The Magical Mark Lowe Interview
thursday, april 18, 2002

Born an Army brat in Germany in 1969, Mark Lowe moved to the US at age 3. He spent most of his childhood creating programs on his Apple II and TRS-80. When most kids answer the question about whether or not they had ever taken drugs, Mark would reply, "Well sure, I had to stay awake to program." He spent 12 years of his young life in Chanute, Kansas, and a change was what he needed.

In 1987, at the age of 17, Mark packed up and took a job at Jim Hall racing in Southern California (AKA the greatest place on earth), but his destiny was not in racing; Mark found an ad for Technical Support Representative at a company named Softview Inc. the original creators of MacInTax (now fondly known as TurboTax on the Windows platform). In 1989 Softview hit a financial snag and dumped about 2/3's of the entire workforce. Two days later, Mark relied on his original talent of art to land a job as a video game artist for a company called Atomic Entertainment, and thus started his illustrious Video Game career. Activision pulled the plug on all the Atomic projects, so Mark met with his programmer friend, Dan Chang and began creating an independent project called Mutant Warriors. "Being a huge fan of the movie Aliens, I started illustrating space ship interiors and little chubby marines, albeit no where near as cool as the Space Hulk board game. It took us about 6 months of living off of Stouffers TV dinners before we were able to call it complete enough to market. We sold the game to the first company we pitched, Virgin Mastertronics in LA. Dan started as a coder there and that was the last I saw of him. Still miss my old friend."

After completing two more years at Softview in 1991, it was over due to a recession, so Mark was off again this time to Northern California. The internet was starting to bloom and finally in 1996 after 5 years of corporate database programming, Mark started learning HTML, and ended up in mid-June of the same year at a conference in Dallas, TX standing in front of 600 people teaching them how to program web servers, email packages, web clients, and ftp applications. Mark credits an old boss Marc Kenig for all his internet programming knowledge.

Mark spent many years with a number of dot coms and launched websites such as talkcity.com, cardgames.com (which he sold), and his award winning stimulus.com. One version of stimulus won several awards, some cheesy, some impressive...one from David Bowie's community site in September 2000. He currently supports the web sites of Syd Mead and Robert Llewellyn. Mark Lowe will be most remembered from his work at EA.com...

After the fall of the dot coms and with the current recession, many internet companies are looking to charge for content and services on the web to try to save their companies existence. This is especially difficult due to the many years of free content and services and the mentality of the users of the web. Do you think this is the best strategy for the remaining dot coms?

Charging for content is a reasonable concept if there is a product worth buying. Unfortunately, most dot com executives always get the chronology of this reversed. Simply turning on a subscription tier won't save most companies. I've been paying for my hometown newspaper for two years without a problem, but I still have an issue paying for CNN.com video since I already pay for cable access.

Charging money over the internet is a very tricky endeavor, which is not a revolutionary answer. If the product has a renewing value each day, I think people will pay for it. If the information isn't updated, subscribers will move on and never look back.

Do you think people will pay for content even though they already pay for the internet?

I really think this is going to follow some logical progressions. The stage we're in now is paying for each and every offering separately. The second stage is to buy services in a bundle. Few will be incredibly value, some will be things you'd only buy in a bundle, and others will be freebies that you'd only know about if they were attached to something else. The third and final stage (of my lifetime) will be the integration of TV and internet, but I think it will be a long time before the cable, phone, internet wars are over, and they have enough time to recovered to establish a unified front that will support the hundreds of hardware and internet protocols that will need to be developed to support such an offering.

Where do you think the internet is heading?

I feel as if the internet is still searching for a standard approach, a format that everyone can come to rely on when searching for information and services. Right now it's a huge party line and everyone is talking at the same time.

I think we have to wait for broadband to be endorsed by mainstream companies like AOL, and not as an alternative, but as a base line requirement. What companies like AOL fail to recognize in my opinion is that they dictate the standard. Instead, they fear something they control. You can tell the public that the 2 year old 56k modems are out, and that you must upgrade to broadband in order to stay connected. People are not going to disconnect or change vendors for what amounts to be a $30 additional charge a month. I think most people are starting to understand that surfing the internet on a 56k modem is like driving a car through a pin hole. It's a whole new world with that extra $30.

I'm also waiting for the time when building contractors start to include internet specifications just as they do heating and plumbing. When we get that far with internet presence, we'll be one step towards a standard offering to the public. Without that attitude and integration into our personal lives, the internet will most likely remain a hit-and-miss venue.

Until the internet is taken seriously by the world community on all levels, it will remain a test ground for good ideas, and an information tool that will continue to represent a cost margin as opposed to a moneymaking opportunity.

Do you regret any decisions you made in your life?

