Advanced Study Digital Game students will visit 2K’s Quality Assurance (QA) studio in Vegas on Jan. 22.

“This is a first for Southwest Tech,” Digital Game teacher Ronald Barranco said. “I reached out to this company and we’ve had a great dialogue with them. We’re bringing them on as a partner, and our first activity is to bring our advanced study seniors to visit their facility here in Vegas.”

2K Vegas will provide a first-hand learning experience for various types of work in the industry, including the guidance of professionals in different fields.

“I feel like it would be like a really cool learning opportunity,” senior Rayan Awad said. “And also I heard that it could have job opportunities as well, and I’m really excited for that, because working on a big game would be really cool.”

Students are excited for the potential job opportunities offered by 2K Vegas, as well as witnessing the development process that helped create over 300 games.

“I heard of them years ago when I started to search for careers in game design,” senior Derek Ortiz-Mondragon said. “They are a small game studio responsible for really big games like Bioshock, as well as all of the FIFA games, the WWE games and Borderlands, and I have always wanted to visit them at least once in my life.”

As a QA studio, 2K features highly developed testing facilities that specialize in ensuring that the newest games are compatible with any console.

“I’m looking forward to seeing their QA testing lab,” Barranco said. “This particular location specializes in QA testing for 2K Vegas’ games, and I’m really excited about going into the actual testing lab and seeing my students try out some of these games, looking for bugs.”

Before entering the studio, all attending students must submit a signed Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA).

“I’m not really offended or unsure about the NDA,” said Ortiz-Mondragon. “It’s common sense that when game studios allow people to come in and visit, they kind of have to keep what they see a secret, because many, many lives have been ruined from a bunch of hackers and from people breaking NDAs. I believe that NDAs are needed in our current game development. It just helps to ensure that a trust is built upon, at least in paper, so that a student or whoever doesn’t go out and talk about any games that might be different than the actual game by like the end of game development.”