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
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.
