Michael Condrey

Michael Condrey is an American video game developer best known as the co-founder and former studio head of Sledgehammer Games, which he founded with Glen Schofield after their collaboration on the popular video game franchise Dead Space. He was the president of 31st Union, a 2K studio located in Silicon Valley, California.

Career Condrey graduated in 1997 from the University of Washington. The following year, his senior thesis on applying biotechnology to conservation biology was published in the Molecular Ecology . After working as a scuba diving instructor and boat captain in the Cayman Islands, he began work on a graduate degree in Seattle. It was there that he launched his game development career, beginning with a summer job at Electronic Arts (EA) during the peak of Seattle's gaming explosion. Condrey later relocated to Redwood City at the EA-owned studio Visceral Games, where he became studio chief operations officer, as well as senior development director on the 2008 title Dead Space. He also worked on three other successful EA franchises: Need for Speed, FIFA and the James Bond game series. Condrey likened the opportunity to work with Activision and Call of Duty to a baseball player having a call from the New York Yankees or a filmmaker hearing from Steven Spielberg After an initial attempt to create their own Call of Duty title, Condrey and Schofield collaborated with Infinity Ward on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. The game grossed $1 billion in worldwide sales in its first 16 days and took the Best Shooter prize at the 2011 Spike Video Game Awards. The following year, the game was named Game Design of the Year at the Korea Games Conference and won the Global Award from Japan Game Awards 2012 at the Tokyo Game Show.

Condrey and Schofield left their roles at Sledgehammer in February 2018, taking up executive positions within Activision. Condrey subsequently left Activision in December 2018 to help establish a new, 2K Games studio under Take Two Interactive near San Francisco in January 2019. The studio name was announced in February 2020 as 31st Union, along with announcing a second location to open in Spain. In February 2025, Strauss Zelnick, Take-Two CEA, reported to Variety that Condrey had transitioned into an advisory role but remained with the company following 31st Union's community playtest of Project Ethos.

Game credits Game Year Publisher Credit Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit 1998 Electronic Arts Tester FIFA 99 Producer Deer Hunt Challenge 1999 Ultimate Hunt Challenge 2000 Champion Bass The World is Not Enough Producer James Bond 007: Agent Under Fire 2001 James Bond 007: Nightfire 2002 James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing 2004 Director From Russia with Love 2005 Dead Space 2008 Dead Space: Extraction 2009Special Thanks Call of Duty: Black Ops 2010 Activision Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 2011 Director Call of Duty: Black Ops II 2012 Special Thanks Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare 2014 Director Call of Duty: WWII 2017

Industry perspective Condrey has expressed concerns about the industry's focus on the top five blockbuster video game titles, noting that, in 2012, "there are probably 10 games that should qualify" at that tier, leaving the middle space below as a kind of game purgatory. The result, he said, has created more innovation for other platforms, genres and business models, including Apple's iOS operating system, freemium business models and social-network games. "Across the industry," Condrey said in a GamesIndustry International interview, "it's as exciting as I've ever seen it in terms of innovation and trying new things out."