after all questions were asked, we were brought into a test run. 8 of the members from the team as well as shane and I hit if off in a 5 v 5 game where we got to play the game with some real competition for once, rather than the bots that we had been playing with throughout the day. After playing a couple games we had a meeting to converse about any noticible mistakes or places in which the game should be fixed or changed in the future.

All in all the day was so much fun and it was awesome to get to meet Mr. Polge and his team as well as get introduced into that sort of field.

Day2, Jonathan Segal, Internal/External Communications

Today I toured in the internal and external communications decisions of SAS. Briefly put, internal coms deals with communications inside the company, employee information type things. External is stuff like PR and press releases that deal with anyone outside the company. My favorite part of the day was when I was talking to an external comm manager and he asked me if I wanted to take a short walk to lunch in a different building. As a guest in another place, I naturally said yes. I have to say I did not expect to walk nearly a mile to and from the different building, although the lunch and conversation were both fantastic.

Day Two

My second day at the state legislative building was a very busy one. We started off the day by attending a Board of Education meeting so that we could watch the implementation of legislation that Ms. DeVivo had gotten passed a few weeks prior to my arrival. Following the meeting, we went down to the quad and helped Ms. Sams (DeVivo’s partner) set up for a lunch catered by the pit for 500 people. The lunch invited all senators, reps, and optometrist to join so that they could generate discussion about the optometrist bill that we lobbied for the day prior. And following lunch, we met with a client from Riskcor to talk about upcoming legislation involving immigrants. We took the client to a couple of senators and reps (including the president pro-tempore and the majority leader) so that he could express his concerns with the legislation, and try to win their support.

One thing that I learned during my day is the importance of making connections. While shadowing Ms. DeVivo, I noticed that she had very good relationships with pretty much all of the officials. She knew pretty much everyone in the buildings, and was genuine friends with them. By developing these friendships, it became a lot easier to do her job because they knew that they could trust her. And while she was fairly liberal, most of her really good friends were conservative. While I assumed that there would be conflict because of party, there really was not because she said that she has a long history of being fair, and that goes a long way. As she said, people remember everything. If you mess with someone, they will fight back. Making friends is a whole lot more effective than burning bridges.

An Epic Day

Today Chandler and I went to Epic Games. Our day started with a tour of the building and we got to learn about the story behind Epic Games. It’s really interesting! It all started with a text-based adventure game, and they have the map for that game framed on a wall in the building. After that, they published the first real game to make Epic Games known: Unreal. Unreal was a shooter game set on an alien planet and it had groundbreaking use of color with 16-bit graphics instead of previous games only using 256 colors on the screen at a single time. Then, there was the first Unreal Tournament, a fast paced shooter game that is our host, Steve Polge’s favorite game he’s worked on. We actually got to playtest the newest Unreal Tournament in pre-alpha development, because playtesting is critical to the final product in game design. It was so much fun and I’m so grateful for this epic opportunity.  Playtesting Room

Day Two Hullabaloo!

Wow. What a day! Most of today was devoted to diving headfirst into all that Chapel Hill had to offer. I spent a combined 5 hours between the law library and main campus library with a quick stop for Chinese food on Franklin Street in between. I have learned more about insanity, criminal defense, and its ties to mental illness in one day than probably anyone ever. Today, the most fascinating connection I made was in regards to the 1996 movie Primal Fear which I screened last night. SPOILER ALERT: Primal Fear is about a young alter boy accused of murder who faked multiple personality disorder to get cleared of a crime through insanity. Today, while researching statistics and reviews, I discovered an eerily similar case in 2000 where a woman killed her husband and claimed to have the same “amnesia” that the main character in Primal Fear had. She got committed to a mental institution and revealed multiple different personalities to the doctors there. Eventually, it leaks from her cellmate that she had been faking these personalities to remove guilt from her crime. These connections were fascinating to observe and I am sure there are many more to come! I can’t wait to see what Day 3 has in store.

 

 

Skip to toolbar