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Zynga CCO Mike Verdu departs to start new company

David Hinkle — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 05:00:00 EST

Mike Verdu has given up his gig as chief creative officer at Zynga to start up a new company. Verdu seems to have left on amicable terms, with AllThingsD revealing that Zynga will be an investor in his new venture and also act as publisher. The new studio's games will be available on the Zynga Platform.

Verdu's departure follows another recent high-profile exit, namely chief operating officer John Schappert. "I personally don't want to add to the noise level," Verdu told AllThingsD. "I think this will be a good thing for me and for Zynga." He added that while he's "concerned about how this might be viewed with what else is going on," it's more to get back to being an entrepreneur than "anything else going on at the company."

In his goodbye address, Verdu thanked his colleagues and friends at Zynga for his three years there. "After a lot of soul-searching, I have decided to go back to my roots and start a new company," Verdu said. Before his time at Zynga, he spent several years at EA and Atari.

Zynga CCO Mike Verdu departs to start new company originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 29 Aug 2012 05:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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See gameplay 'target' footage of Spielberg's canceled Project LMNO

Randy Nelson — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 18:45:00 EST

It's common practice for developers to create "target" footage of their games early in the development process in order to give their artists and designers something to shoot for. Following its look back at the now-canceled collaboration between EA and director Steven Spielberg, Project LMNO, 1UP has posted what it says is target gameplay footage from the cooperative "escape" game.

It's a (very) brief clip, but it clearly shows the A.I.-driven future girl "Eve" from a first-person perspective, and actions that imply that it's the player's character looking at her. The player sniffs a rose that's sitting in a vase on the table of the diner they appear to be in, and passes it to her. Eve smells it next, showing a range of reactions on her face, then abruptly bolts from the table when a sinister black Humvee pulls up outside. This is presumably the beginning of an escape sequence, and sees Eve performing inhuman acrobatic moves to traverse the restaurant.

The footage is clearly pre-rendered, and it's not much to go on, but it's unquestionably neat to see what Project LMNO could have looked like. You can see for yourself just after the break.

Continue reading See gameplay 'target' footage of Spielberg's canceled Project LMNO

See gameplay 'target' footage of Spielberg's canceled Project LMNO originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 04 Nov 2010 18:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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1UP examines Spielberg's LMNO, the game that 'tried to do too much'

James Ransom-Wiley — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 21:00:00 EST

If EA and the Steven Spielberg couldn't pull of a first-person hybrid built on "escape gameplay" and driven by an emotional co-op dynamic, featuring an AI-controlled partner -- spoiler alert -- from the future, whose character evolution was to be determined by non-verbal interaction with the player, then who could pull it off? Probably no one. "LMNO," as this project was code-named, was officially canned by EA last month -- and it's been dead for at least a year, according to 1UP's new in-depth investigation into the game.

The report -- and definitely read the whole thing -- is a compelling tale in and of itself: the inside scoop on a big-budget experiment (a "hyper-replayable" 2- to 3-hour game with no multiplayer) that would later morph into an Uncharted clone (complete with "an alien version of Megan Fox"), dubbed The Escape Artist, before being canceled altogether. But the LMNO story is also a striking reminder of just how inflexible AAA game development has become.

EA tried admirably to invest in new IP several years ago, but its actually released games didn't provide the returns the publisher had expected from consumers. Had it come together as original designers Doug Church and Randy Smith once envisioned, LMNO could have been EA's most ambitious original IP to date. Instead, it fell apart as the industry fell back on iteration (you know, "sequelitis") and made jaw-dropping investments in socially-networked casual gaming as the path to future profitability.

LMNO once carried the heavy burden of being the video game that would finally "make you cry." Assuming that the industry has yet to recognize this milestone as having been achieved, the mission now seems better suited for an indie developer with nothing to lose; one free from the concerns of the corporate goliath: namely, staying in business.

[Pictured: Pre-Megan Fox "Eve" character concept; source: 1UP]

1UP examines Spielberg's LMNO, the game that 'tried to do too much' originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 02 Nov 2010 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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