John Botti This is Me

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1. 1. Black Ops Entertainment

   www.blackops.com/about.html - [Cached]

   Published on: 3/21/2006   Last Visited: 5/15/2008

   John Botti President and CEO
   
   John Botti graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science/EE and Filmmaking from the MIT Media Lab.
   
   John is currently working on the new iPhone | iPod HD-DVD Series, Video Game Jumpstart, an insider's guide to the video game industry: game schools, game jobs, starting the company. videogamejumpstart.com.
   
   John has been creating video games and companies for over 20 years.

2. 2. canadaeast.com - CP Entertainment News

   www.canadaeast.com/apps/pbcs.d - [Cached]

   Published on: 12/17/2003   Last Visited: 12/17/2003

   When John Botti came up with the idea for a bounty hunter video game, he turned to the FBI's most wanted list for inspiration. That was before Sept. 11 but bin Laden was already No. 1 on the fugitive list. So Botti, the 36-year-old president and CEO of Black Ops Entertainment in Santa Monica, Calif., put him in Fugitive Hunter: War on Terror.
   
   The PlayStation 2 title allows gamers to go after 11 terrorists, with the search for bin Laden in mountain caves on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border the game's final battle.
   
   So far, it seems people like beating up on bin Laden.
   
   "We didn't know how it would be taken," Botti said Tuesday. "But we didn't do anything that was inappropriate and I think people like to vent their frustration out on him."
   
   You have to work your way up to bin Laden. First you take on murderers and bank robbers from Miami, a militia group in Utah, a drug cartel in the Caribbean and al-Qaida operatives in France.
   
   Botti, whose twin brother Will is Black Ops' video-president of software development, came up with the idea for the game after graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1990.
   ...
   Botti, who wrote computer games as a hobby while growing up, had hoped to get into the film business after leaving MIT. But when times were lean, he turned back to video games and eventually formed Black Ops in 1994.
   
   Pre-production of Fugitive Hunter started in 1999 and when a team from Blacks Ops finished a James Bond title, Botti put them on the new game in 2000.
   
   So far Fugitive Hunter has done "fairly well," said Botti. "There's a lot of competition right now."
   
   But Black Ops is already pondering a sequel and Botti, proud of the game, finds himself still playing it.
   
   "It's not a game that has a $20-million production budget, but it is a game that has some cool weapons," he said.
   ...
   I'm the last person to do anything defamatory or insulting to my friends and family that live and work in New York," Botti said. "Most of my good friends from MIT or high school work in Wall Street where all that stuff went down."
   
   Today bin Laden is still on the wanted list, with an FBI bounty of $25 million US.
   
   Botti even spoke to the FBI during game production, to make sure Fugitive Hunter would not cause waves by including an al-Qaida component. The bureau had no objections, noting the terrorists had a lot more to worry about than a video game.
   
   Botti compares the production of Fugitive Hunter to that of an independent film. Money was tight so, with an eye to the bottom line, Botti looked for ways to cut costs during game production.
   ...
   But Botti did not skimp when it came to the game's narrator.
   ...
   "It's a game," Botti countered.

3. 3. Xbox Developer: Black Ops Entertainment

   developers.teamxbox.com/compan - [Cached]

   Published on: 9/12/2005   Last Visited: 4/1/2008

   John Botti, President and CEO of Black Ops, is an MIT graduate and prides his company on being headed by gamers.