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Entrepreneurial alumnus drives game business
A fading sign on an old car-repair shop gave NC State alumnus John O’Neill an idea that changed his life. It said, "spark plugs."
It was soon after seeing those words that O’Neill, a 1996 computer science graduate, founded Spark
Plug Games, a Raleigh company that’s since collaborated on a teaching game for IBM and is developing products Nintendo’s Wii and other gaming consoles. The startup bolsters the Triangle’s reputation as one of the top game-development centers in the country.
For O’Neill, a gaming industry veteran, starting the new company was a shot in the arm. He’d been in-and-out of the gaming industry for years and wanted a chance to build his own company with its own culture.
"I wanted to start making fun games again," he said.
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John O’Neill, founder of
Spark Plug Games
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O’Neill
began his gaming industry career in 1994 when he was still
at NC State. He took a job at MicroProse, where he worked on
the popular Civilization II strategy game and built relationships
with industry leaders and hardware vendors. He left the industry
for several years before returning to work for Vicious Cycle
Software, a Chapel Hill company formed by former MicroProse
employees.
The years away from the industry helped O’Neill gain some perspective. Like other
game developers, he began to have trouble balancing a new family with the long
hours and intense dedication required to work at a bigger game company. The idea
of a company where employees could work in small groups while also having the
time and energy for other things in life stuck with him.
O’Neill was walking in downtown Raleigh one day when he came across an old automobile
shop with the words "spark plugs" on the sign. He was struck by how
the fading letters had held up over the years, and began to think about what
they represented.
"I did some research to see if anybody was using the name ‘Spark Plug Games’
yet," he said. "Luckily for us, no one was using it. From that day
on, I kept thinking, ‘This company is something that I really think could happen.’"
It did.
In January 2008, Spark Plug Games set up shop in a downtown warehouse. The office
is located a block away from the sign that gave the company its name and next-door
to Center Line Productions, Spark Plug’s parent company.
"We wanted to leap-frog the start-up phase, and become a valid company right
away," O’Neill said. "Having Center Line’s 12-year track record allowed
me to concentrate on video games without having to worry about establishing the
validity of the company."
The company has found some early success working alongside Center Line in the
development of Innov8, a so-called "serious game" used by IBM to help
train MBA students in business process management. The idea has garnered a lot
of attention for IBM, including feature
story in Business Week magazine.
Now Spark Plug is working on projects for several gaming consoles, including
the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii, and hopes to soon develop games for others, such
as the Playstation 3. The company has just five employees now, and O’Neill said
it would try to stay small.
"We don’t want to become a gigantic game company," O’Neill said. "We
want to keep to keep the small team sizes that allow our programmers to have
more freedom and creativity in their games. We don’t want to ever grow any larger
than approximately 30 people."
O’Neill said that his education at NC State was influential to his career and
was glad to hear that the Department of Computer Science had recently added a
game development concentration to its undergraduate curriculum.
Perhaps some of those students will work for O’Neill some day. If they do, they’ll
work with a guy who likes having fun on the job. His profile at the company’s
Web site, which features a bearded O’Neill grinning into the camera, speaks to
that.
"John is available for personal training in the art of ‘perfect beard growing’
on Mondays and Thursdays," the profile reads. "Call for prices."
Photo courtesy of Spark Plug Games.
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