Scott Orr

Scott Orr is an American computer game and video game designer best known as the original lead designer on the first video game console versions of the best-selling game of all time in North America, "Madden NFL Football". In 2001 Wired magazine named Orr on its list of "gamemaking gods."

Although Orr is most often thought of for his work on "Madden", his career in sports games spans over 20 years, and he also has a strong track record founding companies as an entrepreneur.

GameStar

In 1982 Orr founded GameStar, a game publisher specializing in Commodore 64 sports games, and served as their lead designer. The company's titles included:
* "On Court Tennis" (1984}
* "Championship Baseball" (1984}
* "Barry McGuigan World Championship Boxing" (1985)
* "GFL Championship Football" (1985) -- American Football
* "Star Rank Boxing" (1985)
* "Gamestar Basketball Association (GBA) Championship Basketball - Two-on-Two" (1986)
* "Star Rank Boxing II" (1987)
* "Top Fuel Eliminator" (1987)
* "Face Off!" (1987)
* "Gamestar Championship Sports Pack (1987) -- Miscellaneous sports

Orr sold the company to Activision in 1986. He spent the late 1980s working for Activision, and then consulting for various games companies.

The creation of "Madden NFL"

In 1990 EA producer Richard Hilleman hired Orr to re-design "John Madden Football", then a disappointing Apple II game, for the fast-growing Sega Genesis. Orr and Hilleman together developed the game that we still recognize today as Madden Football, the best-selling title in the history of games in North America. Orr focused, as he had at GameStar, on producing a great head-to-head 2-player game with an intuitive interface, and with responsive controls. Hilleman and Orr played each other continually, honing the design. When the game shipped it was almost immediately a major hit.

Orr joined EA full-time in 1991 after the success of Madden on the Genesis, and began a ten-year period of his career when he personally supervised the production of Madden Football. During this time he and his EA team also created the following EA Sports hits, each of which was updated annually:

* "NHLPA Hockey"
* "NCAA Football"
* "Andretti Racing"
* "NASCAR Racing" (later called "NASCAR Thunder")
* "Knockout Kings"

He continued to work with Hilleman during much of this period, and both were promoted to corporate VP and senior management roles in EA product development.

During this time Orr also produced two educational titles for EA Kids, a division later renamed Creative Wonders:

* "Eagle Eye Mysteries" , which featured The first use of motion control photography in video games, by Stormfront Studios.
* "Eagle Eye Mysteries in London"

Mobile Games

In 2001 Orr resigned from EA and subsequently founded cell phone game design company Sorrent, an abbreviation of "Scott Orr Entertainment". Control of the Madden and NASCAR titles went to the internal EA studio Tiburon Entertainment in Orlando, Florida. Tiburon has successfully built upon the Madden franchise traditions developed by Orr and Hilleman, and the game has remained one of the biggest hits in the industry each year.

In 2004 Orr (and his brother Keith) were ejected from Sorrent by the board, and founded Bigdog Games to develop next-gen console and handheld games. Sorrent's name was changed to Glu in 2005, and the company went public with an IPO in 2007. In 2006 Bigdog Games expanded its charter into digital publishing and changed its name to D2C Games.

References

* [http://sega32x.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,7082/ Orr's rap sheet at MobyGames]
* [http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.05/deathmatch_pr.html Wired article including Orr]

External links

* [http://www.bigdoggames.com Big Dog Games]