I’m Jason French, a Development Director and programmer whose work spans fourteen years in the video game industry, from real-time strategy games to the top-selling sports franchise, Madden NFL Football. I started my career as a programmer on the critically acclaimed Close Combat series. I’m currently living in Orlando, FL, where I’m the Project Lead for EA SPORTSNCAA Football.
Latest Game
My latest game, NCAA Football 12 hit store shelves July 12th, 2011. For this project I started the first part of the year as the Development Director for our centralized football game play group. This group is in charge of the game play for both Madden NFL 12 and NCAA Football 12. We say that that group owns everything from “snap to whistle”. I scoped the project, making sure we could deliver the new “no suction” tackling system and the new zone coverage AI, and managed the deliver of the first few milestones of the project.
The second half of the year I was promoted to be the Franchise Development Director for all of NCAA Football, where I was in charge of all the development. I set goals for hitting Alpha on time and then set our plan for Finaling the game. We hit Alpha only a few days late, better than any previous NCAA title. We were able to get the game out on time despite several issues coming up, the biggest being PSN being down during the last part of our Finaling period. All of this was captured in a four part series that premiered on ESPN-U Thursday, July 14th. Check their web site for possible electronic versions of the episodes.
Currently
Developing
Managing the development of NCAA Football.
Writing
jasonfrench.org, a personal blog about the game industry and programming.
Promoted to Project Lead / Line Producer of NCAA Football.
June 2011
NCAA Football 12 was declared Gold and passed through First Party on June 10th.
During development, we would play the Sexy Sax Man video to indicate we were done for the night. When we were through EA Certification, the Sexy Sax man came for a live performance.
May 2011
NCAA Football 12 was declared Final on May 27th, 2011 and sent off to EA Certification.
March 2011
NCAA Football 12 was declared Alpha on March 11, 2011. Four days late, but the best of any previous version of the game.
About
Bio
Latest Game
The second half of the year I was promoted to be the Franchise Development Director for all of NCAA Football, where I was in charge of all the development. I set goals for hitting Alpha on time and then set our plan for Finaling the game. We hit Alpha only a few days late, better than any previous NCAA title. We were able to get the game out on time despite several issues coming up, the biggest being PSN being down during the last part of our Finaling period. All of this was captured in a four part series that premiered on ESPN-U Thursday, July 14th. Check their web site for possible electronic versions of the episodes.
Currently
Developing
Writing
Recently
October 2011
August 2011
July 2011
June 2011
May 2011
March 2011
February 2011
January 2011
December 2010
Games
To see a list of the games I’ve worked on visit my Games Page.
Contact
You can use the following form to send me an email.