Ea Puts Young In Play As Gm Of L.a. Studio

Electronic Arts has confirmed the appointment of video game creator Neil Young to general manager of its Los Angeles Studio. Young ran EA's Maxis Studio and oversaw the release of "The Sims 2."

The studio is focused on creating titles in the real-time-strategy and first-person-shooter genres. For example, it recently released the RTS game "The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth," based on Peter Jackson's film trilogy, and the FPS "GoldenEye: Rogue Agent," which is set in the James Bond universe. Young has four teams working on new games, including "Medal of Honor: Dogs of War," which ships in the spring for PS2, Xbox and GameCube.

"Building a game today is very similar to how you might make a CG movie," Young said. "There's a high degree of commonality for people who make films and games, which allows us to work more closely with the talent in the Hollywood community."

Young said it's important to reach out to the local community to tap screenwriters like John Milius, an Oscar nominee for "Apocalypse Now" who is working on the new "Medal of Honor" game. That WWII franchise debuted in 1999 as an original idea from Steven Spielberg, whose DreamWorks Interactive game studio developed the game before it was sold to EA.

The Los Angeles Studio was formed from the merger of three studios, including the Las Vegas-based Westwood studio, DreamWorks Interactive (also known as EALA) and Irvine, Calif.-based EA Pacific. Now that the first games have launched, Young said the teams are driven to push the envelope not just of Hollywood intellectual property but also of original intellectual property that can open up opportunities for licensing original content to films and TV.

Young said he is enthusiastic about creating for such next-generation platforms as Xbox Next and PlayStation 3. "Interactive entertainment hasn't had its 'Citizen Kane' yet," he said, "but we are moving in that direction, and games will be able to move people emotionally."

With a current staff of 450, the plan is to grow the studio to 1,000 employees by 2010. The studio is divided into four large teams of roughly 100 people, though Young said the nucleus of each game project is about 30, and as many as eight projects can be ongoing at once as teams transition from one game to another.