Jerry Bruckheimer Gets Halo, Ubisoft Executives To Craft Original Games
Bruckheimer, Veevaert, and Cohen
The future of gaming is now in the hands of super-producer Jerry Bruckheimer, and they will be original and tell great stories, according to the new men running Jerry Bruckheimer Games.
The grand collaboration between Pirates of the Caribbean and CSI producer Jerry Bruckheimer and Rock Band creator MTV Games took another step forward with the announcement today that Bruckheimer Games will be led by 2 gaming industry veterans.
Jim Veevaert, a Microsoft veteran who was executive producer of Halo 3 and worked with gaming giants Bungie, Epic and Rare during his tenure at the company will be Bruckheimer’s president of production. Jay Cohen, former senior vice president of publishing at Ubisoft, credited with helping land the Tom Clancy franchises as well as Prince of Persia and Assassin’s Creed, will be Bruckheimer’s director of development.
These 2 titans of industry will enable the new company to “create content that challenges the way things are done and the experiences gamers have today,” Bruckheimer said in a press release announcing the hires.
Neither Cohen or Veevaert are ready to announce any details about the games the company is making nor to commit to when gamers might play the first one. But they are offering some insight into the company’s philosophy:
“We’re going to create games that tell great stories,” Veevaert said. “It’s not about naming a genre or a platform that we’re making games for. It’s creating that impact.”
Cohen said Bruckheimer Games will be a tightly run ship. “It’s not about putting 100 titles or 50 titles… in development at the same time,” he said. “Let’s put a smaller number of them and think about them in the fashion that hasn’t really been done before.”
And of course, what good is having a TV producer on board with “alternative revenue streams?” Bruckheimer Games will also be creating original games that might then be turned into film or TV projects, the new executives explained. Cohen said this this the next evolution from an old mentality that viewed games as little more than the equal to the official coffee mug for a movie. Instead, he painted the mental picture of Bruckheimer’s top film and TV people collaborating with the new gaming team to bring the best of all disciplines together to improve each other’s chosen form of entertainment. “This is a continued progression of what is a necessary education experience for all in order to advance the entertainment experience.”
Both men have already officially started at the company. Veevaert is based in Seattle, and Cohen in San Francisco. The Jerry Bruckheimer Games headquarters will be in the same location as its TV and film counterparts, in Santa Monica.
May 17th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
I was semi interested until I read “Bruckheimer Games will create original games that might then be turned into film or TV project”. They’re going to whore out the games.