None. I've lived an entirely perfect life so far. Ha! Hmmm…that's a tough one. I assume my answer would have more value if everyone could benefit from my loss. Other than being a jerk at times when I should have been more understanding, there isn't a whole lot that I end up regretting in the end. Career-wise I can't really complain. It would have been nice to work for a few more successful companies over the years.

I think the apple sucks, why do you think it's the future?

Apple has always been the future. Every time a new version of Windows releases and adds features to the PC that have existed on the Mac for 10 years, I get a slew of calls from my friends and family bragging about their new abilities. I have always been a cross-platform developer since high school. There hasn't been a year that my life hasn't been restricted by Windows, so you have to understand I come with 20 years of practical hands on programming experience…it's not a religious thing as much as a functional one.

Recently, things have changed with OS X. My entire family is switching to Macintosh, something I thought I would never see for as long as I lived. And these aren't letter typers and video game players, these are intense IT guys who are responsible for supporting hundreds of people, excluding my mom who owns about 4 Macs at this point.

OS X is the future for anyone who is serious about using their computer to the fullest. The days of microprocessor operating systems has ended. I think even Microsoft has figured that out. With OS X getting stronger every day and being completely BSD-UNIX based, the engines are lit and afterburners are just getting warm.

Keep your eye out for this summer's G5 boxes from Apple with a whole new conservative line-up for businesses. Apple's coming in a way that will be hard to ignore. Instead of pandering to the populous, they navigated intelligently through the consumer's needs and thus ended up with the best digital hub computer in the world.

Go to an Apple store and tell me you're not impressed.

I've been to the Apple Store where you freaks camped out overnight and I have a question, how do you explain the iPod?

The iPod is a really weird thing for me. I personally think it's too expensive for an MP3 device, and yet folks that I would assume couldn't afford to drop $400 on such an item, have and love it. So there is something to say for Steve Jobs knowing what the people want before they know it. It's still the number one MP3 player in the world.

How would you describe your experience at EA.com?

It was pretty incredible, probably the highlight of my entire computer career. At the same time it's been obviously disappointing. I went from managing six coders, to 23 production people, to 47 front end developers and then down to ZERO for the last year. Amazing. During the same time, two out of two bosses quit, hundreds of employees were laid off, and many others jumped ship. I was honored to be kept on for as long as I was.

The frustrating touch points had to do with execution obviously. Most the folks who were brought on board had never created anything remotely like what we were tasked to design, so it took an enormous amount of effort to get our ducks in a row. By the time we were ready, it was time to throw everything we had created out the door for a fresh start. Instead, the looming deadline to launch in 1/10th the time NASA had to land a man on the moon forced us to take what we had with the hope of making it better at a later day. As with any architecture, you can't rebuild the foundation of a home after you've built the first straw-man (to use a popular EA.com term). The sad thing was that many people worked their asses off and didn't get to reap any rewards besides a few weeks of vacation or severance as the case may be.

How do you think EA fared overall?

It's hard to say anything favorable about EA.com, despite the effort it didn't succeed. The business never existed that we set out to create. Pogo.com is a great offering (that I've even been addicted to at times), but that's all that really remains, and something tells me that if Pogo was forced to sell themselves once, it really raises some serious questions about where they can go from here.

EA Studio I think overall has continued to create the best games in the market. I have faith that games like Earth and Beyond Online will dominate the next generation online gaming. I do hope that EA Redwood Shores (EARS) can get back on their feet and be known for adding to the overall EA offering. It's been difficult watching so many productions get delayed, postponed, or cancelled. EARS employs some incredibly brilliant people that have a lot to offer the gaming world.

Hindsight is 2020, how or what would you have done differently if you ran EA.com?

Wow, that's a huge question. My answer can't help but to follow some very popular takes on the subject. Before I share my perspective, I have to repeat that I think most people devoted their souls to the effort in spite of failing ultimately. So even though I'll give you my take, those responsible for events did their best to get it right.

First hindsight was the AOL carriage agreement. Although it made sense on paper, it was probably the single worst step of the entire project. I think EA would have been better off building a gaming network first, and taking the offering to AOL second. Perhaps AOL would not have been so short-sided to shoot down about every good idea we had.

Second hindsight would be the games. When our goals of developing quick downloading FLASH games fell through due to AOL restrictions and Macromedia's reluctance to sign a custom installer agreement, we were doomed for strategy. Our only alternative was to develop heavy ports of PC games, or Java titles that barely constituted fun. There were a handful of fun titles, but nothing worth paying money for.

Third hindsight would have been to remove the consulting firm that consumed so much of our VC. My personal take on the situation is that the consulting guarantees verses the consulting performance borders on illegal misrepresentation. We had consultants that weren't coders who (despite not being billed to us) still held very critical roles in developing key code for our launch. We were consistently pushed into technologies that lacked high-end functionality and available coders. In the end we soaked up and instantiated so much of their lengthy practices and protocols, that the company could not function without a group meeting every morning, very odd.

