JIM RYAN

PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE, SONY INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT

BY SUSAN BECK (STAFF 18-PRESENT)

Picture this. It’s 2nd of December 2022, and Jim Ryan (68-78) is back in the corridors of RGS after –what seems like a trivial –45 years since he graduated from school on Eskdale Terrace. The faces are different; indeed welcoming our visiting Old Novo back to school is our current Headmaster Geoffrey Stanford, his predecessor, the late Alister Cox, having bid Jim farewell in 1978, but – as Jim points out – the main buildings still look the same and he whispers to me ‘the old place definitely still has the same energy, the same vibe’.

Jim seems to be oblivious to the trail of doe-eyed boys and girls, (not so subtly) following us around the main hall, hovering under Lord Collingwood’s portrait and skulking behind the organ, desperate to grab an autograph in their school planner, or a selfie with ‘Mr PlayStation’. It doesn’t hurt that Jim has also brought with him various PlayStation goodies to distribute. Jim has just delivered an assembly, the students rewarding his talk with whoops and cheers –admittedly on a completely different level to the polite applause our guest speakers usually receive – and there’s real excitement that he’ll be in school all day. I, of course am not immune to the impact Jim’s presence is having on the students, especially Max, currently in Year 8 (2nd Form in ‘old money’…) who is a keen Computer Scientist and about to combust with excitement at the feet of his hero. As Max poses for a photo with his idol, the delighted look on both their faces makes me realise that Jim may just be reliving a day as 13 year-old ‘Jimmy’ (James George) Ryan, as well as giving Max and his peers a day in school they’ll never forget.

So how did this all come about?

In casual conversation, Robert Newton (68-78), mentioned that his old school mate was ‘running’ PlayStation. A quick check in the school Archives, followed by some unsophisticated googling, confirmed that little Jimmy from Kenton is indeed leading one of the coolest brands in the world.

Notoriously private, other than the expected corporate press interviews –understandably sanitised, given the commercial sensitivities of the gaming industry –there’s very little public information about him. Indeed, given he’s one of the biggest names in tech, it was initially surprising that he shuns social media – less so when I got to know the man –so I genuinely had no idea if Jim would even reply to my initial contact. Jim shocked us with an immediate and incredibly warm response, not only agreeing to be interviewed by two students – Senior Prefects Taylor Hannant and Evie Tate – but also offering to spend a whole day in school. None of us could believe our luck, especially Evie and Taylor, who I genuinely think had what will turn out to be the best day of their RGS career, thoroughly enjoying getting to know one of our most successful ONs.

Above: Jim with Taylor H and Evie T

Below: Jim with his superfan Max!

The interview couldn’t have started better with Jim immediately putting our very excited but nervous students at ease, demonstrating a gentle manner which carried on into his day in school. As the father of teenage daughters Jim was an absolute natural with the students, though he left no doubt that his corporate mind is razor blade sharp, and I can imagine he’s a fierce negotiator in the Boardroom. Jim was accommodating of our students’ questions, generous with his unguarded insight into his world, and genuinely interested in their perspective of school life. Jim shared with us his journey from Eskdale Terrace to Sony IE, having left RGS alongside Paul Brown (73-78) and Alastair Wolf (71-78), the winners of the BBC Young Scientist of the Year, for their work on the RGS hovercraft sprayer invention. Not yet a tech expert (though perhaps Brown and Wolf’s inventive flair had some unconscious influence) Jim left RGS with A Levels, the Eldon House Cricket Trophy and a Governors’ Leaving Exhibition Award and headed to Manchester to read Mathematics and Languages. On graduating he joined Ford, which was followed by a brief stint at Amstrad, then Oracle and then in 1994 on to the newly created Sony Interactive Entertainment. Jim rose through the ranks of the business and in April 2019 he progressed from Head of Global Sales and Marketing, to Global President and CEO. Perhaps most notably Jim has been instrumental in the success of the company’s PlayStation, including the latest, PS5, which despite its challenging launch in the middle of a global pandemic, is the fastest selling games console, which has just reached sales of more than 30 million units.

Here’s just some of the amazing insight he shared with Taylor and Evie:

Taylor: What are your stand out memories of RGS? Is there anything that you learned here that has helped you at Sony IE?

