I got my foot in the door at Epic Games as an Event Technician!

I first started back in August of 2018 just as my entire team was headed to PAX West and SIGGRAPH. I helped them load up a few pallets worth of equipment then was left completely alone for the first few weeks of my employment there. It was a bit of a trial by fire where I hadn’t really gotten any sort of training or anything but I was more than ready to find things to do on my own, like inventory, repairing damaged computers and organizing the massive collection of equipment we had in storage.

Eventually I was sent to an event as the lone tech person and that was quite a whirlwind of a show. Epic hosted a “Dev Day” event in LA and I was flown out from Raleigh, NC the day prior to setup. It wasn’t much equipment so I wasn’t too nervous to be alone. After that event came dozens more and while our live events are on hiatus because of the pandemic I’ve now been to at least 50 events over the past 2 years that I’ve worked at Epic.

Some of my favorite events that I’ve been apart of have been Fortnite tournaments. Every so often we hold a Pro Am competition where Epic invites 50 professional players to come play against 50 celebrities. As you can imagine, it’s a lot of work to get 100 PC’s running Fortnite on a gigantic custom built stage and to have everything go off without a hitch but getting to be on stage with everyone and seeing the crowd go crazy makes it well worth it.

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We also do a lot of Unreal Engine events where we usually have presenters, classrooms and networking areas. These are also some of the best events, for the past couple of years we’ve had them in London and getting to travel and see the city has been an amazing experience. Of course we aren’t there to sight-see and setting up all the equipment and making sure it stays running is our main task but we get a night out at least once each time we go.

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What I’ve enjoyed the most about working on the Events team has been getting to see almost every part of Epic. Our team interacts with almost every other team at Epic, from the devs to finance, legal, marketing and production. It’s given me a decent understanding of how these teams work and how we can best line the Events team up to assist them/make their jobs easier. I’ve also loved having the freedom to improve processes and automate things. My boss not only allows us to experiment with the tools and systems that we have available but he actively encourages us to look for better ways to do things.

While I’m not in a hurry to leave the Events team I do eventually want to move into a more development focused role within Epic. With my background in Game Design and my foot in the door now I hope that some day I’ll be able to achieve that goal.