Mike Verdu

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Michael "Mike" Verdu (born December 28, 1964 in Washington ) is an American manager, producer and author of computer games .

Life

Verdu was born on December 28, 1964. His father worked for a trade union, his mother was a dance teacher. Michael studied at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, 600 km from Washington . He did not finish his studies because the company Advanced Technology, which provided IT services for the US Department of Defense, offered him a lucrative position as a programmer. In 1985 he left Advanced Technology and founded at the age of 20 years, the software company produced Paragon system software for the Ministry of Defense. Paragon's programs were used for the maintenance of Ohio and Los Angeles class submarines . The company also helped other companies with their programming capacities, such as the game software start-up Challenge Inc. by the author Bob Bates , who developed text adventures for the industry leader Infocom . In September 1987, Verdu sold Paragon Systems, which meanwhile had 25 employees, to the IT service provider American Systems Corporation, where he worked for the next three years as division manager for software development.

After the defense budget sank at the end of the Cold War , Verdu turned his passion for computer games into a profession and founded the developer studio Legend Entertainment in 1989, together with Bob Bates, who was meanwhile affected by the closure of Infocom , which produced text adventures and published them as a publisher . Verdu was CEO of the company and remained so until it was sold to GT Interactive in November 1998. Legend Entertainment was integrated into the production processes of GT Interactive (or from 1999 of the new owner Infogrames ) after the takeover as a studio , and Verdu and Bates acted as Head of the studio that focused on the production of first-person shooters .

From July 2002 to May 2009, Verdu worked for EA Los Angeles , initially as a producer, from 2005 as division manager for real-time strategy games , from 2007 as managing director. In seven years at EA Los Angeles he was responsible for titles such as Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars , The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth 2 and Command & Conquer: Generals . From June 2009 to August 2012 Verdu was Chief Creative Officer at the US browser game provider Zynga . At the time, Zynga was valued at just under $ 9 billion. In September 2012 he left Zynga to start the independent development studio TapZen. The start-up capital came from his former employer, and the Chinese tech company Tencent later joined . TapZen was bought by the browser and mobile game producer Kabam in January 2015 , and Verdu moved to the Canadians as chief creative officer. After Kabam was bought by the South Korean game producer Netmarble in December 2016 , Verdu switched back to Electronic Arts , this time as managing director of EA Mobile . Since May 2019 he has been the managing director for augmented and virtual reality at Facebook .

Verdu is married and lives in California.

plant

Verdu's gaming focus has always been on being a manager and producer. In the ten years as managing director of Legend Entertainment, however, he was also active in the creative field. Mission Critical from 1995 was the only narrative game that he wrote completely alone. He was involved in the scripts for Gateway and Gateway II: Homeworld as well as for the first person shooter Unreal II: The Awakening ; he contributed about half of that to Gateway II . He composed parts of the soundtrack for the role-playing game Superhero League of Hoboken .

The tradition at Legend Entertainment of licensing literary templates and using them as models for games goes back to Verdu. When the company faced the problem in 1991 of having too little capacity for new games with two full-time authors (Bob Bates and Steve Meretzky ), Verdu proposed the licensing model to save time in game design. As a fan of Frederik Pohl's work , he brought the Gateway trilogy into play. Bob Bates let his contacts from Infocom times play and organized the license. Verdu proposed himself as the author of the implementation. Although he had no experience in this field, Legend found a way to steer the manager's thirst for action into orderly channels: The writing of the script was divided between three inexperienced but enthusiastic new authors (Verdu, programmer Glen Dahlgren and producer and musician Michael Lindner ), which in turn were guided by Bates. The system worked well, Gateway was very well received by the press. Other conventional writers whose works have been licensed by Legend for computer games include Piers Anthony ( Companions of Xanth ), Terry Brooks ( Shannara ), and Spider Robinson ( Callahan's Crosstime Saloon ).

In Mission Critical in 1995, Verdu looked at the evolution and potential of artificial intelligence. His central question was how humans deal with the awakening of an artificial intelligence as an actual new form of life, not as an anthropomorphic reflection of humans previously common in literature. Verdu viewed the current state of human evolution as a mere intermediate form in the context of a further evolution.

reception

The Byte magazine named Mission Critical Game of the Year 1995. The award "Year in Review 1995" of the US print magazine Computer Game Review garnered Mission Critical prices in the "Adventure of the Year" and "Best Graphics of the Year " a.

Ludography (selection)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b ChoicestGames.com: Where are they now? - Mike Verdu. Retrieved July 18, 2020 .
  2. ↑ LATimes.com: How I Made It: Game firm exec fuses art and technology. Retrieved July 18, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Rick Barba: Mission Critical: The Official Strategy Guide . Prima Publishing, Shreveport 1996, ISBN 0-7615-0177-0 , pp. 203 .
  4. ↑ Filfre.net: A Time of Beginnings: Legend Entertainment (or, Bob and Mike's Excellent Adventure Game Company). Retrieved July 18, 2020 .
  5. ^ Kurier.at: Zynga: Strong stock market debut expected. Retrieved July 18, 2020 .
  6. ↑ BuiltinLA.com: Zynga-backed gaming company leaves stealth mode with $ 8 million from Tencent. Retrieved July 18, 2020 .
  7. ^ VentureBeat.com: EA Mobile senior vice president Mike Verdu resigns. Retrieved July 18, 2020 .
  8. ↑ Filfre.net: The Gateway Games of Legend (Preceded by the Legend of Gateway). Retrieved July 18, 2020 .
  9. ↑ Mobygames.com: Frederik Pohl's Gateway Reviews. Retrieved July 22, 2020 .
  10. ↑ Rick Barba: Mission Critical: The Official Strategy Guide . Prima Publishing, Shreveport 1996, ISBN 0-7615-0177-0 , pp. 207 .
  11. ↑ BobBates.com: Awards & Nominations. Retrieved July 18, 2020 .
  12. ↑ Nuke.com: CGR's Year in Review ( October 18, 1996 memento in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Verdu, Mike
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Verdu, Michael (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American manager, producer and writer of computer games
DATE OF BIRTH December 28, 1964
PLACE OF BIRTH Washington , United States