16 Facts About Rod Fergusson

Rod Fergusson is a Canadian video game producer, best known for overseeing the development of the Gears of War franchise, originally at Epic Games and then as head of The Coalition.

Rod Fergusson grew up in Ontario, Canada, and while he had an interest in video games, he thought the industry was too far out of reach for him, though he had programmed his own multi-user dungeon .

Rod Fergusson started his career in 1996 at Microsoft, initially as part of its consulting services providing technical support to enterprise customers with Microsoft Solutions Framework before moving into the Redmond campus directly.

Rod Fergusson joined Microsoft's internal simulations group, later renamed to Aces Game Studio, where one of the first projects he worked on was Microsoft Train Simulator alongside Kuju Entertainment.

Rod Fergusson helped to bring the multiplayer game to the Xbox by 2003, and assisted in setting pace for the single-player Counter-Strike: Condition Zero to be completed by 2003, though ultimately, Valve dropped much of Ritual's work and had the single-player game reworked by Turtle Rock Studios.

Related searches

In early 2005, Fergusson was introduced to the upcoming Gears of War from Epic Games, targeted for Microsoft's new Xbox 360 console.

Fergusson discussed the situation with Microsoft where it was determined the best route would be for him to quit Microsoft and join Epic in a full-time capacity to help get Gears back on track, and by July 2005, Fergusson was working at Epic as an executive producer and helping to get the game ready for release over the next 18 months.

Rod Fergusson had gained a reputation from his days at Microsoft and Epic as a "closer", a management-level position that would help bring a troubled project to completion.

Rod Fergusson was brought into this same role at Irrational as to assist the game's lead, Ken Levine, to make tough decisions on what content and gameplay that they needed to cut as to deliver the game following nearly a decade of development.

Rod Fergusson said that he found himself enjoying helping to close out the development cycle of games.

In September 2013, Rod Fergusson had been tapped to lead an upcoming new studio under 2K Games in the San Francisco area.

Rod Fergusson later identified this studio as Hangar 13 and had been working on Mafia III.

Rod Fergusson decided to leave due to having creative differences with the senior management at 2K.

Rod Fergusson heard of this and contacted Microsoft, eager to work on the series again.

The last two games shifted the main character and setting for the game, which Rod Fergusson said was meant to be comparable to the contrast between Tim Burton's and Christopher Nolan's Batman films.

Rod Fergusson left the Coalition in February 2020, moving over to Blizzard Entertainment to oversee development of the Diablo series.