GAMING GURU

It's Saturday afternoon and senior Brent Coyle is hard at work at Electronics Boutique in College Mall. Well, if you consider playing video games "work."\nCoyle is the Electronic Arts campus representative for IU, and he's at EB getting people to try "NFL Street," the latest from EA Sports BIG Brand for Sony PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube and Microsoft Xbox.\n"We love these in-store demos," says EB Assistant Manager A.J. Heston. "It drums up business for EA and EB as a whole. It's not like most games where you just get a press release telling people what the game is like. They can actually come in and try it out before it's in stores. It really gets them excited."\nBut it's just another day at the job for Coyle.\n"What if someone sent you a game before it comes out?" he asks. "That's just awesome to be able to try something out before anyone else. They sent me this earlier in the week and me and my buddy have just been playing it non-stop."\nCoyle says it wasn't too difficult to land a job with the world's largest video game publisher in 2001.\n"One day my roommate came running into the room and told me that this guy on the floor above us was the EA rep but that he's graduating and needs someone to replace him," he says. "I e-mailed him and told him what I do and he sent it back and said I was hired. Thirty people applied for the job. There were even sign-up sheets at the business school, but he hired me right away."\nCoyle is one of many reps working on the biggest campuses across the company.\n"The program began as a response to our most devoted consumers -- primarily sports fans who were also into gaming," EA spokesman Trey Geiger says. "This group of people began conducting tournaments featuring several of our games, most commonly 'Madden NFL.' We started the program to support this core group of consumers -- hiring them, and equipping them to carry out their passion."\nThe program has been particularly successful in Bloomington.\n"Thanks in large part to the efforts of Brent and the reps preceding him, the program has been received very well at IU," Geiger says. "Indiana is a school where sports and the competitive spirit rule, making the program a natural fit."\nCoyle says if it weren't for his job, he would most likely not still be attending IU.\n"Before this I was an exercise science major and I was probably going to transfer to Old Dominion in Virginia," he says. "Then I took a sports marketing class and took this job and it all rolled together. I've been rolling ever since."\nIronically, Coyle says he was just about ready to give up video gaming before landing the job.\n"Right before I got the job I was moving away from it because I had to keep my grades up," he says. "But then you get all these games and you get addicted again."\nIt isn't all fun and games though. There's a lot of hard work involved in being a campus rep for the makers of the Madden football games. Coyle holds events around campus sponsoring the hottest games almost weekly. He estimates each event takes up about five hours of time that could be used studying.\n"I definitely do more EA stuff than school work," he says.\nThat's not even counting the time it takes to make fliers and spread them around campus or the giveaways Coyle organizes with Indianapolis TV. Plus, if a celebrity visits campus he has to be right there "putting stuff in their hands."\n"It's just constant little stuff," Coyle says."And if you don't do it, you get fired."\nCoyle extended his campus rep job into an internship with EA's Redwood, Calif. development studio last summer where he worked on the recently released James Bond game, "Everything or Nothing," for the three major gaming platforms.\n"I had so much input in that game, it's like my baby," Coyle says. "I kept telling them what needed to be done to make it better. I was kind of disappointed when it got delayed last fall, but I think it's going to be a much better game when it comes out now."\nCoyle says he hopes to land a job with EA when he graduates next year.\n"Everyone there works hard. It's just pure motivation," he says. "I would come in at 9 a.m. and I wouldn't leave until three or four in the morning. I'll do whatever I can for the company."\nHowever, there's more to a job with a video game publisher than just playing games all day. \n"You have to know the industry," Coyle says. "There's a lot of little day-to-day things like getting assets together and readying PR for magazines."\nCoyle says he's not afraid of voicing his opinion about EA's releases, even if they are paying the bills.\n"When they released 'Simpsons Skateboarding' in 2002 I just went nuts," he says. "It just wasn't a very good game, but if a game isn't good I'm probably the most verbal rep about it. I've gotten shot down a couple times for that."\nBack at EB there's no one complaining about "NFL Street," a follow up to EA's well-received "NBA Street" series, as a few teenagers gather around to play the PS2 version.\n"This game is awesome," says 13-year-old Jake Mulinix. "It's kind of like 'NBA Street,' but different. It's a little like 'Blitz' (an older arcade football game in the same vein), but it's more realistic, like it could actually happen."\nCoyle just stands back and smiles as the teens take the controls.