There was this old teacher called ‘Stoker’ (Laurence Meakin, Staff 31-74). He taught Geography and he was about 100 years old. Or at least he seemed that to me. We were having a really terrible Geography class during which he tried to introduce to his teaching the very latest technology: acetates on an overhead projector. He couldn’t make it work and kept getting it wrong; they’d be upside down or back to front. One of my mates at the back shouted ‘Stoker, you’re c**p!’ to which Stoker said a defeated ‘I know, I just can’t get this damn thing to work’ and on he struggled.

Then a number of years later, I was doing my driving test in Gosforth and very nervously stopped to attempt a three point turn, and who should I see doddering along the road but Stoker?

My attention wavered as I felt regret about our amusement with his own struggles under pressure. I did pass the test, but it taught me real empathy.

There was a teacher called Alan Hall (Staff until 2000) who taught languages. A very shy, diffident man but in my opinion a great man and teacher, and from him I developed a love of languages that has endured. What I’ve taken from Alan and indeed all my RGS days is to give everything your best shot, and not leave anything unfinished. Put everything out there, your heart and soul, and great things can happen.

Evie: How was your transition from the close knit community of RGS in to the wider world? Is there anything that you miss about RGS and being back in Newcastle?

RGS is a wonderful community and my friends are the ones that I made at RGS, which I think is quite something, given it’s been 45 years. I don’t keep in touch with people from university nor many I met in my career. But I do keep in touch with people from the RGS and we get together, we drink too much and we talk about the old days. Though it’s getting harder because we’re all increasingly deaf and when we meet in the pub, we’re all jockeying for position so our good ear is closer enough to hear the conversation. It’s like some bizarre dance.

I miss Newcastle a lot. I still consider Newcastle to be ‘home’ and could leave

London tomorrow. I get back to Newcastle from time to time and always look forward to the train crossing the Tyne and seeing the bridges. It’s difficult to articulate but I find it really moving.

You get off at the Central Station and you know you’re home. People are just nicer, they talk to you and they’re interested and they’re not looking to score something. At 63 years I still consider it home and that’s not going to change, it’s great up there and I owe the region a lot.

Taylor: It’s been an incredible journey, how on earth did it start?

I am a finance person, so after graduating my degree in 1982 I joined Ford Motor Company, which was a very good place to learn positive habits and great workplace behaviours. They just did things in a kind of unspectacular manner, but in a very proper way. After a brief spell at Amstrad with Alan Sugar, which was hilarious, I went to Oracle Systems. They made me redundant in ’94 so I was looking for a job and I took the first thing that came along which just happened to be PlayStation.

I think in any of these things, there’s always a degree of luck. I joined the year before PS1 launched. I didn’t know whether the thing was going to be good, bad or laughable and it obviously ended up a huge success and I was to an extent in the right place at the right time, but I applied myself and made it happen.

My job then was to set up the businesses in continental Europe because there was nothing. Back then PlayStation didn’t exist, there were no people there, no companies, and I had to form the businesses, hire people, find offices. It was real start-up stuff.

It’s just grown from there and my journey has been one of incremental progressions, and that tends to be how life is. When you’re young you might expect that success is when something really big or an amazing opportunity happens, but quite often it’s just small wins over many years, working hard and learning along the way.

Evie: What excites you about the gaming industry?

Obviously the gaming industry is a very cool place to work and PlayStation is one of the coolest brands in the world. I mean have you seen the new God of War ads?

The Last of Us is such a beautiful game, Horizon Zero Dawn is just gorgeous to watch with a lovely narrative.

Jim, Taylor and Evie go on to talk about their favourite games, and it’s clear that Jim is not just the ‘finance guy’ but genuinely loves all aspects of gaming. Eventually Jim asks for a reminder of the question…

Where was I? You know it’s just a cool brand, a cool product and it’s just a great place to work. The people tend to be either young in age or young in spirit and young of heart. It’s fast-paced. It’s international. I love it. I know the studios we work with really well, and I like hanging out with them.

Taylor: Which element of the business do you really enjoy?

I like the business, entrepreneurial stuff, the start-up, the recruiting, the working with the studios, the creative elements, the tech challenge and the sales. I like it all and it’s the diversity of the business which is one of its great attractions. For me it’s primarily the privilege of being able to work with really great people.

Evie: I am sure there are a lot, but is there one proudest moment that really sticks with you as the CEO?

