Game plan: EA Sports’ chief operating officer has parlayed a software engineer’s credentials into being one of the most powerful women in Canada’svideo game industry
Mission: To help EA Sports evolve from a packaged-goods business into a digital service provider Assets: A bold structural thinker and self-professed “info freak” who is intimately involved in process and developing best practices Yield: Leadership of one of the world’s largest video game studios
By Andrew Petrozzi  Prior to joining Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) 13 years ago, Pauline Moller had no experience in video game development. Now the 48-year-old software engineer is arguably the most powerful woman in Canada’s video game development sector.
As the person responsible for completing the construction of EA’s Burnaby campus in 1999 and later as an architect of its game development framework during the early 2000s, Moller’s importance to the organization was recognized when she was subsequently named studio general manager of Electronic Arts Canada (EAC) in Burnaby. In March, she was promoted to COO of EA Sports, one of three internal labels responsible for producing EA video games. But for Moller, who is originally from Malaysia and immigrated to Vancouver with her family in the 1970s, a future career in the gaming industry was foretold by a chance encounter with industry legend Don Mattrick. While she was a software engineer at Sydney Development Corp., she recalled a 17-year-old Mattrick coming into Sydney to pitch his first video game, Evolution, which the firm subsequently published. As a result of its success, Mattrick founded Distinctive Software, which became EAC when he sold it to the California-based video game developer in 1991 for $13 million. Mattrick is now senior vice-president of Microsoft Corp.’s interactive entertainment business, entertainment and devices division. As vice-president of research and development at Infonet Software Solutions, Moller found herself working on the lower floor of an office building shared with EAC before it built its massive Burnaby campus. The joke in the office back then, according to Moller, was whether to be “assimilated” by the growing video- game developer upstairs. While her answer was initially no, she joined EA in 1997. Starting as a development director, she was partnered with an executive producer to start a new business group that produced the snowboarding classic SSX and other titles. “By the time I came to EA, I was already in management,” she said. “I had learned that I didn’t have to be the person who always had to have answers. I had to figure out how to get people to communicate with each other.” Her role was to create an environment conducive to nurturing creativity and open communication. It was a task that gave her an intimate understanding of what it took to produce quality video games. But it didn’t prepare her for her next role: overseeing the construction of EA’s Burnaby campus. “My big learning point was to find the right people. I knew immediately I needed to rely on some key skill sets I did not have. My job became more about joining the dots.” It marked a turning point in her professional life. She realized she could do anything she wanted if she put her mind to it. “As long as I stay sane, be practical about the whole thing, find the right talent and be creative about how you solve the problem.” She would return to game development for a time, but was approached by then-EAC GM John Schappert, now EA’s COO, to structure the studio’s pre-production processes. Moller said she spent a year looking at different processes that teams used to develop products. The result: EA’s game development framework. “Really it was dividing a game development process into chunks.” She partnered with Glenn Entis, now with VanEdge Capital, and the two developed the language and syntax of how EA now designs and produces games. “We trained people to take creativity and harness it into structured thoughts that will in turn become activities and plans so people can go and execute against them,” she said. “For me, that was also the first time of understanding how you do scale.” She returned to games development before being named studio general manager in 2007, where she focused on quality and innovation and strategic planning. In her COO role she applies what she learned as GM to ensure EA Sports’ development teams – in Burnaby and at its Tiburon studio in Florida – have the structure, technology, strategic planning and marketing support needed to execute projects and that they embrace the rapidly changing nature of the business. “How do we manage the transformation from packaged goods only to a connected experience that is there all the time? For me, that is the exciting part of my role today.” VanEdge Capital principal Paul Lee, former president of EA worldwide, is a self-described “fan” of Moller. “Her strongest business attributes are her strong organizational skills and ability to manage projects. She is a joy to work with – organized, detailed, and one gets the feeling when dealing with her that things she is dealing with are in good hands. Her leadership style is one of strong analytical research coupled with good business process.” Disney Interactive’s Howard Donaldson worked with Moller from 1997 to 2004 while he was CFO of EAC. He continues to work with her as a member of New Media BC/DigiBC and the BC Interactive Task Force. “We share many of the same business values and work styles,” he said. “Neither of us are big talkers or showboats but we get the job done by motivating and respecting the team.” For Moller, being COO of EA Sports is about being bold in a time of industry flux. “EA Sports is the adult, responsible child of EA,” she said of the company’s three labels. “We have a stable full of products that we know we have to cultivate with different challenges than EA Play and EA Games. Our challenge is to make the world’s best sports products. “At the same time, how do we manage costs and get more effective in how we develop our products? How do we re-engineer the plane we’re flying in – and we can’t fail – to get to the connected digital experience that we want to get to? How do we deliver more online features and product offerings? How do we try new things without screwing up the ones we have to look after? “It’s a real balancing act.” •
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Photo: Dominic Schaefer This article from Business in Vancouver July 27-August 2, 2010; issue 1083 Business in Vancouver (www.biv.com) has been publishing in-depth local business news, analysis and commentary since 1989. The newspaper also produces a weekly ranked list of the biggest companies and players in a wide range of B.C. industries and commercial sectors, monthly features and industry-focused sections that arm its subscribers with a complete package of local business intelligence each week. |
