Tiburon | The VidZone Network Blog

February 9, 2010

Don’t Forget Where You Started

From VidZone to EA Sports MMA

The VidZone Network logos over the years

It’s been something like half a year since I wrote in this blog. That’s a shame since I’ve always enjoyed writing. But I also got into this Twitter thing that let’s me vent slowly in a stream of conscious manner. It’s sort of like how I treated my LiveJournal back in high school.

I can account my absence to my great fortune in returning back to the game-making biz. I was called back to EA Tiburon last July to write for the upcoming MMA project; I can’t get much more detailed than that. This opportunity was given to me from a recommendation by my friend (actually my project lead) from my gaming grad school, FIEA.

An aside: Let me make something very clear to you aspiring game makers. You know how they say everyone in Hollywood’s no more than six degrees from Kevin Bacon? In the games industry, it’s more like two steps from any person. The best thing you can do is to not make enemies. Don’t burn any bridges. I’m not saying you necessarily have to make friends (though that’d be tremendously helpful), just don’t piss anyone off. Yes, like high school, it’s better to be anonymous than to be disliked.

I’ve written (or at least copied press releases) about video games on a website or blog for well over 10 years. I love games, and I love sharing games. Even if I may sometimes forget about writing on this blog, I’ll shout my voice out somewhere on this big informational network of interconnected tubes. You don’t have to listen to me, but you’ll always be able to find me out there.

Where’ve I been since I last checked in? Well first, let me remind you that I graduated from graduate school in December of 2008. During that last semester I interned as a feature owner at a mega-publisher. Then I spent a short while at a small independent developer.

The following unemployment afforded me reason to go to GDC. Then the student project I worked on was showcased at the return of the glory days of E3. Right after that the phone calls came. Not necessarily from contacts I made at the show, but let me tell you, people appreciate hand-written thank you cards.

I did a quick R&D contract back at the indie developer for a new platform, and once again I was torn with the decision of pursuing a promising follow-up interview in Austin (this time with SOE) or accepting a shorter term contract at EA.

Ultimately I decided on EA because: 1.) I have so many friends in Orlando vs. almost no one in Austin. 2.) The EA position was already offered and waiting for me. 3.) Moving (especially long distances) is a bitch.

My first few calls with SOE in Austin went spectacularly, but unfortunately the timing was just wrong and the planets didn’t align that way. As much as I launch tirades about the whole Sony umbrella of companies (particularly the consumer electronics & Playstation hardware sides), I have tremendous respect and admiration for the actual game software that gets released and the trust and support that must have been given to get them to that level.

Anyway, my time on the MMA team has flown by so quickly. So much has been accomplished, and yet there is so much left to do. I was given a new contract to keep me on a bit longer, I was given more design & production responsibilities, and I even took a couple of trips to Miami last week.

Thanks to a tremendous hookup by our partners at Strikeforce, a large number of our team were able to enjoy fourth row floor seats at the recent Strikeforce: Miami fight. Then I was also entrusted to make an emergency power supply delivery to Madden Bowl, saving the day and allowing our fighters to get some hands-on time with their in-game characters.

Speaking of fighters, I don’t think any other team in gaming is even close to as lucky as we are in being able to regularly talk with and interact with our talent. And not on voice or video conference. In the same room. Over food with plenty of conversation.

Let me recap this: I was invited back to work for two different companies, large and small. That’s four gigs. I went to GDC. I went to E3. I sat cage side at a major televised MMA event. I went to Madden Bowl. All of this in less than two years out of school!

Needless to say, I count myself unbelievably fortunate. I can only hope that this fast-paced life really is just the start.

Carl @ 12:33 am
Filed under: Personal — Tags: , , , —

April 16, 2009

BOOM! There goes the namesake.

Big news today that John Madden’s retiring from broadcasting.

My friend in EA Tiburon called me today to ask how the job hunt is going, and I asked him about the office reaction with the announcement, if they knew the big news in advance.  He’s not on the Madden team, so he told me he only heard about it on SportsCenter.

