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Company

Midway, a veteran of the pinball and coin-op videogame businesses, was a Top 10 publisher of videogames in the early 2000s. The company boasted several development studios in North America and support operations overseas.

Position Summary

• Recruited to bring structure and direction to Midway’s troubled sports products.  Initially this involved taking over and running all sports product development activities within Midway's Chicago studio:

   

  • Established in-house development disciplines and process, including project management systems, redefining and restructuring product development organization

  • Established cross-product discipline specialists including Director of Technology and Art Director

  • Set sports PD expectations including standards for code, art, audio, design, QA, also for weekly project tracking documentation, project management systems and reports, project metrics, team structures and reporting

  • Internal team structure approx. 100 people, plus external developers. Budget responsibility $ 25m+

• My role was extended to include setting up and running the sports business unit, including sports strategy and oversight of sports marketing activities.  This entailed advertising, packaging, sports league negotiations (NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA etc) as well as financial and strategic planning

• Revenues for the sports titles during my tenure are in excess of $100m, approx. 15% contribution

Achievements

•  Improved product development efficiencies

o    Restructured Midway Sports product development; got the sports titles onto an annual track and reduced both production costs and time to market. Improved communication and morale within teams.

• Introduced ‘Development Discipline’

o    Consistent processes including project management, data driven pipelines and reusable, sharable code, applicable across all sports titles. 

o    This led to cost savings and greater efficiencies through new innovative tools and pipelines. 

• Delivered new innovative tools and pipelines including first online console products for Midway

o    Examples include Midway’s first online console titles, a commentary engine, and a Flash-like user-interface/front-end tool – these are now common across most of Midway Chicago’s internal projects

o    Negotiated a multi-title deal with GameSpy for PS2 online back-end support including custom TRCs; the code base developed is now used in all Midway PS2 online titles (including Mortal Kombat: Deception)

o    Midway Sports shipped the first game in the market to use the XBox Live Tsunami v3.0 technologies. 

o    Other in-game online initiatives included downloadable content including  weather (a tie-up with Weather.com), a real-time ticker-tape with scores and headlines (a tie-up with MLB.COM) and fantasy sports (with Sports Mogul)

• Revised line strategy for Midway Sports

o    These were challenging times at Midway: our over-the-top sports products were having an identity crisis in the face of the increasing dominance of EA Sports.  I worked with the production teams on new content and implemented new strategic and financial plans that resulted in critical acclaim for fresh innovation in the product line

• Joined Midway's Executive Strategy Team

• Proposed company-wide product development reorganization

o    I used the widely recognized Software Capability Maturity Model (CMM) to establish a benchmark for Midway’s current competency and a framework for key steps for improvement.

o    Undertook a review of all Midway PD across all of its operations, and submitted a detailed proposal to the CEO that outlined three key recommendations: the adoption of critical project stages; a common PD organization structure to provide scalability and uniformity across all studios, and a restructuring of Studio business units

• Undertook trouble-shooting roles

o    Assisted various projects and initiatives across all Midway studios, including going on-site to a developer in England - at short notice - for six weeks to oversee a complicated project start-up.  I was also part of the due diligence team for studio acquisitions

o    Instigated management training and mentoring -- part of my wide-ranging initiative to build future management talent from within and adopt best practice within Sports, these sessions were expanded to include the entire Chicago studio as well as our San Diego studio

• Shipped: 
  • “MLB SLUGFEST"
  • "NFL BLITZ 03"
  • "NHL HITZ 03"
  • "MLB SLUGFEST '04"
  • "NHL HITZ PRO"
  • "NFL BLITZ PRO"
  • "NBA BALLERS"
  • "MLB SLUGFEST:LOADED"

    PS2/online, Xbox/Xbox Live, Gamecube. Average review scores: 80%; sales 4m+ unit

(Click here to see Softography)

Reason For Leaving

Head-hunted by competitor EA SPORTS.

Back to Employment History

  I  joined the company during its painful transition period from coin-op to home console videogames.  The business was losing money and sought new ways to run product development.  I was asked to lead the Midway Sports  products because at the time they were considered in the biggest trouble.   By the beginning of 2004, Midway Sports was making a name for itself once again in a market dominated by EA SPORTS.

"NFL Blitz"

Jon at Digital Games Summit 

Jon presenting the Midway Sports range on stage at E3

"MLB Slugfest"