John Smedley formerly was a computer game programmer, Product Development Director and is now President of Sony Online Entertainment since 2002.
Smedley was born August 27, 1968. He became heavily involved in table-top RPGS such as Dungeons & Dragons, which would later give him the ideas forEverquest. He attended Mt. Carmel High School in San Diego, California, before graduating and attending San Diego State University.
Smedley was involved with the creation and development of the original EverQuest, and was co-founder of Verant Interactive, Inc., which became Sony Online Entertainment, Inc. (SOE) after it was purchased by Sony Pictures Entertainment in 2000.
In 2007, he announced a change in direction for Sony Online Entertainment, including a broadening of business models beyond the subscription model and pursuing female consumers to balance their audience, which was 85% male at the time.
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“You are at your very best when things are worst.”
—Raynold Gideon, U.S. screenwriter, and John Carpenter. Starman (Jeff Bridges)
“Professors could silence me then; they had figures, diagrams, maps, books.... I was learning that books and diagrams can be evil things if they deaden the mind of man and make him blind or cynical before subjection of any kind.”
—Agnes Smedley (1890–1950)