Peter Moore Blog : Curt Schilling

Your Feedback is Appreciated

PeterMooreBlog — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 19:13:00 GMT

It was great to see the passion and level of detail in your comments on Monday's post featuring the first screenshot of Madden NFL 10. Rest assured that the development team reads every one of these posts, and while we can't guarantee we can integrate all of your requests into the game each year, we really appreciate the feedback. Keep it coming. For more detail, I'd invite you to read the detailed new blog post from art director Mike Young with more details about this screenshot and more about the visual presentation in this year's Madden.

I also want to tip my hat to my friend Curt Schilling, who announced his retirement from baseball yesterday after 23 spectacular years. He now becomes a rookie again, this time in the video game business, as he and his team at 38 Studios continue to build their impressive MMO, codenamed Project Copernicus.

Finally we have another videoblog segment to share. Below is more from my conversation with Nate Lundy a couple of weeks ago before our Season Opener.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Here’s To You, Curt

PeterMooreBlog — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 22:29:00 GMT

One of the side benefits of my job is the opportunity to interact with athletes in both business and social settings. As with any segment of society, they can be a mixed bunch - most are courteous, and cognizant of their fortunate position to be able to do something for a very healthy living that most of us would do for free. Of course, there are also those (a minority) that are blissfully unaware of the good luck that their genetics have afforded them, are self-absorbed, and do nothing to give back or even give the rest of us mere mortals the time of day. And then there is a small sub-set that have so much more going on in their lives than just their day jobs, give back more than they receive, and plan and invest for the day they are forced to hang ‘em up.

If there is one athlete I have met in recent years that exemplifies that latter category, and someone I am fortunate enough to be able to describe as a great friend, it's Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling. Smart, articulate and unbelievably focused are the attributes that spring to mind when asked to describe Curt. Pushed further, I'd describe him as driven, hard-nosed, outspoken, unabashedly patriotic and loyal to a fault. Most of you know him for his exploits on the mound in 3 World Series, and of course in particular Game 6 of the ALCS in 2004 versus the Yankees - the infamous Bloody Sock game, in which Curt pitched through 7 innings giving up but one run, despite needing the suturing of a tendon to his ankle to play. I know him as a wonderful family man, generous supporter of our troops overseas, talented blogger (www.38pitches.com)and a ridiculously hard-core gamer.

I first met Curt a number of years ago while I was still at Microsoft. Even then I was aware of his love of MMO's in general, and Everquest II in particular. So it was no surprise to receive a call from him one day, and in classic Curt style, he made no bones about the fact that he had to have an Xbox 360 at launch. That was his lucky day on two counts. One, I had an extra console available from the handful we were allocated at launch for "seeding", and two, as he quickly found out, I am a hard-core, card-carrying (literally) member of Red Sox Nation, created from years of visiting Fenway while working at Reebok in the 90's, and the (little-known) fact that my mother was born in Boston (I'll explain that another time).

Long story short - Curt got his Xbox 360 on launch day and I got an autographed World Series #38 home jersey for my office in Redmond. Since then we have struck up a friendship that has us in touch weekly. As many of you know, in 2004, Curt founded 38 Studios (www.38Studios.com) his own game development studio in Maynard, MA where he now has a talented team working on an MMORPG, working name Copernicus, that he feels can give the current leaders in this genre a good run for their money.

If you follow this blog, you know that Curt and I have a small side bet about my purported ability to kick a 50-yard field goal, which I happened to blurt out in front of him one day, something which he reminds me of on a regular basis. While the best I was able to do last year was a squeaker from 42 yards, 2009 is another year, and I am not giving up the ghost yet. In the meantime, Curt's kids are not lacking in EA games while I figure out how to get the extra distance without ripping my quadriceps right off my femur...

So every time you read of an athlete that does something disappointingly selfish, there is someone like Curt, who uses his celebrity to build ballparks for young players in his home town, supports his lovely wife Shonda's tireless efforts to raise funds for skin cancer research, and who spent a good portion of December visiting our troops in the combat zone in Iraq, distributing consoles and games.

