The Lost Posts of 2006 Part 1
Well it’s been ages since I last blogged, partly due to a lack of the Internet and a lot to do with not being bothered, but I’ve since rectified both and can start spouting nonsense with a fair few random Lord of the Rings quotes chucked in for good measure, to noone once more. But yeah brush the digital dust off your RSS feeds and whatnot as there will probably be more where this came from. I’ve noticed that there has been a distinct lull in all of my friends blogs, so this is a call for Geffy, Luke, Matt, Tom, and especially Andy who is off galavanting in Japan and hasn’t blogged for ages.
I’ll start by being incredibly random and blog about the stuff that I’ve missed out and as it’s currently cold and snowy wherever you are it makes sense to start with the hottest day of summer, date forgotten, August 2006.
I was in Chertsey, just outside of London, for my games tester interview at EA. Some of my housemates may find this amusing as they know how much I hated EA and their challenge everything clip (which thankfully they’ve now changed) which on many games you coudln’t skip.
My heart pretty much sank when I found out what I was up against, I met someone else who was going for the interview who was doing Computer Science at Oxford. Despite being extremely intelligent and going to a top university he managed to like me enough to find the place together. We arrived and I managed to wangle a few bottles of water as it was really, really hot.
The centre itself was fairly amazing. It used to be the European headquarters of EA until they built a new one elsewhere in Europe. Complete with football pitch, random rivers and water features, all the games consoles for you to play on, and my personal favourite; a games library for employees. There were also informal meetings going on everywhere and because all the employees were in plain clothes I guess they thought we worked here too and were more than happy to discuss high staked mergers and acquisitions of other companies within earshot of myself! Despite being a veritable child in a sweet shop, I chose to talk with the other candidates rather than bugger off and play games. They all seemed pretty interesting and it was no time at all until we went in for our tests. The psychometric test consisted of choosing the best grammar and/or spelling out of multiple choice. I was under the impression the psychometric tests were to determine your personality and if you had a nut loose or whatever, but I wasn’t going to complain as I think my spelllinhg is alright. Then came the games knowledge test and by god I have never been so happy when looking at a test paper. Although they were multiple choice, you couldn’t guess because you got deducted a point for a wrong answer, got 1 point for correct and if you chose ‘I don’t know’ you didn’t get anything. A pretty harsh system I think.
However during the presentation that came after the tests, I found out that the job wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. The pay wasn’t great, it was uncertain hours, and perhaps worse of all I wouldn’t be employed directly by EA, but through a games testing agency called Volt.
Then came the interview proper where rather than hiding my obsession of games I was asked to expand on it, so it didn’t go that badly.
To conclude on my rather random post which has no relevance into anything going on my life at the moment, I was told the day after that they offered me the job, and that I’d scored the highest on the games knowledge test out of 60 people that day. I so wish that every test I could do absolutely no revision for and ace it. But basically I’ve learned that agencies are the bane of my existence because although they said I was an ideal candidate, and went along to the training which they paid me for, they really didn’t treat me like that because I needed their contract to show my bank to get enough money to move there, but they never sent me it, even after numerous phonecalls and e-mails asking for it. In fact I never officially declined the job, so hats off to Volt for caring about their employees!