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EA chief is in the game again
July 12, 2007
Santa Monica: John Riccitiello says returning to Electronic Arts as chief executive was the only job offer he considered seriously in his three years in private equity with Silicon Valley’s Elevation Partners.
While with Elevation, he oversaw a major investment that brought together developers Bioware and Pandemic Studios and he carried out due diligence on a number of other video game companies.
“I went through virtually every game company out there and had unprecedented access to people that now probably rue the day they agreed to let me in their door. But I got some pretty good insights,” he told us in an interview at the E3 Media and Business Summit.
Mr Riccitiello was president and chief operating officer at EA from 1997 to 2004, when he left to help set up Elevation. He returned to replace Larry Probst as CEO on April 1 and has been carrying out due diligence on the state of his company and the industry since then. Here are his thoughts:
On why he came back: “Being a private equity guy is master of the universe these days and it’s harder to do better than being a founding partner, so it’s a good gig. During the time I was gone, I got called by media magnates to be CEO of a number of different companies and it was always very easy to say thanks but no thanks.
“When Larry and the board approached me about EA, that’s a different question and it’s hard to describe how intertwined my emotions and history and relationships are with EA. It was about a company that I am profoundly motivated to work in and a company in particular in which I’ve got massive passion and belief. I felt I could make a difference and be helpful.”
On the state of the company: “It’s very clear that some companies performed better than we have during the [console] transition in terms of top and bottom line growth. We’ve got to drive our business really aggressively, we’ve got to put distance between us and our competitors and make it exceptionally clear that we’re not just the biggest, we’re absolutely the best. I think people are leveling criticism at us on a couple of different fronts and we’ve got to address that and move beyond people’s expectations whether it’s product quality or top and bottom line growth.”
On his current focus: “It‘s the innovation level of our games. In particular, I’m focused on innovation and accessibility, things that are going to drive new people into the industry. I just think we have to set a higher standard for innovation and we have when we are at our best - we just haven’t been at our best as an industry often enough. I also am focusing on success on a number of strategic fronts like online or wireless or Asia or the new casual business we’re pursuing.”
On how deeper games needn’t be harder ones: “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the only game in the history of our industry that has sold 20m units is also one of the easiest games to pick up and play ever made – this is [Take-Two’s] Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. I don’t think you have to be inaccessible to be deep. GTA is deep, it’s rich, it rewards the core game player, it’s one of the highest-rated games and it was easy to play - you could finish it and have fun if you didn’t have fast thumbs and had to master a whole series of skills, so that [depth] and inaccessibility are not a trade off.”
On innovative upcoming EA titles: “Army of 2 is a fantastic title, Spore is a game that may be viewed as the most innovative game of the last few years industry wide when we put that out in about a year. Then there’s Rock Band and Boogie, which sort of takes the piss out of other music games, it is so simple, it is so much fun. I could give you a long list.”
