Mark Jacobs on Leaving Mythic Entertainment
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After 15 years of leading Mythic Entertainment, my time with the studio (and EA of course) I co-founded with Rob Denton has come to an end. Early in May, Electronic Arts let me know that they wanted to make some changes within the Games Label and as a result of those changes I have been out of the office (and out of touch with the team, game, etc.) since that day. So, please accept my apologies if you have tried to reach me over the last couple of months but please know I wasn't ignoring you. Well, unless you were a gold seller making me an offer I couldn't refuse in which case my email automatically deletes your message (would be nice if it could do that wouldn't it?).It's disappointing that the guy who co-founded the company is gone, but disappointment should always be expected by anyone foolish enough to sell out to EA.
To describe these past two months as difficult would be a great understatement as change is almost never easy. I have helped shepherd Mythic through good times and bad, through near bankruptcy and through our many successes. During my tenure there my duties have run the gamut from being CEO/GM to doing some of our legal work to acting as lead designer and even using my personal credit cards/credit to pay for the phones we used when we launched DAoC back in 2001. While I will miss doing those things (well, some of them anyway) for the studio, what I will really miss are the people at Mythic. While some of the team has changed over the years, we have always had a great team at Mythic and seeing, talking, protecting and sharing with that team is what I will both treasure and miss the most. Mythic is, as always, more than simply the senior leadership there, it is the programmers, artists, designers, marketing, IT, operations, facilities, finance, community management, HR, customer service, quality assurance, etc. who make Mythic what is was and is today. It is those people, most of whom whose efforts aren't usually publicly recognized, that deserve so much credit for the success of DAoC and Warhammer. I wish that team nothing but the best of fortune going forward as my respect and love for them runs deep and I hope, is well known by them. I will never forget the effort made by those teammates during both the development of DAoC and Warhammer. Whether it was the extra late night and/or weekend efforts or simply the passion so many of you showed for our games, your level of commitment is something I will never forget. I will have a lot more to say about this over the next few weeks and I will try, and I'm sure fail, to adequately express my thanks and deepest gratitude to many of the team members. While I always tried to show my gratitude either through the tools available to me as CEO of Mythic or GM of EA Mythic as well as with some personal touches, I will never be able to thank you enough.
Over the next few weeks I will be using this blog to thank certain people and companies for their efforts over the years. There will be a lot of praise, a couple of mea culpas (I wouldn't be me if I didn't deliver some of those) and maybe a couple of surprise shout outs. So, I expect this space to be pretty busy for a while. However, if you are looking or expecting me to damn EA or anyone there, you will be sorely disappointed. Over my 23 years of making games professionally I have refrained from attacking the competition, former and/or current partners, other game developers, etc. except on a few very rare instances. I have no intention of breaking with tradition at the present time and I hope my track record in this regard remains unchanged for the rest of my career. During my time at EA I was privileged to get to know a number of very fine professionals and I have some fond memories of working with them. As always EA has my thanks for their interest in acquiring Mythic and in supporting the development of Warhammer.
