In a growing trend around the internet, a number of video game developers and designers are making their presences known on various community forums. EA Sports has done this for a number of years, most notably through Ian Cummings and more recently Phil Frazier. Well we have a newcomer to the arena - Adam Thompson (OMT on the OS forums).

Thompson is one of the designers of the NCAA Football series. In light of Ian’s success at both the Operation Sports and MaddenMania forums, the folks at EA Sports decided to have Thompson fill those shoes for the NCAA franchise.

http://www.operationsports.com/forum...-q-thread.html

With the release of NCAA Football 09 having been only days past, Thompson has already faced a barrage of excited fans as well as disappointed ones. His question and answer thread in OS’s NCAA Football forum alone has over 2,000 replies since its beginning back on June 3.

Most of the questions have centered on a glitch in the ability to name rosters and the game freezing or crashing upon changing names in the rosters. Of course being a designer working on graphics, it’s hard for him to respond to these questions, but he has done a good job thus far keeping up with the barrage of questions on the subject.

Thompson has even brought a sense of humor to his responses – something rarely seen when somebody is officially representing their company. Thompson’s response to one forum member’s question about whether the addition of a new team to the database, such as Western Kentucky, could have caused the glitch was one such display.

http://www.operationsports.com/forum...post2038500103

“That is my hypothesis,” said Thompson. “Western Kentucky broke the game.”

Of course he’s not making light of the game. In fact most of his responses have been quite helpful and insightful.

http://www.operationsports.com/forum...post2038499912

“Actually,” said Thompson, “we have an automation tester who writes scripts for the game to do repetitive tests like [inputting massive quantities of names into the rosters]. I asked him to write a script for [NCAA Football] 2010 that will name every player on every team so this issue will get caught next time. That's one of the things about testing video games. Every year you learn of a new test that you should have done, and from then on it is tested.”

In fact, he went so far as to address the process of patching a sports game.

http://www.operationsports.com/forum...post2038498338

“The process is just like a game cycle but compressed,” said Thompson. “We have a list of things to patch, figure out when the patch should come out (if there are very serious bugs, we make it come out sooner). Based on when we want it done, we figure out how long everything will take and cut stuff accordingly to be able to schedule it out and get done in time.”

Despite this being his first foray into the Operation Sports forums, Mr. Thompson is holding his own and not cracking under the pressure. Sure there are of course questions he won’t be able to answer, but by and large he’s made a concerted effort to answer as many questions as possible in a way that will help those in need.