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EQ2_Bloggers
05-27-2010, 12:04 AM
In my past work experience in Sales and Marketing at the Upper Deck Company, I was in constant contact with the Quality Assurance department and have learned how important their work is! Many companies have a separate department devoted to quality assurance as Sony Online Entertainment does Why is it important to maintain a separate department for Quality Assurance? It increases customer confidence and a company’s credibility, improves work processes and efficiency, and enables a company to better compete with others.

Quality Assurance was initially introduced in World War II when munitions were inspected and tested for defects after they were made. Today’s quality assurance systems emphasize catching defects before they get into the final product.
Last month when SOE’s Community Team hosted a Ustream event (http://eqplayers.station.sony.com/news_article.vm?id=51853)
dedicated to Quality Assurance, it gave me an idea to highlight the Quality Assurance international team. In fact, the international team does the same kind of work as their US counterparts plus they deal with localization issues in several foreign languages like: French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish. Three members of that team took some time to answer my questions:* They are Cristbel (Spanish Quality Assurance),Naoko (Japanese Quality Assurance) and Nikhil (French Quality Assurance).
http://www.station.sony.com/images/fr/Interviews/tn_Cristbel.jpg (http://www.station.sony.com/images/fr/Interviews/Cristbel.jpg)
http://www.station.sony.com/images/fr/Interviews/tn_Naoko.JPG (http://www.station.sony.com/images/fr/Interviews/Naoko.JPG)

Hello, can you please introduce yourself?

Cristbel: My name is Cristbel. I am from Caracas, Venezuela. I am 33 years old.
Naoko: Hello, my name is Naoko from Japan.
Nikhil: Hi, my name is Nikhil.

How long have you been working at Sony Online Entertainment?

Cristbel: I have been working at SOE since January 2009.
Naoko: I’ve been working at SOE for half a year.
Nikhil: About a year and half now

What are the games that you have worked on in the past and the games that you are working on right now?

Cristbel: I have been working on Pirates of the Burning Sea and Free Realms. Also I recorded my voice for the tutorial of Free Realms in Spanish.
Naoko: I’m working on EQ2.
Nikhil: EQII, PotBS, Free Realms, DCOU, and some other ones I’m sure.

What is a typical work day for you?

Cristbel: Every day is different. I start at 9:30 am [and work] until 6:30 pm. Sometimes we have to work overtime. Every day we have reviews, check lists or test the missions.
Naoko: I come to work, check Devtrack, keep doing quest check, review the C-Translator file.
Nikhil: If there are no assigned tasks, I start the day off with bug regressions.
If tasks are assigned, I do a lot of testing, but also a lot of translations and proof-readings for game content, promotional content, Platform and Marketing.

What would you say is your favorite aspect of your job?

Cristbel: I like when we switch the games, I mean working one day on Pirates and the other day on Free Realms.
Naoko: I like this job because obviously I can play games all day long. But mostly, I’m happy for helping Japanese people directly by sweeping language type bugs. I especially like when I put some dialects in Japanese when the character has an accent as English. It’s fun.
Nikhil: I am a wordsmith, so I love playing with phrases, syntax and just writing/translating in general to convey the exact meaning of dialogue in the target language, which in my case is French.

How many languages do you speak?

Cristbel: Two languages: Spanish and English
Naoko: I speak just two, English and Japanese.
Nikhil: I speak four languages. I understand another three.

What are some of the challenges that you encounter in your job?

Cristbel: The big challenge for me was to record my voice for the game in a professional studio in SCE. I had no experience but everything was perfect.
Naoko: I was not originally a heavy game player, so when I have game content issues, it’s sometimes difficult for myself to solve problems. And sometimes I hurt my hands by clicking keyboard like crazy…
Nikhil: Probably the deadlines and what they entail.

Enough with work questions. Let’s get personal! What hobbies do you have outside work?

Cristbel: I love to go to the beach, surfing, water sports, snowboarding, traveling and going out with my friends for dinner. I love enjoying the beautiful days of San Diego.
Naoko: My hobbies… I swim every morning, I sing, play the bass guitar, play tennis, basketball, I have run for the Rock’n’Roll marathon, I don’t drink too much but I like partying, etc., etc. Oh I’m obsessed with Japanese comics. Not the typical Japanese contemporary animation stuff, which I don’t really like, but comics that have such a variety.
Nikhil: Currently, I’m trying to take as much advantage of what San Diego has to offer: Karate, surfing, photography, playing guitar and Djembe, being in the sun or with friends.

Many thanks and keep up the good work!!
Susan “Soffrina” Rummani
International Community Relations-France

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