Forth hindsight would be rate of growth verses actual revenue. We weren't making any money and yet were spending it like it was falling out of Brinks trucks. How many companies did we buy? And why? Did anyone have a track record? If so, why did we interrupt their success? If not, why did we buy them? I think we would have been better off starting very small and slowly work our way towards profitability. If we were going to buy a company, we needed to be very smart about exactly how we were going to benefit from the purchase. I know you'll hate me saying this, but Apple Computer Company is the best at this strategy. They only buy what they know they can integrate and release within 12 months, more often less.

Fifth and final hindsight which is somewhat related to the AOL agreement, would be the lengthy design process we went through. There were a lot of good ideas on the table from the get-go, some we even returned to after months of deliberation. This was a slam-dunk design effort, which was held up by nearly hundreds of people trying to get their two cents in. This needed to move fast and stay on track. The internet is unforgiving for those who are unwilling to play by it's dynamic fast moving rules.

You're a huge Jesus fan and you have all the Jesus Christ Superstar action figures. Do you think Jesus could cook a burrito so hot that not even he could eat it?

I don't know if you'd call me a fan, I mean, I think he has enough fanatical groupies as it is. I actually met Jesus at a swap meet off highway 169 just outside of Tulsa (where he has a concentrated following), and I saw him cook some Chili that he kept poking and prodding with a little crucifix of himself. When I asked him why he wasn't eating it, he replied, "My Father forbids me from eaten Kick-Yo-Ass Chili, because I put ingredients I imported from a friend of mine Judas." I figured that was my queue, so I pulled up a bowl and had two full helpings. I was crapping demons for a week! So I think the answer to your question is yes, yes he can.

How do you know Brett Downen?

Brett and I met in 1995 at a company called Blyth Software in Foster City. We became friends pretty quick as Brett was always interested in learning new things about programming and using Photoshop. I started showing him odds and ends, and before I knew it he was a webmaster for Blyth. We've worked at three companies now and are actually business partners on the outside with our company TWIN MONOLITH. Yes, I take responsibility for the name of the company. It's a heavy concept that cuts across many endeavors. Lucky for us, Brett's lovely wife is a brilliant accountant, so we've been able to avoid losing our shorts. Brett is a bit of an "Unbreakable" character to me, because he continually scales to meet whatever challenge is thrown his way. Having a similar philosophy myself, we've been able conquer some incredible projects over the years.

Is Brett Downen as hot as some people says he is?

Most definitely!

What is your favorite Tequila?

Patron Gold in a margarita, on the rocks, with salt, and make it a double. Oh, and one for my friend Chad Okada who's going to type in these answers.

How are you spending your free time?

My life has come down to one destiny and some pastimes to make money. I've been studying screenwriting for the last 12 years. Writing very seriously for the last three. I just finished my first film, and I'm moving onto my second which is a collaboration with a childhood idle Syd Mead who is noted for several of my favorite films like Blade Runner, Aliens and TRON. He's been in the business of designing the future for 40 years and over those years he's created hundreds of futuristic "things" that have never been put into a movie before. So I've been working on a screenplay with him over the past couple years, and this month (April 2002) is the month it gets to go into full writing production. The cool side-note is that I get to begin the production house-sitting Syd's place for two weeks while he's in Italy doing a road-show.

I'm also on the hook to create a "making of" DVD of Syd Mead creating a work of art this summer. That will give me some credible experience shooting, editing, and releasing something on film. I've also written and will continue to write some shorts that I plan to film over the summer to begin building a portfolio for entering into competitions and film festivals.

Other than screenwriting, I've been learning some new software (Maya, Lightwave, Final Cut 3.0), and studying how to accomplish all my internet goals using Java instead of Perl. Exciting huh?

I have a music studio which I've been neglecting for the past two dot com years. I've upgraded it a number of times, and now it's time to start cranking out the tunes again. Music software has become so advanced it's even tough for the most technical minds to grasp….just ask Rich Hilleman.

Will we see Mark Lowe at this year's E3?

Probably not. I've never been to one before, but have heard hours and hours of stories. I'm not even sure what the benefit is to an ordinary gamer besides seeing what's new. Fun, yes, is it something that will make you come back and develop better games? Hopefully not, hopefully that comes from within.

What's the future look like for Mark Lowe?

Gosh…if I get my way, my hopes and dreams, it's to get back down to southern California and get into a film production company holding a role in production pipe-lining. I have a goal of directing my written works, and that's going to take time learning the industry first hand and not just reading books and shooting my own features. I have a number of friends in an around the business that I hope to leverage to get the best possible chance of a quick execution.

With the acquisition of Adam Deadmarsh, the Los Angeles Kings should win the Stanley Cup this year. Do you think you are going to move to Los Angeles?

I've got my kidney's crossed!