John Hight – Director of Product Development, Sony Computer Entertainment of America.

In 1991, John built his first game, Battleship, for the Philips CDi player. Since that time he has worked on 32 games and 9 educational products on various platforms. He’s been fortunate to serve many different development roles: programmer, artist, designer, writer, producer, and studio executive. He has worked on both the development side and publishing side of the business. He’s listened to hundreds of concept pitches, negotiated many development deals, and managed dozens of projects.

As a studio director, John currently oversees a staff of 105 employees at Sony’s Santa Monica Studio. They are currently in production on God of War 3.

John spearheaded the PlayStation Network first party publishing effort, with pioneering games like BlastFactor – Sony’s first downloadable game and flOw – the first indie game published on PlayStation 3. flOw was the first game developed by thatgamecompany, a startup founded by former USC interactive media students.

Prior to joining Sony, John held management and creative positions with Atari, Electronic Arts, and 3DO. While Executive Producer at Atari, John brought Wizards of the Coast, BioWare, and Obsidian together to develop Neverwinter Nights 2. In his role as Executive Producer and Director of Design for Electronic Arts / Westwood Studios, John contributed to the design, script, cinematics, and art production of Nox, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, and Yuri’s Revenge.

John holds a B.S.E. in Computer Science from the University of New Mexico and an M.B.A. from U.S.C.’s Marshall School of Business. He is a past board member of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. John is the lead author of Game Development Essentials: Game Project Management; Hight, John & Novak, Jeannie; Thomson Delmar Learning, 2007.