Former EA creative director Rich Hilleman joins Amazon Game Studios

Richard Hilleman, the former chief creative director at Electronic Arts, announced today that he is joining Amazon Game Studios.

Hilleman had a long career at EA, starting there in 1982 as its 39th employee in the year it was founded. He went on to work on seminal titles such as the original Madden NFL Football game, which is part of a series that has generated billions of dollars for EA. He also helped establish EA Sports as the top video game brand for sports games.

In a posting on Facebook, Hilleman said, “Many of you wished me well in mid-May as I left EA. Some of you wanted to know what I was going to do next. It’s time to use these hands again. Today I join a number of old friends, and some new ones as part of Amazon’s Game Studios. I will be doing a number of things you will recognize, and some new things that will surprise you. I can’t wait until you see some of it. John Lee didn’t fade away, and I won’t either.”

He left EA in May of this year.

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.