BioWare Blog: Diary of the New Guy, Part Two

BioWare's Jay Watamaniuk stopped by the company's blog again to wrap up his thoughts on the move he made from community manager to Mass Effect 2 writer.
I have spent my first week chiefly doing four things:

1. Trying to get a handle on all the new software on my computer that involved filing bugs, document security and game engine-related things used by developers. This also included the game itself which is more interesting by far then the the other stuff

2. Giving feedback on my first playthrough of Mass Effect 2. Things like loading screen hints, journal entries and general gameplay. This feedback is valuable because it is impossible to reproduce initial impressions from people that been working on the game for years

3. Wrangling something called '˜string reference numbers' which didn't involve colored yarn but are codes that are associated with every piece of text in the game. There are many, they hide and come from nearly all disciplines working on the game

4. Working on the wording of the achievement list