Why I Make Games – Nina Nikolic
2016-03-03
EA Staff
There’s something special about making video games, and whether you love art, engineering or both you know how magical the experience can be.
We’re lucky to have lots of amazing creative people who make video games here at EA, and we wanted to find out more about why they’ve chosen to make video games.
Nina Nikolic always loved games, but never thought she could work in gaming.
“I didn't really think a career in digital entertainment was something I could do myself,” she says. “Growing up, I wanted to be an astronaut or a physicist.”
She loved playing Snake and Pong on an old Macintosh that her dad brought home from work, but it was a trip with her father to a tech conference in Sydney that opened her eyes.
“There were a bunch of really great animation and technical art presentations that I was completely engrossed in,” she says of the conference she attended when she was nine years old. That lit a spark.
“I used to be attracted to the fantasy of games,” she says. “Being transported to and living in a fantastical world was so much fun for me with MMOs like World of Warcraft and Star Wars the Old Republic.”
Nikolic is now Player Engagement Manager, responsible for content that appears on the Real Racing and other Firemonkeys studio social channels.
"I spend a lot of time coordinating social media campaigns with partners of our games,” says Nikolic. “Most of what I do now is more around analysis and strategy.“
Nikolic also runs the social channels for the game and is a race fan in real life, like many that work on the title. “My interest evolved with working on the franchise,” she says. “Over time, my knowledge of Motorsports grew as we started adding more real-world elements to the game.
Nikolic gets to travel to big races around the world, a dream for race fans. “Le Mans and NASCAR events have to be the highlights for me. The level of passion I saw for NASCAR was just unreal!”
Nikolic spent time at the Daytona 500 with some of the team, capturing footage for the Real Racing social channels. A passionate team of developers worked to capture the nuances of stock car racing, from the track details, to slip-streaming and placement of barriers and branding on the track.
Nikolic learned a ton about gaming when she was younger, developed a passion for racing along the way. And she knows that the lessons she learned when she was younger helped her get a head start.
“There's nothing like making mistakes to teach you how to persevere.”
Love Real Racing? Tell us why on Twitter @electronicarts.
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