Gardens

(3DS) (EA)

Another original IP that we got to Alpha but EA killed it, choosing not to release. Another mistake! :-) Originally called Bloom, we started work on this before the Nintendo 3DS was released. The game was another idea conceived by Dustin Hansen and I. It began when I was talking to the truly brilliant Rod Humble, who at the time was President of the EA Play/Sims label and who EASL found itself reporting into after yet another reshuffle. Rod was looking for an original idea to develop for the new Nintendo platform which promised virtual 3D above the screen. Of course, we hadn’t seen the device at the time and didn’t know it was never going to really work. I pitched him an idea Dustin and I had kicked around, where you would nurture a small Zen garden - kind of tamagotchi with plants, but the 3D effects would make this so much more ‘alive’. Rod liked it and we set about making the game. We pitched Unity on the idea that we would adapt their engine to 3DS if they let us and gave us support - and of course a break on the licensing fee - which they ultimately did. We had quite a few Japan culture fans on the team including programmer Ben, and pretty soon we had a character - the mythical Tanuki in various forms.

Anyway, as always I loved the game. Phil Katz became Producer, and we got it as far as Alpha and even a showcase with Nintendo - before EA killed it, deciding that the platform would be DOA. ABout two weeks prior, I recall showing the game to John Shappert (at the time EA’s COO) and John Riccitiello (at the time EA’s CEO) and the first thing they did was tap the screen of the pre-release 3DS, being so used to mobile smartphones by that time. Having to use a stylus was not intuitive. Another game I loved and am super proud of everyone that made this happen.


EA North Carolina / Atomic Fox

(iOS, Android, Windows Phone) (EA)

EA Salt Lake

The move for me to EASL wasn't as strange as it might as first seem, as my family has been living in Utah since we came to the States in 1999; I was doing a 'super-commute' during my days at Midway and Tiburon, getting back as many weekends as we could afford the airfare, family coming to visit with me on school breaks.  Like anything in life, you can do anything if you're prepared to make the effort, and our family decided that this arrangement was about quality of life; sure we might not see each other every day but when we were together, we all made time to enjoy it.  I knew the folks at EASL fairly well, and when the head of studio, Headgate founder, Vance Cook, announced he was to retire, EA asked me how I would feel about working in Utah, I joked "I'll need to check with the family - they might not like having me around all the time!"

Vance atop Everest

Vance atop Everest

It transpired that Vance's announcement had been planned for sometime, but in early 2008 it became problematic for a couple of reasons - one, he had a long planned expedition to the summit of Everest coming up, and two - the first batch of Hasbro titles at EASL were struggling to realize vision or timeline; both EA and Hasbro were frustrated as a lot of money and the future of this new relationship hung in the balance.  For me, this kind of troubleshooting is exactly the kind of challenge that I relish! During spring of 2008 I worked at both Tiburon and EASL, and began to redirect the Hasbro titles.  Thanks to a lot of hard work by the EASL team, which by now also included a few of my team from Tiburon and some patience at Hasbro, we delivered on time and the first couple of games - Littlest Pet Shop and NERF N-Strike - became holiday best sellers.  The Hasbro business changed divisions (labels) within EA a few times over the next few years, and with it direction and priorities, which was hard on EASL as we saw multiple project cancellations.  I negotiated a split for the studio, with more than half the team moving into the Sims division, while the rest of us joined the EA Mobile division, to help pioneer the company's move into freemium gaming.  I was promoted to Vice-President, and also General Manager of both EASL and North Carolina mobile studios; being hands-on is important to me so I continued to be an Executive Producer on the titles I was responsible for.  The learning about mobile freemium was incredible and fascinating, it meant a new way of designing games and thinking about the development process, not least when you have a live service to plan for, launch and manage. Great challenges which resulted in a couple of great mobile freemium games, including Monopoly Hotels and Tetris Blitz.

Tap on an image below to see studio life at EASL!

New Studio

When EA acquired Headgate, their studio was a typical office suite in a dentist building. So for a while, that’s where EA Salt Lake was. It got cramped and we got approval to design a new custom studio. We decided on downtown Salt Lake City, the building on the corner of State Street and Broadway. We even got an EA logo put up on the outside! Vance Cook managed the build-out and move as his last big project before retiring and did a great job.

The new studio was opened to much fanfare and included a ribbon-cutting from Utah’s Governor. All the senior leaders from Utah’s government were in attendance along with the families of all the EASL teams.

TMi Trivia

(iOS) (EA)

One of my favorite games to have worked on! Another game I was disappointed not to be able to bring to market at EA; TMi Trivia – the concept was not just historical trivia, but up to the minute trivia about things that were happening now; designed for mobile and taking full advantage of connectivity.  Fronted by a character that would change every day based upon whatever was topical and in the cultural zeitgeist, allowing you to be “in” with the community, it almost became an editorial live service. 

