Thanks for taking the time, John. Please provide a brief summary of your development work for those who don't know your contributions to the industry.

I started making games back in High School and after earning a Communications degree from Pepperdine University in 1983 I taught myself how to program on a Timex Sinclair 1000. A few months later I graduated to a Commodore 64 where I learned machine language programming and that helped me get a job at a Santa Barbara game company (in late ’83) called “Gamestar”. I quickly realized that while I was very creative, there are a lot of REALLY smart programmers out there, so I moved into a Designer/Producer role and that’s what I’ve done ever since.

Between Gamestar and my current job at Big Fish Games I’ve worked at Cinemaware, Dynamix, New World Computing, and several other companies. All told I’ve designed and/or produced well over 50 different retail titles, including five that are listed in Computer Gaming World’s “The Top 150 Computer Games of All Time”. (“Betrayal at Krondor”, “Defender of the Crown”, “Rocket Ranger”, “TV Sports: Football”, and “The Three Stooges”.)

I designed and programmed a shareware game about ten years ago and quickly fell in love with that aspect of the business. Much of my subsequent spare time was spent working on casual games, while I focused on retail development as my day job. About two and a half years ago Pat Wylie hired me to design and produce games at Big Fish and, despite some initial trepidation, I accepted the offer. It was the best career move I ever made. I absolutely LOVE making casual games at Big Fish!

Every developer starts off with a small project that gives them their big break. What was the project that you created that gave you your first big break? Was that project ever published or was it just a case where a company saw potential in your development ideas?

I approached Gamestar with a kind of graphics editor that I was working on. At first we talked about them publishing this tool, but they eventually decided to use it in-house and they hired me on as a junior programmer.

I think I did some pretty good work at Gamestar, but I left the company after they got bought by Activision. Bob Jacob and his wife Phyllis had just formed a new company called Cinemaware and I approached them with a new game concept I had developed. (It was a “Seven Cities of Gold” style game, only it was set in the Old West.) Bob thought the idea of doing a Western was really cool and he hired me. So I became the very first employee at Cinemaware.

Cinemaware games provided something different over previous game offerings. They were engrossing, yet easy to pick up and play. Was this a goal of the company from the start or was it a case of the early games working so well that future designs followed that successful methodology?

Those were absolutely some of our early design goals. As you can tell from the name of the company, our main concern was to deliver a cinematic experience; so we focused on providing great visuals, an interesting theme and story, engaging gameplay, and a simple intuitive interface. We wanted to hook players early so our games had to be easy to pick up and play.

You have been a developer for a larger development house along with a smaller independent developer at various stages in your career. Do you have any preference for one over the other? Does a smaller development shop allow for more creative freedom or is there something to be said for the development options with a larger budget?

Interesting question. The early days of retail game development were awesome, but big budget titles today are a completely different story. Because these games cost millions of dollars to develop and promote, publishers are incredibly risk averse. They simply won’t take chances on anything, which is why you see so many derivative games on the shelves.

Even interesting features within derivative games can get shot down if a single person along the approval chain makes a scrunchy face at it. And it’s a big chain: designer > producer > executive team > producer at the publisher > publisher technical guy > publisher marketing team > publisher VPs> publisher CEO. Any of these folks can kill a project, and of course that happens all the time.

I’ve probably wasted eight years of my life working on games that will never see the light of day. And don’t even get me started on the retail industry’s focus on licensed titles! (But suffice it to say, I almost had to work on a Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen game a few years ago. (shudder)

The thing I love about my current job is that I have almost total creative freedom. I’ve released a sports-themed solitaire game, a multiplayer casino title, a pirate game, a title based on the Wizard of Oz, a funny game with a mechanical fortune teller, a puzzle game with a cool robot, and more.

Is there any game that you've created that looked great on the drawing board, but the final product just didn't meet your initial expectations? Was their any specific phase of development where a change could have improved the end product?

Tough question. To be honest, I’m usually not that happy after I’ve released a game. There are always things I wanted to do but couldn’t because of time or budget constraints. I was VERY concerned about “Betrayal at Krondor” due to some of the design decisions I made, but that one went on to win a number of Game of the Year awards so I was worried for nothing.

I worked on a Muppet game with Jim Henson Productions that didn’t turn out as well as I hoped. Frankly, my meta game design was flawed, and because that project was managed like a business application rather than a game (the company was run by a bunch of ex-Microsoft folks), there was little to no time in the schedule to rework it. Iteration is absolutely essential for game development, which is why these things are so hard to schedule. So I’d like to have a “do over” on that one.

The least successful casual game I’ve worked on so far was an online Word Search game called “Madame Libra”. I’m actually pretty proud of the work we put into that one, so the fact that it hasn’t done well pains me. My goal was to create a Word Search game that would appeal to everyone, but the Art Director felt that we should target word search fans. We sort of compromised and I think that caused us to miss both groups. The game was too hard for mainstream players, and too easy for word search enthusiasts.