Last Online: 3/1/10
Randy Dersham
I joined the game business in 1989 as the photo and video director for Dynamix and later managed the art staff for games in the era of: A-10; Red Baron; FPS Football; Aces of the Pacific; Willy Beamish; and Betrayal at Krondor. Switching from art management to game design, I designed and produced or executive produced the Trophy Bass series of games and Trophy Rivers. I later spent about three years as a senior executive for Sierra during the days before and after they were acquired by Cendent
In 1998 I joined Electronic Arts as executive producer for their new line of outdoor games and later became the Executive Producer/GM of the EA-Seattle office. During that time I executive produced Championship Bass, Ultimate Hunt Challenge and Motor City Online.
In 2003 I joined Acclaim Entertainment as Executive Producer/GM of their Austin office where we completed NBA: JAM, All Star Baseball, and The Red Star.
Today I am an executive producer for Playdom a publisher of social games that delivers high quality games across the internet played with your friends on your Facebook, MySpace or other social network.
Other stuff I do:
My wife and I own Eagle Rock Lodge on the McKenzie River just outside of Eugene, Or. www.eaglerocklodge.com
My son, Sanderson and I own Tatman Wooden Boats where we help people build their own wooden river boats for white water touring and fishing. Check it out at www.mckenziedriftboat.com
In 1998 I joined Electronic Arts as executive producer for their new line of outdoor games and later became the Executive Producer/GM of the EA-Seattle office. During that time I executive produced Championship Bass, Ultimate Hunt Challenge and Motor City Online.
In 2003 I joined Acclaim Entertainment as Executive Producer/GM of their Austin office where we completed NBA: JAM, All Star Baseball, and The Red Star.
Today I am an executive producer for Playdom a publisher of social games that delivers high quality games across the internet played with your friends on your Facebook, MySpace or other social network.
Other stuff I do:
My wife and I own Eagle Rock Lodge on the McKenzie River just outside of Eugene, Or. www.eaglerocklodge.com
My son, Sanderson and I own Tatman Wooden Boats where we help people build their own wooden river boats for white water touring and fishing. Check it out at www.mckenziedriftboat.com
\\\All men are equal before fish\\\ Herbert Hoover
| Game | What I Did | Difficulty of Development | Anecdote |
|---|---|---|---|
| GM Austin Acclaim | Harder than Planned | This game was approved by Sony for distribution the week before the doors were shut at Acclaim. | |
| Dir. of Image Production | Harder than Planned | One of the first successful games on the CD-ROM, as they were called at the time. Krondor went out the door a large game with a high cost of sales in a crowded market. Once ported to CD it was one of the few great games available for the CD sales quickly took off. | |
| Dir. of Image Production | Harder than Planned | A single pallet of dark blue/black and other muted colors gave this early VGA game it\'s distinctive look. | |
| producer | Average | The development team at Presage scored the original Lode Runner AI. | |
| CD version voice producer | Average | Sid is Rob Paulson, the voice of many cartoon characters including Rude Dog, Pinky, and Spike in Land Before Time. Al is played by Jim Cummings who has enough range and talent to go from Darkwing Duck to the more Zen Winnie of Winnie the Pooh. | |
| Dir. of Image Production | Average | All of the VGA photo images in this game were printed to scale, physically arranged and then scanned on a flat bed scanner. Flat beds were very new at the time and gave us the very best combination of colors. That seems so silly now. | |
| Dir. of Image Production | Average | Famous war plane painter Bill Phillips was commissioned for this cover of Red Baron. The rest is history... hall of fame game. | |
| director of visual production | Average | Local actors and photography crew were used to build slide show storyboards in EGA before we had room for movies. | |
| Dir. of Image Production | Harder than Planned | I believe this was the first computer game to use traditional hand drawn animation. | |
| Designer/director | Harder than Planned | At its core this is a timed strategy game where you pit your fishing knowledge against time of year and weather conditions to race AI or real opponents in a timed event to catch the largest total pounds of fish. One executive suggestion during review was the game could be run in screen saver mode so the player could do other things while waiting for a fish to bite. We decided that idea didn't mesh with a timed event. |
