sticker earned!

i ship
AAA games.

I'm Chris, a Senior QV Tester at EA Tiburon, credited on Madden NFL 26 (hello, Switch 2 certification) and embedded in an unannounced title. My work lives where quality, production, and design overlap: I'm the QV point of contact for my pod, I run playtests for a full cross-discipline dev team, and I pin down how features should feel before a line of code exists.

↓ three disciplines. one job: ship it.
what i do shipped work
Chris La Croix
hi, i'm chris ✌
Madden NFL 26 · credited Unannounced AAA · QV point of contact Switch 2 · certified & shipped
the shipped shelf

games i've helped ship

Real titles, real credits, real cross-team coordination with development and production.

madden nfl 26Electronic Arts · Shipped
Madden NFL 26 key art featuring cover athlete Saquon Barkley © EA · Official key art
Senior QV TesterPresentations & Visuals

Owned quality across the broadcast cameras, cinematics, and visual polish that define how Madden looks and feels to millions of players.

  • Drove the visual quality bar on a fan-scrutinized feature area
  • Platform validation and first-party cert for the Switch 2 launch
  • Engine-level investigation and fixes, hand in hand with dev
  • Annualized AAA release cadence with hard ship dates
unannounced titleElectronic Arts · In Development
Senior QV TesterPod QV Point of Contact

QV point of contact for my pod: other testers route questions to me, I own the QV side of our syncs, and I report pod quality status directly to the Development Director.

  • Own coverage strategy and QV reporting for the pod's feature areas
  • Embedded with the dev team from early development, not post-hoc
  • Run playtest events in partnership with the lead producer
pick your class

three disciplines, one job: ship it

AAA development doesn't respect job titles. My work lives where quality, production, and design overlap.

quality
  • Coverage strategy, test plans, and defect triage across my pod's feature areas
  • Engine and build access across Frostbite for investigation and minor fixes
  • First-party certification for the Switch 2 launch of Madden NFL 26
  • AI-assisted tooling, built in VS Code with GitHub Copilot, that other QA teams now use for test design briefs
deep dive: the QV portfolio →
production
  • Playtest sessions for a large cross-discipline dev team, owned end-to-end
  • Single point of contact for my pod's quality status, reported up to the Development Director
  • Risk escalation that keeps sprints and UXR studies honest
  • Selected to host recurring play sessions with senior leadership
case study: playtest production →
design
  • Expected behavior defined with developers before a feature is built
  • Shipped work reviewed against design intent, sprint after sprint
  • A photographer's eye for polish, applied to Presentations & Visuals
  • On the workbench: an Unreal 5 greybox study with design breakdown
design portfolio: cooking ↗
why it all connects

qa is where every discipline's work collides. my job is seeing the whole board, and helping teams ship the game they meant to make.

Owning quality for a pod means knowing what engineering can build, what design intends, what production can afford, and what players actually feel. That vantage point is why my work keeps crossing lines: producers trust me to run their playtests, developers trust me inside the engine, and designers trust me to say when intent and implementation disagree.

The foundation is my background in IT, gaming, and photography: a technical base, a player's instinct, and a trained eye for how things should look and feel. process over heroics. every time.

proof i don't just write about it

behind the scenes

Chris La Croix crouching in front of four colleagues in motion capture suits on a mocap stage
mocap reference session. still counts.
The EA Tiburon team gathered in front of Madden NFL 26 screens on launch day
the day madden 26 dropped. ship days hit different.
the paper trail

experience at a glance

current

senior qv tester & qv pod lead

Electronic Arts, EA Tiburon · Orlando, FL
March 2025 – Present
  • Pod SME and QV lead for a cross-discipline pod of engineers, designers, artists, and producers: other testers route questions to me, and I own the QV side of every sync.
  • Define the pod's quality scope through the test strategy itself: plans, cases, and stories with entry and exit criteria, built to hold up across the feature lifecycle.
  • Primary line between pod and leadership, reporting quality status directly to the Development Director and escalating risk before it touches a milestone.
  • Credited on Madden NFL 26: spearheaded platform validation and first-party certification support for the Nintendo Switch 2 launch.
  • Run studio-wide playtests in partnership with the lead producer, from build readiness to hosting the room.
  • Build AI-assisted internal tools (VS Code + GitHub Copilot) that speed up my QV team's work, part of a leadership-backed push for practical AI adoption.
the role the rest of this site is about ↑

imt technical technician

Full Sail University · Winter Park, FL
2024 – 2025

First point of contact for faculty and staff, triaging and routing technical requests across help desk, networking, and cybersecurity teams in a multi-campus environment.

consultation & advanced repair agent

Geek Squad, Best Buy · Orlando, FL
2021 – 2025

Diagnosed and resolved hardware and software issues across macOS and Windows in a high-volume environment, isolating root cause across systems and configurations.

b.s. entertainment business (in progress)

Full Sail University · Winter Park, FL
Education

quality

Test plansCoverage strategyDefect triageCertificationRelease readiness

production

Milestone readinessSprint planningStakeholder reportingAgile / Scrum

engines & tools

FrostbiteUnreal EngineSwitch · PS · Xbox SDKsMayaSubstance PainterJIRA & ConfluencePower BI

languages

EnglishFrench CreoleFrench

want the whole thing on one page?

preview / download
the part where you email me

let's ship something together

Open to opportunities across quality, production, and design in the games industry. If you're building a team that ships, let's talk.

email me linkedin

want the specialist view? qv.chrislacroix.dev goes deep on quality verification