Inside NCSoft's Game Publishing Process
Women are involved in every level in the gaming industry. I want to talk to women who are behind the scenes of all of the work involved in getting games produced, to help their stories become more visible.
The first thing that I had to do for this particular interview was to find out what exactly it is that Publish Coordinators do! I learned that the job is very important for games that I like to play, such as Guild Wars, and another new NCSoft title, Auto Assault.
Publish Coordinators are very similar to Live Producers, though their title is mysterious, and no one quite understands what it means until you hear the various duties they perform. In a nutshell, she's the liaison between the server admin group at NCsoft and the NetDevil programmers, coordinating the push of new builds to the servers, overseeing the technical aspects of beta tests, and so on. Her background is in programming, and she had aspirations of going into game design. Thank goodness women like Becky are there to mind the servers!
Geek Woman: Tell us how you got started gaming?
BECKY: "You are in an open field west of a big white house with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here."
I started gaming when my dad brought home a computer from work and installed Zork. I started playing with him, and was immediately sucked into this bizarre world of adventure, bad jokes, and Grues. After that I progressed through every console known to man, spent way too much time in arcades, and then graduated into massively multiplayer games and first person shooters. Needless to say, gaming has been an integral part of my life. It even helped me meet my husband (our first date involved me schooling him and his dorm-mates at Counter Strike ).
Geek Woman: What are your favourite games?
BECKY: I have often said I have ADD when it comes to gaming, so I play a wide variety of games. Some of my favourites include Ms. Pac Man, Zork, the Final Fantasy series, Counter Strike, God of War, the Legend of Zelda series, Fallout, and Psychonauts.
Geek Woman: What did you do before you came here?
BECKY: Before coming to NCsoft, I was a designer at Origin Systems on Ultima X: Odyssey. After that, I moved over to NCsoft to join the QA team, before landing where I am now.
Geek Woman: What projects are you working on now?
BECKY: I'm solely dedicated to Auto Assault. With a project this awesome you have to jump on the hood and hold on with both hands, otherwise you'll be left in the dust.
Geek Woman: What does a Publish Coordinator do?
BECKY: Mainly I have to remember that not feeding the server hamsters = bad. All joking aside, my job is to make sure all our ducks are in a row, so that the patches or builds get out to the public with as few hitches as possible. Should anything arise, it's my job to coordinate between all the departments for a solution, so that everyone enjoys Auto Assault as much as possible. The best part about this is that I get to do something new every day, and have the opportunity to work with and learn from every member of this team.