Plans to partner with news organizations, magazines, online sites, TV shows, sports networks, the idea was to build the biggest trivia game on the planet allowing you as the player to specialize with categories, even create your own, daily and weekly challenges, you become the star among your friends.  Plus personalization, making it about you and your friends by using material from your social media.  The category has gone on to become one of the most consistent on mobile and I think this could have been another biggie as the opportunities for cross-promotions with brands and advertisers were huge.  Oh-well (wipes tear from the eye). More: https://www.gamasutra.com/view/pressreleases/187312/TMI_TRIVIA_ROLLS_OUT_THE_RED_CARPET_FOR_THE_OSCARS.php

Genesis of the Idea

In about 2010, I had been playing a brilliant trivia game on my iPad called Qrank from Ricochet Games, a small indie developer in Austin, Texas. It was the first trivia game I had ever played on mobile where you were in competition with your friends on social media - essentially they had invented trivia with friends. Plus the content was beautifully curated and delivered fresh daily. It was such fun and I believed the opportunities enormous. What if you could use AI to scrape real newspapers and online outlets to create quality, curated questions? What if you could scrape your friends social media to create a truly personalized experience where no two people would ever have the exact same content? Somewhere that fans of specific types of pop culture could play together in competition or collaboratively? Oh! And what if we could dynamically translate the content for any language? Isn’t that the ultimate Trivial Pursuit game?

At the time, EA had the Hasbro relationship and I was thinking this could be the future of Trivial Pursuit. It was hard to convince either EA or Hasbro that this was a good idea, but I got a small budget and was able to start work. So I reached out to Ricochet Labs, got to know the creators Rodney Gibbs and Michael Baird, and we began to build Trivial Pursuit Online, using Qrank as the starting point. Ricochet continued to publish Qrank and it was important to both sides that we kept the two separate in as many ways as we could. Well, the project started falling behind schedule, the powers that be at EA liked the innovation but weren’t sold on trivia as a mobile category, and at the worst possible time, Ricochet called to say they were going out of business.

A Trivial Pursuit No More

Hasbro weren’t overly excited about TP Online when we lost Ricochet and EA also lost confidence in the project, and so this troubled project faced a death blow. I had been reaching out to many major media companies about partnering with us on the project and had several really interested parties, with brands on the hook including People magazine, Variety, Time and Billboard. It was the strength of these that allowed us to live another day, and EA gave me one more chance to pitch our own brand trivia game, which became TMi Trivia. I was able to convince EA that we should keep the project going using a really small internal team at EA Salt Lake. And so we did.

Maebe We Can

The small EA Salt Lake team included the wonderful Ron Jensen. I told him we needed a character to act like a game show host, the idea was that she could change every day to reflect some aspect of that day’s news — the example I always gave was Miley Cirus twerking at the MTV Music Awards, which had been a big news event recently - so our character the very next day would have been twerking! No commentary, it’s just what she would do and you, the player, would get it. Ron came up with a quirky cartoon lady that I christened Maebe (the name inspired by the character Maeby from Arrested Development) - as ‘maybe’ is the only answer you can’t give in a trivia game. Ron is a genius and had fun creating hundreds of variants for Maebe, which really gave the game heart.

Rich Reagan, brilliant Producer, came up with many new ideas and some brilliant content curation. Farrell Edwards, Technical Lead, oversaw some remarkable technical hurdles, not least EA’s own troubled online services that had to be integrated.

Gibbs Rainock (now at Hasbro) was also on the team, and he created many different UI variants for us as we tried to build the game. EA didn’t like this, they didn’t like that and time and again we ducked and weaved and kept the game alive, recreating the look at every turn.

Trivia No More

It was exciting - and also very depressing, nit just for me but also the team that worked so hard and put their passion and energies into making something special. The constant changes; we’re on - we’re off. When the game was finally axed - after it had been announced by the company - I was about done at EA. But it remains one of my favorite games and teams to have worked with.

Credits

I don’t recall everyone that was part of this team throughout its development, but this really was a fun group to work with, super productive and passionate despite so many ups and downs I miss them! So, here is who I can remember… if I missed you, please ping me and I will add you!

EA

Anthony Cummings, Engineer

Mallory Day-Schilder, Marketing

Jon Dean, GM / EP

Farrell Edwards, Tech Lead

Ron Jensen, Genius artist who created Maebe

Lisa Leyba, Ace marketing supremo

Tim May, Engineer

Matt Peterson, Art Director

Rich Reagan, Producer/Creative Director

Jeff Shieh, Long suffering legal counsel

Ortsbo (3rd Party who were working on dynamic localization tech)

Patrick Bultema

Mance Harmon

Ricochet Labs (Original developers when it was Trivial Pursuit Live)

Michael Baird

Rodney Gibbs