For a short while I was General Manager of a new group that was being established called Fission; the idea being that the group would serve EA SPORTS and other divisions within EA in building special versions of hit games for handheld and more casual play devices. 3 super-talented people had been hired prior to my arrival to kickstart the Fission team - Daryl Holt, Peter Arisman and Paul Kashuk - all in the art field, no engineering headcount which was surprising to me. We became known as the Fab Four, each one of us a Beatle!
The surprises continued; about 4 weeks after my start date my boss, studio GM Steve Chiang informed me that EA had decided not to proceed with Fission after all. I was to be an Executive Producer (EP) on multiple projects until it was decided what next to do with me, and my team would work with me on whatever I worked on. So it transpired that "JDGroup" (me, Daryl, Paul, Peter plus around 100 other headcount that got re-assigned to me) got to work on a mish-mash of projects - versions of mainline franchises that were to be built by 3rd party developers; internal skus for new platforms such as Sony PSP; the NASCAR franchise as it's EP (Chris Gray) was moving to head up the infamous "Superman Returns" project, and the Tiger Woods franchise that I was asked to move from its beloved home at company HQ in Redwood Shores, CA, to become a Tiburon fixture (a process that was politically very unpopular not least in Redwood Shores).