Blogger Profiles
BlackOps
Alan O'Dea is the Business Development Director at Monumental. Alan can oft times be found in the kitchen regaling fellow team members with tales of all the really fun parts of making an MMO game, i.e. marketing, business development, partnerships and meetings that he is involved with. He has as yet not found anyone that will listen to him. Alan spends his time equally between accepting guff from team mates about his Irish ancestry and continually reminding people of his ability to completely suck at and therefore not want to play Table Football.
Alan joined the video game industry and Monumental from a recent career hiatus where he went back to school for four years obtaining a BSc in Video Game Design and a MBA, Masters of Business Administration. In a former life Alan was an award winning graphic designer and has worked throughout the global advertising, marketing, Internet, Computer Based Training, ISP and design industry as a manager, creative director, consultant and strategic planner.
Alan has had about 16 different jobs and role titles at CyberSports and Monumental but in a nutshell what he does on a day to day basis is plan, forge and manage all the partnerships, contracts, business and strategic planning throughout the long list of publishing, billing, infrastructure, VoIP, technical and business partnerships that are essential for a game like Football Superstars to launch in the global marketplace.
Georgenius
George "Georgenius" Kotsiofides was hatched way back in 1970 in London, has been a Liverpool fan since 1973 and has played nearly every kind of videogame ever made.
Despite all this, he managed to get a degree in English and Sociology, along with a Masters degree in Postmodernism, Literature and Modern Culture and put these to good use parking cars before getting a job running an independent games shop.
He soon moved into game journalism, helping set up industry trade paper MCV and became deputy editor there after just 18 months. After leaving MCV, George enjoyed stints as a freelance games writer, with published reviews and articles on Eurogamer.net, and in publications such as PC Format, Develop, MCV and Edge.
With the advent of mobile phones, George taught himself how to write WAP games and designed, wrote and sold a number of titles based on other people's IP including games for Bungie and 3D0.
He then joined Microsoft and helped launch the original Xbox, helping set up the ‘Games Evaluation Team' which analysed games and gave suggestions to developers on how to improve them where possible.
Before long, George found himself working as a game developer himself, and joined Climax London as a games designer for a Nintendo DS and GBA title. He then moved to Nottingham to take on the role of Game Designer at Monumental Games on Football Superstars.
George's favourite game of all time is Tetris. He has an extensive collection of retro consoles, plays guitar badly, loves steak and chips and is a big fan of Lost and Battlestar Galactica. His favourite film is Star Wars. His hair has been growing inwards since 1998.
Plectrum
Jesse Coombe is the Community Lead for Football Superstars. Jesse is the youngest member of the CyberSports team, coming fresh out of university clutching a hard-earned psychology degree (he assures us it's far from the soft option it's cracked up to be).
While this is Jesse's first time behind the scenes of a major title, he has earned his community stripes with work in amongst the fans and developers of the Make Something Unreal award nominated Unreal Tournament mod "DeathBall" establishing clansites, fansites, and radio stations to keep the fans supported, informed, and entertained. Jesse also has a background in MMOs, having spent an inordinate amount of time playing The Matrix Online and working with the community to develop plots for the game. Jesse lists Half Life, Football Manager, and Guitar Hero among his favourite games of all time.
Jesse is a lifelong Arsenal supporter - a fact you'll soon become painfully aware of on the forums. When he's not agonising over Arsenal's ability to throw it all away or cranking out ideas for Football Superstars you'll most likely find him plugged into a bass amp or an iPod. Jesse has been known to incessantly sing the praises of Southampton-based band Delays to anyone naïve enough to give him the chance. You have been warned.
Phil Friendly
Phil is the Sales and Marketing Manager for CyberSports Ltd, the publishers behind Football Superstars. Phil has been working at the top end of online sales and marketing since 1999 for a number of leading brands on a managerial, director and consultancy basis. Joining CyberSports in November last year it is Phil's responsibility to make sure there are ‘hundreds of thousands of bums on the seats' of Football Superstars when it launches later this year!
Outside of work Phil (as you can see from his first blog) is an unhappy and depressed Southampton fan, a lover of all things football, a father of 1 (Liverpool supporting) 8 year old and a trombonist!
Working out of the CyberSports office in London, Phil makes the odd cameo appearance in Nottingham where he generally causes chaos, goes drinking with Monumental's CEO Rik Alexander, turns up late the next morning looking rather green and is kicked back to London feeling sorry for himself!
Wartortle
Rocco Loscalzo is CTO of Monumental Games Ltd and heads up the Software Team on Football Superstars.
Whilst maybe a bit long in the tooth now, he has always been involved with computers going back to the very first days of the Sinclair ZX-81, Oric-1, Commodore 64 and Dragon 32. Games have always held a particular interest but the real passion lies in all of the technical challenges involved in Software Development.
After graduating from Loughborough University with a BSc (hons), he 'slipped up' and landed himself a job working in the Business Software world. Starting as a Junior Software engineer in 1987, he scaled the dizzy heights of management before achieving a Director position in 1999. Luckily, he came to his senses and ditched the 'easy life' just prior to the Y2K debacle that never was and joined Charybdis Ltd as a Software Lead in 2000. Ultimately working on Magic & Mayhem: The Art of Magic, he then joined Climax Online in 2001 before being promoted to Technical Director. Whilst at Climax, he was also Software Lead on the original Warhammer Online MMO and has been involved with MMO development ever since.
