User:Mbrandsma

Michael Jeffrey Brandsma ("Mike") was born in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania in September, 1968 to Anne Fortuin Brandsma and Dr. Jeffrey Melvin Brandsma. His father Jeffrey Melvin Brandsma was in graduate school at the Pennsylvania State University at the time. In 1970 the small family moved to Madison, Wisconsin. In 1972 they moved to Lexington, Kentucky. In 1981 they moved to Augusta, Georgia where most of Mike's primary education occurred.

After graduating from Aquinas High School in Augusta he attended Presbyterian College in Clinton, South Carolina where he met his wife June Elizabeth Conyers. When she graduated in 1988, Mike transferred to Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. Upon graduation from his bachelor's degree in Clinical Psychology, he moved to Atlanta, Georgia to wait tables and wait for the start of his Masters degree program at Augusta College (now Augusta State University) back in Augusta. He was married to June Elizabeth Conyers on December 12, 1992. After graduating with a Masters of Science in Clinical Psychology in 1994 he worked a few years at random jobs as a clinician in the CSRA and then moved to Athens, Georgia where he eventually worked as an Academic Adviser with the University of Georgia at the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.

While working at UGA, Mike was starting to get into interactive gaming specific to MMO types games that were gaining popularity on AOL in 1998. Eventually he interviewed with Kesmai Studios in Charlottesville, VA. Mike started in the games industry as an AOL volunteer staff member for the Games channel. His game was Air Warrior. He played through AW2 and prior to the launch of AW3, his studio mentor, Gary "Moggy" Cooper, was offered an associate producer job for the next game in the Air Warrior series: Air Warrior: Vietnam. Mike agreed to leave his job at the University of Georgia to work as Product Support Lead in Virginia.

Soon after joining Kesmai (about a year), Electronic Arts purchased the studio from News Corps with plans on absorbing the AOL games channel contract and fleshing out its online service offerings. Mike and his colleagues including Jay Blincoe interviewed and hired over 20 people to establish the EAVA call center in Charlottesville, VA.

When Origin support and EAVA support started to mix, Mike was recruited by Scott Mattson to relocate to Austin and establish support for Motor City Online in the call center there. Eventually, Mike did the same thing with Maxis for The Sims: Online. When Origin was closed Mike was offered, and accepted, relocation to Redwood Shores where he works today (7/7/06).

In 2004, Mike was tasked with contacting and developing relationships with every EA studio to represent the interests of Customer Support. Under the supervision of Boyd Beasley, Mike provides insight from the customer and CS perspectives for developers using the EA online platform. Additionally, he has worked with multiple people at EA to evangelize the importance of including a support perspective as early as the pre-production phase.

In June of 2007, Mike joined the EA Online Studio under Steven "Mick" Giles. With this assignment came a relocation back to Atlanta, Georgia and work on a new project creating quick-to-market websites for studios requiring a web portal to act as a starting point for their franchises. Mike worked directly with DICE on Battlefield Heroes, Phenomic with Battleforge, BioWare with Dragon Age, and others. Adding a commerce component to the web presentation layer added new experience for Mike that was in-line with what he was monitoring from his Customer Support assignment. Currently, Mike reports to Joe Black under Jacob Shen in EA's Global Online Publishing division.

In November of 2009, EA closed its Atlanta office and performed a company-wide 40% reduction in force, Mike wasn't spared during this go around. After a short stint with an interactive web agency in Smyrna, GA he found work in September of 2010 as Director of Product Management for Sciplay, a Joint Venture company between Scientific Games of Atlanta and Playtech of Tel Aviv. His professional pursuits during this phase of his career focus on getting lottery customers into the next generation of gaming products on the internet.