Well, all good things must come to an end and time flies, on October 19th, the one year anniversary of the release of EA MMA, the final EA MMA Live Broadcast will be taking place. I know, I know. Please try not to cry, it will be OK (maybe). For one more night we will be living the digital MMA dream, witnessing the culmination of an epic 64 man tournament full of the absolute best EA MMA players from all over the world. We wanted to jump behind the scenes and give credit where credit was due, so we talked to Preston Dollinger, the handsome and hardworking producer of the Live Broadcasts to get his emotional recollection of the last year.
I started out as a QA Test Lead on EA MMA where I was the very first tester on the project. After working closely with the dev team, I was given the opportunity to work on some design items for the game. My main responsibilities were creating the training games in career, as well as Fighter Authenticity, specifically I assigned all of the walk out music, Idles/Stances and Special moves for the fighters. I also had a large hand in the testing aspect of Live Broadcast while the game was still internal by creating the “Tiburon Fight League”. This work lead to my involvement with the Live Broadcast feature post ship. I started off by helping out in the chat room as an EA “viewer”, and persistence paid off as Travis the online Producer at the time needed an extra hand in the booth. I then ran the chat room for a good 6 months. Travis left EA which opened up the door for me to become the “Producer” for the Live Broadcast shows.
It’s been an amazing experience! We’ve had a lot of fun and really have loved interacting with the community. Whether it was League-a-palooza, The MiddleEasy Grand Prix, Live Chat Bonus fights, or the more structured cards… I’ve always just enjoyed being a part of the process. Everyone here at EA Tiburon is super impressed with our community, mostly just the passion everyone brings to the table. We’ve had words and battles in the forums, as well as the cage, people are definitely in to the show. We even had some internal Beef between myself and Fritz (side note, all for show, of course 😉 , with D**kerman playing devil’s advocate. We’ve had awesome special guests on the mic including Josh Barnett, Stephen Quadross and Frank Trigg. I can’t say there is anything that we didn’t try at least once to provide an entertaining experience for the audience. All of us have bleed for the broadcast (there is a LOT of work that goes in to the show). My favorite part was the Christmas episodes when I was Santa Preston. Nothing like whirlwind headbanging with a Santa hat.
In the days leading up to the final broadcast, we will be taking a look at the final four competitors in this tournament to crown the best EA MMA player. If you show up to Sunday Night Fights tonight at 10/9c there may be a spot left in the final Live Broadcast for you, digital grappler.
