As many of you are anxiously waiting for Rift Beta to begin let me help your anticipation anxiety by giving you some perspective of who's involved in this game. Now not all of these are solely working on Rift, but this is the resource pool that they have to pull from.
FUNDING
Primarily Time New Warner and NBC Universal. See more in my Who's Funding Rift & Trion thread.
STAFF
- Dr. Lars Buttler (former Vice President for Global Online at Electronic Arts)
Founder and the CEO of Trion World Network, Inc.
Dr. Lars Buttler is a Founder and the CEO of Trion World Network, Inc., the publisher and developer of original entertainment and games for the broadband era. Dr. Buttler helms strategy and business direction for Trion as the company sets out to define the future of entertainment. Under his leadership, Trion develops groundbreaking new capabilities and content for broadband, the greatest entertainment and mass media platform.
Prior to founding Trion, Dr. Buttler was the Vice President for Global Online at Electronic Arts, the world's largest independent developer and publisher of interactive entertainment software. Dr. Buttler led EA's strategy for online games and services and ran EA's Online Studio, home to the pioneering Ultima Online MMOG franchise.
LinkedIn Profile - Kevin Beardslee (World of Warcraft)
Senior Development Director
As one of the premiere video game developers in the industry, Kevin Beardslee has over 15 years experience in game design, with over a decade spent crafting popular and innovative Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMO). Most notably, Kevin served as a key member of Blizzard Entertainment’s core development team for the internationally best-selling MMO World of Warcraft before later founding Carbine Studios, a division of NCsoft North America, where he created and oversaw the development of an unannounced MMO. Kevin now brings his creative vision and vast MMO development experience to Trion where he will act as the Senior Development Director for the co-developed SCI FI – Trion MMO video game.
http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,11534/ - Peter Egan (Medium)
Writer, Shared Platform Content
Peter Egan's television experience includes Playmakers (ESPN) and Over There (FX Network). For NBC Entertainment, Peter served as a writer on several series including Medium and Medical Investigation. Peter also served as writer and story editor on the SCI FI series, The Dresden Files.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1341733/ - Glen Van Datta (Former Director of Online Technology at Sony Computer Entertainment America)
Vice President of Engineering and General Manager
Van Datta brings with him more than 22 years of experience in software development, 12 of which consisted of online videogame development. He joins Trion from his most recent post as Director of Online Technology at Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA). At SCEA, Van Datta oversaw an international team of more than 80 employees that developed a full-featured online software suite, known as the SCE-RT SDK, to enable online games for the PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable and PlayStation 3. Today, the SCE-RT SDK has been used in over 120 production titles, including Singstar, MLB, Warhawk, SOCOM, >Resistance, Home, GT5-Prolog and ATV. Prior to SCEA, Van Datta was co-founder and Vice President of Engineering at RTIME, Inc. where he was responsible for the design, development and testing of the RTIME SDK online, in-game and player matching platform, used in more than 30 published titles.
MobyGames.com - Jon Van Caneghem (former founder and CEO of New World Computing)
Creator of the best-selling Might and Magic and Heroes of Might and Magic game franchises.
Wikipedia - David Reid (Former NCsoft West President of Publishing)
David Reid, former president, publishing, NCsoft West, will lead Trion's marketing, sales, corporate communications, brand management and market research. Reid brings with him more than a decade of successes in the games industry. During his tenure at NCsoft West, Reid led publishing efforts across six live MMO businesses and architected NCsoft's North American and European launches for Aion. Before joining NCsoft, Reid served as vice president, marketing, for Turner Broadcasting's GameTap, and led the Xbox 360 launch as Microsoft's director of Xbox global platform marketing. Reid will be based in Redwood Shores and will report to the CEO. - Scott Hartsman (Former Sony Online Entertainment Exec)
Chief Creative Officer and General Manager, Redwood Shores Studio
Joining Trion as the chief creative officer and general manager of the company's Redwood Shores Studio is Scott Hartsman, who will take on responsibilities for the creative vision and implementation of Trion's titles. Hartsman comes to Trion with more than 20 years of games industry experience and has contributed to more than 40 online products. Formerly an executive at Sony Online Entertainment among other online games companies, Hartsman brings to Trion his immense knowledge and skills in the development, deployment, and operation of online games. While at Sony Online Entertainment, Hartsman held key positions throughout the EverQuest franchise, including managing the massive EverQuest II team and successfully shipping more than a dozen EverQuest-related products across a variety of locales with monthly content updates. Most recently, Hartsman oversaw the development of MMOs for the exponentially growing social networking audience. Hartsman will be based in Redwood Shores and will report to Trion's SVP Product Development, Nick Beliaeff. - Lisa Bell-Cabrera
Vice President of Sales
Prior to joining Trion, Bell-Cabrera held the Vice President of Sales position at NCsoft, where she led internal sales teams and channel marketing of world class MMOs throughout North America and Europe along with digital distribution, business development and partnerships. Previously, she held positions at Go Daddy as Director of New Business Development and Atari as Vice President of Sales. Spending her career exclusively in the interactive entertainment space building extensive strategic relationships, she has in-depth knowledge of gaming business models and market dynamics. - Christopher Yates
Senior Vice President, Platform and Technology
Yates joins Trion Worlds after seven years at Sony, driving technology and platform development for Sony Online Entertainment, Sony Media Software and Services, and Sony Network Entertainment. Most recently as Senior Vice President of Technology, Yates led the development and operation of Sony’s Network Platform, the infrastructure that supports PlayStation® Network (PSN) game, video, and comic content worldwide. At Electronic Arts, Yates directed the creation and implementation of the EA.com online platform as CTO and helped lead launch efforts for Ultima Online™ and The Sims Online™. Prior to EA, Yates held Vice President, Research and Development roles for Virgin Interactive Entertainment and Westwood Studios.
- Ricardo Sanchez
Vice President of Digital
Sanchez joins the company as Vice President of Digital after nearly two decades of experience in the games industry launching new products, driving business growth and increasing overall customer usage as an executive and consultant. Before joining Trion, Sanchez helped launch GameTap.com as Vice President of Content, managing the licensing and delivery of games on the service. He also served as Creative Director, providing the vision for GameTap’s episodic game strategy and content on GameTap TV, including the award-winning GameTap News and the Re\Visioned: Tomb Raider animated series. As a founding member of IGN Entertainment, Sanchez oversaw operations for IGN.com, Vault Network, GameSpy.com, Rotten Tomatoes and GameStats.com. - Adam Gershowitz (Warhammer Online, Dark Age of Camelot)
Producer
MobyGames.com - Simon Ffinch
Senior Design Director
Previously Mr. Ffinch worked for Electronic Arts (Development Director), Lego System A/S (Software Producer) and Microprose (Lead Engineer/Producer).
MobyGames.com - Darren Pattenden (Quake III, Electronic Arts)
Art Director
MobyGames.com - Chris Junior (Everquest II)
Senior Systems Designer
MobyGames.com - Cameron McNeil
Lead Systems Designer
LinkedIn - Hal Hanlin
Design Producer
MobyGames.com
- Cindy Bowens aka Abigale (Everquest, Vanguard, SCEA)
Sr. Community Manager
Trion Worlds is happy to announce that Cindy "Abigale" Bowens has become the newest member of the Rift: Planes of Telara Community Team. Cindy joins the team as a Senior Community Manager and will be located in the Redwood City office working directly with the development and publishing teams. Cindy joins Trion with a long history of MMO Community Management from games such as EverQuest and Vanguard.
LinkedIn
More on the way ;)
» Edited on: 2010-10-22 09:42:30