Tom Frisina

Adjunct Faculty

213.821.2515

LUC 310B

Vice President and General Manager, EA Partners, Tom Frisina's course provides preparation for successful careers in interactive entertainment, covering a range of business and legal issues, including an overview of current business models in games and interactive media, methods for pitching and getting products funded, legal issues pertaining to copyright and intellectual property issues, production management techniques, as well as business start-up nuts and bolts for aspiring entrepreneurs.

Joining EA in 1997 as Vice President of EA's affiliated label business, then called EA Distribution, Frisina has worked on such titles as Battlefield 1942, Black and White 2, SSX Tricky, Madden NFL 2002, and The Simpsons: Road Rage. He was chartered with taking EAD from a distribution business into a world class third party interactive publisher and was responsible for bringing the Bond, Medal of Honor, Battlefield, Valve Half-Life Distribution, Lord of the Rings, and Crysis franchises to EA. EA Partners today continues in this pursuit of nurturing and capturing other developers‚ creativity, adding these valuable commodities to EA's growing list of franchise assets. As General Manager of this combined Studio and Business Development Group, he has the opportunity to affect both business deal structures and product quality in the most unique manner within all of EA. Through June of 2006, EA Partners has delivered 27 titles on a variety of hand-held, console, PC and large, multi-player based content connections.

Trained as a symphony conductor, Frisina spent three years spying for the U.S. government in the late 60's. In 1970 he began his business career in the consumer audio business working on brand names like JBL, Infinity & Harman-Kardon. Before joining EA Partners, Frisina had an interactive entertainment-consulting firm with clientele including Hasbro, Softbank Japan, Empire Interactive, and subsidiaries of 3DO and Activision.