The Office of the Chief Creative Officer (OCCO) is a department consisting of the Chief Creative Officer, Chief Technical Officer, and other valuable members of Electronic Arts. While several members of this office are permanent, many are temporary to the department, working on side projects until moving on to their next game or in the prototype phase of a new IP. Each individual in this team works independently or in small 2-3 person teams, investigating, implementing, and researching new technologies and methods to improve or innovate game development within Electronic Arts. As such, much of which is worked on is kept under Nondisclosure Agreement.
About Galactic Joe:Galactic is a social online game prototype created in 3 months by a team of 8 people consisting of 3 interns and 5 EA employees. Galactic Joe was an attempt to combine RTS resource-collecting with casual gameplay, and as such, went through many phases of trial and error. Because of the project's experimental nature, its development was also an opportunity to explore ways to utilize synchronous and asychronous interaction and compare social gaming between stereotypical hardcore RTS and social/casual games. Our goal was to create a prototype under short schedule and low budget in order to allow a team a chance for freeform creativity with little impact upon EA.
The final prototype was later transformed and polished in to the beta game, Galactic Joe, by the remaining 5 EA employees after the duration of this internship. The beta version remains on haitus until further notice.
About My Role:Because of the small size of our team, my role during the project was wide and diverse. We ran on 1-week scrum cycles and brought what talents we could to achieve our goals. We were also being experimental within our objectives, which would alter the direction of our prototype and the requirements needed to develop. While I was officially the design and production intern, I also took part in asset creation for the prototype and UI design.
On the team, there was little division between intern and employee and we all worked side-by-side during the development and experimentation of the prototype. My primary contributions were as listed: