I’ve designed games for fun since the 1970’s, but didn’t turn pro until 1995 when I was hired as the lead engineer on Tom Clancy’s SSN, a submarine simulator. The success of SSN led to the founding of Red Storm Entertainment. Besides being the creative director at Red Storm, I was also the lead designer and lead engineer on Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six. I followed up the success of Rainbow Six by designing the ground-breaking military shooter Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon.
In 2002 I left Red Storm to join PlayStation’s Santa Monica Studio as a senior game designer. In my 14 years at Sony I guided numerous third-party games through the console development process, including Fat Princess, Warhawk, Sorcery, Escape Plan, Everybody Has Gone to the Rapture, Bound, and Here They Lie. I left Sony in 2016 to go freelance.
I’ve served on the advisory boards of both the NYU and UC Santa Cruz game programs, and I regularly give design talks at universities and conferences. I also write books. In 2015 I published The Aesthetic of Play, exploring the relationship between play, story, and meaning. In 2016, I contributed a chapter on horror game design to Level Design: Processes and Experiences. And I’m currently working on a new book about non-interactive play.
Game On The Rails 