11th Oct 2008

And the award goes to...

Yonk! for the best looking blog so far!

From the guy who brought you EA Singapore on Facebook, he makes everything look nice.

Singaporeans, you might want to keep this one in your favs: /blog/yonk/

10th Oct 2008

Hello and Welcome to the new EA!

Today we proudly relaunch the English versions of what we internally call EA.com Asia... the platform that runs all homepages, mini-sites, promotions, viral campaigns and more throughout the Asia Pacific region for Electronic Arts. The non-English territories are still going through last minute localisation functions, but shouldn’t be too far behind.

It’s an amazing feeling. 11 territories, 200 product pages, 425 banners, promotions, blogs, forums, eCommerce integration, mini-sites and much more… all with small team who exemplify what it means to do whatever it takes to get the job done.

We’ve gone over the site with a fine tooth comb, but as always there will be issues we didn’t see, bugs we didn’t catch and features that we didn’t think of. We’ll be in the forums listening to whatever suggestions you have to make this a fun place to spend your time.

Chat soon,
Liam

8th Oct 2008

Warhammer Online Cinematic Trailer 2

I love to dabble in 3D during rare moments of spare time, and fortunately working for an interactive software firm I have access to all the 3D tools I could ever dream of. It’s not easy to open up 3DSMAX or Maya and try to model a character. Even if you have the modelling skills nailed the render times are ridiculous... even if you have a server farm the size of Pixar’s. Those little spinning logos you see above took about 20 mins each on a high-end laptop.

Now imagine the time and effort it takes to model, light, and render the latest Warhammer Online Cinematic Trailer below!? It would take years on my poor little laptop. I can only assume the guys at Mythic had this outsourced. I know a lot of game trailers and in-game video isn't done by the developers but outsourced to dedicated CGI firms. If anyone at Mythic happens to be reading this then let me know (I won't bother you all with an email ).

Check out the high quality version here, or the Youtube version here:

8th Oct 2008

EA's YouTube Channel

Not sure if anyone here has heard of a new little website called YouTube, but EA has a pretty decent channel on there.

Check it out here http://www.youtube.com/user/EA.

The quality isn’t too bad for a quick looksie during lunch, but some of these trailers need to be shown in the original HD glory.

Speaking of quality video, we’ve currently upgraded our game trailers found on the game pages from 480x270 to 640x360. Still not HD, but it’s a noticeable increase in clarity. The file sizes are larger but with EA.com Asia Version 2 we’ve started hosting all of our content on a CDN (Content Delivery Network). The CDN is Limelight, the guys who host Xbox Live if I can remember correctly. This means that instead of this websites files being served from our Japanese data centre, they are served from wherever Limelight has a server closest to you, making everything faster.

8th Oct 2008

High Def Videos

What do you think about creating a dedicated video tab on this site? Something like http://www.fwatheater.com/ but in AJAX instead of Flash. We can offer the HD versions of our trailers for those of you on decent connections. This pretty much rules out Aussies... sorry guys - I know how the internet is truly supposed to be experienced since moving abroad. Try 100Mbs straight into my home!

8th Oct 2008

Find EA Singapore on Facebook

I’m constantly impressed by the amount of high quality work the single web guy (search for Yonk! On the forums) for the local EA Singapore team pumps out each day. One such endeavour is their Facebook site.



1,700 fans, tons of new movies, downloads, screenshots, MSN icons, wallpapers and more. Even if you’re not Singaporean it’s well worth becoming a fan to get access to all of the latest content from EA.

Good stuff Yonk.