Will this shake things up for EA’s biggest US franchise?  Maybe yes, maybe no.  It’s complicated, but either way, a change won’t be seen for years.  John Madden and EA renewed an unspecified multi-year contract most recently in 2005.  Unspecified in length, unspecified in compensation.  That said, he takes in at least eight figures.  Yeah, that still a pretty wide-open range of numbers.

Everything else written from here on is hearsay and cannot be attributed to any individual employee or representative of the opinion of the company as a whole.

There are many within the organization who want to oust Madden from the game series.  He’s expensive, and many football fans see him as a joke who doesn’t contribute anything worthwhile.

However, John Madden is the brand.  The football game series is one of the most mainstream and most recognizable in not just the US but the world over, and I can assure you there is a sizable enough fan base who, despite the in your face branding, is ignorant that EA has anything to do with the game and only know the “Madden” brand.  It would be a tremendous risk to remove his name from the franchise and thus confuse millions of potential buyers who may not understand that an “EA NFL Football 20XX” game is a direct continuation of the series they’ve always known and loved.

But!  EA holds the exclusive rights to the NFL until 2012.  If, at any point between now and then, they care to experiment with rebranding, there would still only be one choice for an officially licensed football game on the market, Madden name or no.

Carl @ 10:59 pm
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September 21, 2008

Life in Video Games, pt. 2

I was at school a few nights ago to help with the newest build of our project, and one of my classmates asked if I still blogged. I told him that the more structured my life gets, the more boring I become. Ultimately, what I generally wind up writing about is my shopping adventures. But let’s give this a shot, eh?

For example, I had my birthday in the middle of the week. I can’t honestly keep track of how old I am. When I went to the dentist last month, they asked me as small talk. I couldn’t remember. I told them I’m old enough that keeping track doesn’t matter. I’ve said that every year after 21 is just you getting older. Where’s the next milestone? 65-ish? For Senior Citizen status? You don’t really want to look forward to that, do you? At the suggestion of my fellow classmate/intern, I went out to eat. He, Janel, Mark, and I had a minor outing to Applebee’s and then back home for a bit of Rock Band. Just another night for any young person. Perhaps an underlying feeling of lonliness contributes to that malaise.

Speaking of time passing, the internship is already a quarter of the way through. Like that, in a flash. It was really slow to get going because my manager’s been crazy busy, so we haven’t had too much opportunity to talk about my ideas. This week, we really got crackin’, though, and we’re talking with the engineers Monday. The other FIEA interns sound a lot more productive, but they’ve either got a specific set of actions or a very free. The team I’m on has to not only deal with our Canada arm but our actual customers are the individual game teams. With their staggered schedules and different needs, it becomes a challenge to determine what would be usable across the the lineup as well as convincing them to add any crazy new features to their already tight production schedules.

So, back to school. I went in that night to help with the installer script, but any potential productivity from me was halted in its tracks. It turns out my account for the source control server was disabled to make way for the new set of students. So I couldn’t download any updates. I eventually wound up consulting one of my teammates through the process, but prior to that, I just wandered around and talked to some people. I talked with some friends from back home on the phone, I talked to the aforementioned classmate, and I talked with some of the new batch of students. Unlike in our cohort, the artists seem like they goof off more than anybody. But to put this into context, this was around 10 or 11 o’clock at night, and nothing was due the next day. So kudos to them for being around so late for me to witness all the Justice-soundtracked Nerf blasting. Our artists, especially during the production semester, preferred to avoid the clamor and work from home, leaving right after class.

After about a month and a half, the writer from the Orlando Sentinel wrote up about the presentations we gave at the end of Production. He seemed very pleased, especially with our project: Zephyr: Tides of War. [ Click here ] to read his impressions and a link to download the game. I’d welcome any comments.

Carl @ 2:13 am
Filed under: Personal — Tags: , , —