Field Trip To Sony Online Entertainment 8//7/2012

On Thursday, August 7^th, 2012 we took a field trip to Sony Online Entertainment.  I’m really glad we were given the opportunity to experience touring their company.  During our tour of SOE we witnessed firsthand what it would be like to work behind the scenes of the online gaming community.  Actually seeing firsthand how the company operates and is structured was very enlightening.  Overall I enjoyed this field trip, and above all that even left SOE with some exclusive goodies.

      Working for SOE almost felt like it would have been more fun that actual work.  They have onsite beta testers for every game they’ve produced.  Each employee had their own desk with multiple displays.  Their graphics department was very kick back.  In one area, employees would literally spend their day playing their newest games, re-enacting battles or cool gameplay scenarios to create potential You-Tube videos and commercials.  One building was dedicated to server maintenance, which is arguably the most important department.  For obvious reasons that department is monitored and maintained 24 hours a day.

      Sony Online Entertainment had a very upbeat and comforting environment through-out every building we toured.  There was no question that they invested a lot of time and effort as well as an exciting original like personality into their work.  They had developing game rooms which were used to invite people from all different kinds of demographics to play and test out their games. The rooms had about eight cameras strategically placed around the room so they could record the physical reactions to help fine tune their games accordingly.

      Overall, I had a very good time and enjoyed our field trip to SOE.  It opened my eyes to a whole new possibility.  I also feel this field trip motivated me as well as gotten excited and pumped up for my career.  I hope that every school year they do this.  I strongly feel that I got a lot out of it.  Before leaving SOE they even hooked us up with some exclusive goodies.  The most memorable one being a beta code allowing us to download and become one of the special few to play the game before everyone else for free.