Without doubt launching PlayStation 5 in 2020, in a global lockdown.

Pre lockdown, I was spending two weeks in California, a week in Tokyo and a week in London every month. It was really difficult. It sounds great but I lived my life in a fog of jet lag, grumpiness and disorientation.

Then in March 2020 I had to take the decision to close the offices, yet we had six months to launch this new product everyone had worked so hard to create. We couldn’t build the consoles, the games weren’t finished, the marketing teams weren’t ready. 10,000 staff were working from their homes and flats. I had to put on a brave face to the world, saying this is going to be tough but let’s just roll up our sleeves and get on with it and we can do this. Of course I was terrified and had no idea if it could be done. The launch wasn’t flawless, but not far off.

Sitting at this table –which is my dining table and was my workplace for six months – and having the largest and most important product launch in Sony’s history, was very tough and overnight we had to learn new ways of working.

My work patterns became very different, changes which persist now because I don’t travel as much, now that I know so much travel was unnecessary. I get up very early and I work from 6:30am to 10:30am in order to work with Tokyo, and then I break for sleep, to eat and to walk. Then I start work at 3pm in the afternoon to work with California, and I go through to 7:30pm. And then I stop.

Taylor: PlayStation has provided so much entertainment, I know a lot of my friends and I stayed sane through lockdown by interacting over PS5. What is your personal favourite experience with SIE’s products outside of work life? Just meeting people like you who actually enjoy what we do. It always makes me very humble. I also enjoy the party culture and I’ve met famous people from within the gaming industry or well known musicians or famous movie stars who like PlayStation, like gaming, which is always fun.

Is that your objective when creating PlayStation and its games, to reunite people of all ages?

It also gives me a kick that the people who bought the first PlayStations have stayed with us. They were probably mid 20s then, and will now be in their mid to late 50s. And millions of them have stayed with and are now gaming with their grandkids. I love that we have inter-generational fans and our product connects people.

Having been able to excite people across multiple axes – age, gender, geographies –has been great. We’re a very global business, having content that appeals in Japan, which appeals in the US, and we’ve built a huge business in the Middle East, localising what we do into Arabic, which was very, very radical and actually very difficult from an engineering perspective. We’re enduring in Europe, the business that I built before becoming Global CEO, which is our heartland. In Italy, Germany, France – to treat these as country specific communities is really important.

Evie: Where do you draw your talent from and is there any connection that you have with the North East tech community?

We’ve got somewhere between 10 and 11,000 employees, probably about half in the US, quarter in the Europe including the UK and the final quarter in Japan. The North East has had a couple of development studios over the years but there is no conscious ties with any one region. With the focus on software technology, links to the West Coast of America are very important, for proximity and access to Google and Amazon and Microsoft. We actually moved headquarters from Tokyo to California, which was a very big, traumatic thing for Sony, which is obviously Japanese. But being close to big tech, and Hollywood, is important.

Taylor: How do you believe your leadership style can be defined?

I tend to think these things are actually very simple. Three things; just do your best, that’s all I can ever ask of anybody or of myself. And you know, sometimes even for me I do my best, and for reasons completely outside of my control it doesn’t work or it’s not good enough. But it doesn’t matter, if you do your best the people around you will respect that.

I think the other thing that’s really important is just to enjoy yourself. I am not a fan of anyone working ridiculous hours and working weekends. You know you’ve got one life. ‘Work hard, play hard’ is very hard, it’s an equilibrium and many people work too hard and don’t play enough. The balance matters.

Finally, conduct yourself properly. Don’t lie. Don’t play politics. Don’t seek to advance yourself at the expense of others. Bring everyone with you instead of leaving anyone behind.

I think some of these values were definitely family driven, but I think the RGS, without question, gave me a superb grounding in my thinking about life, about what achievement actually means, what it requires and what achievement demands. Not only my friends persist from the RGS, but also these values that I learned at school, and which have transcended my early years, University and working life.

We ended our time with Jim with a fascinating chat which included banter about NUFC, favourite biscuits, cats versus dogs, Sixth Form dress code and nightlife venues in Newcastle. Towards the end of our long day together, I could increasingly hear Jim’s Geordie twang make a shy appearance every now and then, and I am reminded that this most successful, impressive – but perhaps most importantly – most humble of Old Novos, is indelibly of great Newcastle stock. How proud we are to watch his continued success.