How Jones has arrived at this point stems directly from the nature of THQ's rapid growth. Last year, the company brought in Scott Krager, a 35-year-old game producer, who had experience as a television-sitcom writer and who came with big credentials from managing an in-house creative staff at Activision, a company in which many producers are MBAs. THQ hired Krager away from Activision, gave him the title of executive producer, and asked him to lay a foundation of business processes -- weekly reports, milestone checkpoints, forms, procedures -- in the game-production department. He also brought with him his own secret creative dream: a game called Evil Dead, which he had been pitching to people at Activision without success. Evil Dead has since gone into production at THQ. Krager's dreams are coming true on all levels: He's getting both the job title and the game.
Jones watched all of this from his own office, and it changed him. He became restless. With the company growing around him, Jones was forced to grow as well -- despite himself. He began to question his own career. Krager had left Activision on good terms. He hadn't been angry, and he had been perfectly willing to stay at Activision -- if his bosses would have made him an offer that he couldn't refuse. But they didn't. So he moved to THQ, where he got everything that he wanted. As Jones puts it: "I'm learning everything from Scott. I'm just doing what he did."
It's easy to see why Jones wants to emulate Krager. There may be some envy behind Jones's resignation, but there's also a little hero worship. Krager is bearded, boyish, friendly, and full of energy -- but "friendly" and "full of energy" could describe almost anyone in the company. He worked on successful games, such as one of the sequels to Pitfall and Interstate '76. He's seen, from the inside looking out, how and why the video-game industry rivals the movie industry in total revenue.
"The early games were created by one person who did everything," Krager says. "Now a game is created by anywhere from 5 to 300 people. It takes a movie crew -- no, a movie production." He sits in his spacious office, which is decorated with oversized movie posters from Star Wars and The Shawshank Redemption. He's quick to enumerate what he did when he arrived at THQ and to compare his current workplace to Activision. "When I got here, it was a seat-of-the-pants culture -- all improvisation. I was amazed at the lack of foundations. Still, to get out all of those products and to be profitable? It was mind-boggling. We created clear job descriptions. We established a set of basic responsibilities for producers to follow. We added the role of assistant producer. We scheduled regular status meetings. We created a series of milestone checkpoints that must be passed before a creative team gets an advance-on-royalties payment. And we do a thumbnail status report on all products, so that everyone in all departments knows where things stand."
Krager is also quick to give credit to his people, including one of his best producers: Jones. And, for his part, Jones has taken initiative on several fronts. Recently, for example, Jones told Krager about a dream of his own -- a racing game that would knock out both PlayStation's Gran Turismo and its Gran Turismo 2, the reigning racing-game franchise, the supreme masterpiece of all racing games.
"Our producers, such as Gabe, work with developers in driving the design," Krager says. "Storyboards, voice-over scripts, level designs -- everything goes through the producers. The producers are the carriers of the vision."
Jones and his girlfriend, Krista, sit on a maroon, velour-upholstered bench at Scotland Yard, a Scottish pub where people actually smoke inside the bar. The walls are covered with memorabilia from Scotland: soccer-team pennants, wooden cutouts of bobbies wearing helmets. Krista hangs on Jones's shoulder, her hand on his hand.
In a way, this too is a business meeting. His career is the main topic of conversation: Jones would like to know, for sure, whether Krista will join him if he moves to Vancouver. He talks about the racing game that he dreams of creating -- about how racing games have just the right amount of variability and structure, a perfect balance for game play. A racing game's logic is clear, its physics are exactly those of the real world. A game like the one that Jones dreams about is the ultimate test of getting it right. The problem is that reality costs money: To get a racing game tuned to perfection, you often have to pay licensing fees to every name in the game: race tracks, automakers, race-car sponsors. Reality costs money. For THQ, it's a major investment and a huge risk -- an even larger risk than Aidyn.
Jones wants to know how often Krista thinks she'll come to Vancouver to visit if he goes.
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