Proud to call you a friend, Curt...

March 14th

petermoore — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 20:17:00 GMT

Greetings from Dana Point in Southern California, where I’m excited to have joined some of the top minds in sports over the past few days at an event hosted by the Sports Business Journal called World Congress of Sports. It is testament to the power of sports video games that I could share the stage with key executives from the NFL, NBA, FIFA, etc. and not feel that our industry doesn’t belong here. There were some fascinating presentations, if you are interested in the business of global sports. I’m perhaps even more excited to have landed in time on Tuesday to have caught the 1-0 win by Liverpool over Inter Milan at the San Siro to send them through to the quarter-finals of the Champion’s League. Another great goal by Fernando Torres secured the win.

As promised, we’re finally up and running today with our new look and blog format. This is a little more pleasing to the eye, huh? We knew when we did our “beta” launch last month that we were a few weeks away from getting it exactly right, so thanks for bearing with me, and still getting involved regardless of the somewhat clunky format.

As a neophyte blogger, there are a few things I’ve learned about the blogosphere over the past few weeks:

- I love the feedback, regardless of how hard you are on me, the dev teams and our titles. I’ll echo what I’ve already said here, and that’s that it’s fun hearing from you and that your feedback is going directly to those teams. That’s a big reason why I wanted to even do this in the first place. And rest assured that with our migration to this new format, all of the original posts and comments from the past month remain in our forums.

- On the feedback, I can’t guarantee everything you suggest will get into the games or that we even agree with it. I also will never be able to answer all of your questions and respond to all your comments. But I can promise you that your feedback is valued and so starting this month I’m going to begin having producers from our different game teams join me as guests where we’ll review the top questions and comments from the blog. Stay tuned for that…

- It has deepened my respect for the EA SPORTS brand that I have been proud to inherit. Your passion and input for the titles is indicative of the relationship so many of you have with the experiences we create for you, and not unlike the relationship we have with our favorite teams. Some weeks you love them, other weeks, not so much. My goal is provide you with a more consistent and predictable quality experience with everything that we develop for you…

What else is going on?

- This is the time of year when we have a lot of fun announcing our cover athletes. Earlier this week, we announced that Jeff Gordon will cover NASCAR 09. While it’s hard to argue with that pick, that’s exactly what’s been happening in the final days of our contest to select the cover mascot for NCAA Football on the Wii. The contest ends later today, and we have a close battle for the cover, with Washington State, Michigan State, Auburn, Nebraska and Central Florida making up the top 5. I’ve been calling all my friends in the Bay Area all week to get them to vote for Cal…Who wouldn’t want to see Oski on the cover of a video game?

- I’ve seen speculation the past few days about the comments we’ve made recently about new IP coming this year from EA SPORTS. While we’re still a couple of months away from any official new game announcements, I’m encouraged by the interest and excitement. As I’ve said many times over the past few months, as EA SPORTS looks to expand our brand and capture new audiences, developing new intellectual property - such as FaceBreaker and future unlicensed titles - will be a key component of that strategy. As an extension to those comments, and coming fresh out of our sku plan reviews of last week, I can tell you we now have EIGHT titles in development for the Wii, testament both to the global impact of that console currently in the global marketplace, as well as to our desire to attract more consumers to experience EA SPORTS games, no matter their experience playing games nor their prowess with a traditional controller.

- You all know I’m a huge baseball fan, and despite my current angst about Josh Beckett’s back spasms and Curt Schilling’s shoulder, I can’t wait for the regular season to get under way in a couple of weeks. So you can imagine that I was interested to see the new ads for MLB 2K8 last weekend on ESPN, as I was watching SportsCenter. Amusing spots to say the least. Any of you old-school EA SPORTS fans recognize anything there? Anybody remember Gimme?????

Hopefully you will all enjoy this new format, and look for us to take full advantage of the multi-media opportunities it affords us over the coming weeks, with audio and video clips, interviews, and more links to breaking news from EA SPORTS.

Cheers,

Peter