Categories
Games Personal

Senior Manager, Esports

Back in May I was very happy to note that it had been four years since I started working in the games industry, and that month also marked the start of a process that has led to today, which is my first day in a brand new role: Senior Manager, Esports.

Yes, I’m still at Ubisoft, and still based in Montreal, but after about three and a half years with the company (going from Production Coordinator to Project Manager to this) and close to three years on the same team, this marks a big turning point for me, and it’s a role I’m incredibly excited to take on.

Another big change is that although I’ll continue to be based in Montreal, I’ll now be reporting directly to our NCSA (a designation that refers to the Americas) Director of Esports in San Francisco. I’m also excited that the person in question is Che Chou, who joined us in January, after years at Blizzard, 343 Industries, and Microsoft (here’s an interview he did with Polygon back in May). Also important for me is that I initially know him from his years in games media, and especially The 1UP Show, a web series about games I used to watch avidly and admiringly.

(Also, this is now the third 1UP Show alum I’ll have worked with, following Mark Macdonald and James Mielke.)

What does the role entail? I won’t be organizing or running events — we already have amazing people doing that — but instead will be working with Che on growing our esports activities at Ubisoft, and working with productions on making that happen. It may sound like it’s a big change from what I’ve been doing so far, but it actually builds nicely on the various roles I’ve had so far within Ubi, and my interactions with all of our teams. It also means I’ll get to travel a bit more, which I’m excited about.

So yeah, electronic sports, here we go!

Categories
Games Music

Yuzo Koshiro

Polygon recently posted a big feature on legendary video game composer Yuzo Koshiro, and it’s a great read.

Categories
Games

The Fall and Rise of Yoshiki Okamoto

Another interesting feature I read this week from Polygon that dates back to 2013 is this one on the fall of Yoshiki Okamoto’s Game Republic studio. It’s a fascinating read, and becomes even more interesting when bookended with this piece published the following year (about Okamoto’s success with Monster Strike).

Categories
Games

Swery and the Sinner’s Sandwich

The recent news about Swery’s new studio, White Owls, led me to this old feature about him, published on Polygon in 2013. It still makes for an interesting read, and offers up some nice insights on what he’s all about and how he sees games and game development.

Categories
Design Games Web

Oral History of Final Fantasy VII

I haven’t read the whole thing yet, but I’m in awe of the massive oral history of Final Fantasy VII that was published on Polygon last week. It’s pretty fantastic to see this sort of intensely researched piece get made in this day and age of fast content for the web.

Categories
Books Design Games

Rez Retrospective

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As part of the vinyl release of the Rez Infinite soundtrack, you get a beautifully produced book — without having seen it, I just know it’s beautiful because it was designed by Cory Schmitz — and Polygon is sharing a long excerpt to read. Some great reading on a great creator.

Categories
Games

Rui Guerreiro and Mare

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Polygon has a nice feature up on Rui Guerreiro, a dev who left the Last Guardian team and helped start up the Friend & Foe studio in Tokyo, later leaving to work on his own game Mare (and later joining up with Visiontrick Media, the studio behind Pavilion, which I mentioned last month).

Categories
Games

An Interview with Tomonobu Itagaki

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Even though I know he’s working hard on a new project that hasn’t been announced yet, it’s been great to see my buddy James Mielke get back to a bit of games writing (on Glixel and Polygon), and his latest piece is this feature interview with legendary game creator Tomonobu Itagaki (Ninja Gaiden, Dead or Alive) over at Polygon. It’s a super fun read, with Itagaki being his usual “straight” self, and it’s quite interesting to hear him talk about Devil’s Third, a game that you would think would be down and out, but isn’t.