"We were scrambling in 1996 to put together financing for this awesome project," Farrell says. "We had to lean on the banks to fund this high-cost cartridge. We had to make the bank into a believer. We needed between $15 and $20 million."
Farrell got the money. Then he spent it. And it paid off. THQ produced a legitimate, original hit -- WCW vs. NWO World Tour -- followed by a string of successful, original wrestling and sports titles. Now the company is on the verge of becoming known as a maker of new games that go toe-to-toe with those of far more famous rival companies. Last year, at a trade show, a woman from THQ's marketing department created some point-of-purchase display cards that announced, with the wisecracking kind of humble pride that is characteristic of THQ culture, "Our games don't suck anymore."
Jones was a key figure in THQ's tuning operation. Now he's a key figure in the company's coming-of-age -- the man in charge of Aidyn, a game that is meant to compete directly with the sequel to Zelda for Nintendo 64. Jones's role is a little bit like that of a movie director who hopes that the film he's shooting will broadside Terminator 2: Judgment Day during the first week of the renowned sequel's release. Nobody is saying that THQ would be incapable of such a feat. With recent best-sellers like WWF SmackDown!, THQ has generated raves from industry reviewers, gamers who are eagerly anticipating the game's release, and the business press. People everywhere acknowledge that the company has become an emerging power in the industry.
Aidyn, a long shot to begin with, still has many intractable problems, including all of the debugging that still needs to be done in Vancouver. But its biggest problem may be Jones himself. Those in the company who could decide Jones's future aren't quite sure what he wants: to keep producing games or to move up into an executive position. Back when the company employed only 30 people, none of this would have been an issue. People didn't think about promotions or about corner offices. Now as Jones watches others succeed in ways that only a growing company makes possible, those concerns have become central in his life. He often asks himself, Where is my job going to lead me?
Back when THQ was a village, somebody might have sat down with Jones and simply said, "Go to Vancouver, and we'll have everything that you want ready and waiting back here when you return." But now, THQ doesn't work that way. And four months from now, nobody knows how the company will be structured, let alone what will be waiting for Jones when he returns. THQ used to be a team. Now it's a company. As it grows, many people within the company will likely remain strangers to one another -- even though people try to keep the memory and the spirit of the village alive. But there's something distinctly new here now: Jones is trying to change himself at the same time that the company is changing, to make personal changes as the company is making professional ones. And whether he can make those changes is just as crucial for the company as it is for him. Jones himself represents a gamble by THQ. A talented, dedicated game producer is extremely hard to find--especially one who already has 20 months of producing Aidyn behind him.
Other people at THQ have learned to change and have learned to win according to the new rules. Others have done already what Jones is struggling to do. Still others have created a path for him to follow. Germaine Gioia, vice president of licensing, is a CEO's dream. She is full of energy and laughter and self-deprecating wisdom. She has changed herself as the company has changed. More than any other employee in the company, she knows what Jones is going through and wants to help him decide his future, but she knows that she can't. She can't force him to go through the kind of personal surrender that she went through when Jeff Lapin arrived to run the company. At the time, she was doing both marketing and licensing, bartering what were akin to street deals with other companies. She spent next to nothing on the agreements, which went something like this: "We'll put your shoes on the front of every game box if you get us a point-of-purchase display in every Foot Locker." That sort of thing.
Gioia is the personification of why THQ is succeeding in making the transition from a small, creative shop to a growing corporation. She sits at her desk with a small haystack of black brooms leaning in one corner of her office, evidence of some past presentation, and she blurts out the most candid things without a second thought. You can't help but marvel at her honesty--because, mostly, it's at her own expense.
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