Red Storm Entertainment
Public Relations Manager
Red Storm Entertainment will always hold a special place in my heart. I started working there in 1998, just a year and a half after graduating from The American University with a degree in Public Communication. Author Tom Clancy was the owner and the company which was about to launch it's first highly anticipated game, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six. Due to Clancy's notoriety, I was tasked with helping to manage interview requests for him and in many cases I would write a draft of suggested answers which he would look over and approve.
Because I had recently lived in England during my last semester of college, I was also asked to become the international liason for the company. I spent time at our offices in London to help ensure that our global promotional efforts were cohesive but locally appropriate. I led coordination for international trade shows and translation needs.
Because I had recently lived in England during my last semester of college, I was also asked to become the international liason for the company. I spent time at our offices in London to help ensure that our global promotional efforts were cohesive but locally appropriate. I led coordination for international trade shows and translation needs.
I also connected early with our fans in online forums and after the quick success of Rainbow Six, we received quite a bit of "fan mail" and I would help craft responses. One email came through from L.A.P.D. from an officer named Mike Grasso who said he was also on the SWAT team. They wanted to express their appreciation for our team's attention to detail. We wanted to thank them for their service so we sent them a big box of branded tshirts, mugs, and stickers as well as some copies of the game signed by Tom Clancy. They were so surprised and grateful that it started regular correspondence with Mike. It turned out that he and some of the other SWAT team members had a side business of doing stunt work for movies. We ended up using them to do our motion capture for our sequel and other games. We also had them appear at our booth for E3, the largest video game conference in the United States. While other companies had scantily clad women, we had men in full combat gear.
Generally, my time at Red Storm allowed me to take all of the education I had just soaked in for my degree in immediately put it all into practical application. We had a good variety of games during the years I was there, including a couple games for kids. Our company was very inclusionary so I was on the naming committees for our games and sat in on production discussions for features, where my opinion was included. I wrote press releases, created media kits, did interviews, helped others learn how to do an interivew, I worked trade shows and created unique media events. I served just as much as an advocate for the players as I did my company. It was a very sad day when the entire marketing team was laid off after the sale of our company to another company, but I will always hold dear the lessons I learned and the people who were willing to teach me about an industry that was entirely new to me.
I was also at Red Storm when Microsoft decided to enter the console gaming market with the Xbox, which had previously been dominated by Nintendo and Sony. Part of what made the Xbox system different was that it was based on the same coding platform as PCs whereas the GameBoy and Playstation were a totally different coding language. By making this choice, Microsoft recruited the top PC gaming developers to join their new system and these developers didn't have to learn a new coding language. PC games could easily port to the Xbox platform which had previously been a big barrier to entry with the console market. Red Storm Entertainment was the first major PC game developer to agree to make games for Xbox and as such, we were on stage as part of the intial announcement of the platform at a press conference in San Francisco. Our first Xbox product was Ghost Recon.
Generally, my time at Red Storm allowed me to take all of the education I had just soaked in for my degree in immediately put it all into practical application. We had a good variety of games during the years I was there, including a couple games for kids. Our company was very inclusionary so I was on the naming committees for our games and sat in on production discussions for features, where my opinion was included. I wrote press releases, created media kits, did interviews, helped others learn how to do an interivew, I worked trade shows and created unique media events. I served just as much as an advocate for the players as I did my company. It was a very sad day when the entire marketing team was laid off after the sale of our company to another company, but I will always hold dear the lessons I learned and the people who were willing to teach me about an industry that was entirely new to me.
I was also at Red Storm when Microsoft decided to enter the console gaming market with the Xbox, which had previously been dominated by Nintendo and Sony. Part of what made the Xbox system different was that it was based on the same coding platform as PCs whereas the GameBoy and Playstation were a totally different coding language. By making this choice, Microsoft recruited the top PC gaming developers to join their new system and these developers didn't have to learn a new coding language. PC games could easily port to the Xbox platform which had previously been a big barrier to entry with the console market. Red Storm Entertainment was the first major PC game developer to agree to make games for Xbox and as such, we were on stage as part of the intial announcement of the platform at a press conference in San Francisco. Our first Xbox product was Ghost Recon.