Art of Video Games – Advisory Group

Editor – Scroll Magazine

Ray has been a longtime devotee to video games of all stripes. His personal interests lie with classic games of the ’80s and ’90s and international game culture, which nicely dovetails into his appearances on 1UP’s Retronauts podcast and producing related features. He has been writing about video games professionally since 2002.

Ray recently launched his new magazine, “Scroll”.

Thoughts:

What best visually represents a leap in computer technology? A bulky old computer versus a sleek iPad, maybe? Not to me — rather, it’s the difference between an NES and PlayStation 3 game. It’s bold, it’s obvious, and that kind of contrast is exactly the kind of thing that keeps me interested in the industry. To have the opportunity to help illustrate and celebrate that in an elaborate exhibit like nothing else before it, along with bringing in participation from the public, is too exciting to pass up.

CEO – Instant Action Inc.

Louis Castle is the co-founder of Westwood Studios, former VP of Creative Development for Electronic Arts and serves as the CEO of Instant Action Inc. an IAC (IACI) company. Castle served as CEO, COO, and CFO, growing Westwood from 2 to over 250 staff. He contributed as executive producer, creative director, technical director, programmer and artist to over 100 games, most recently collaborating with Steven Spielberg to create the award winning game franchise, BOOM BLOX.

Louis is the second individual honored with the Game Developer Associations lifetime achievement award (1999) and serves as an outside director for Shuffle Master, (SHFL).

Vice President of Business Development – Foundation 9 Entertainment

Recently ranked #5 worldwide in total impact at retail by Develop Magazine, Foundation 9 is the largest independent game developer in the world. As VP, Charla oversees all aspects of concept and client relationship development at Foundation 9. Prior to selling out and becoming a “suit,” Chris was an Executive Producer and part of the team that created multiple successful IPs and game concepts for Backbone Entertainment, an F9E studio. In his previous career, he was editor-in-chief of Next Generation magazine and launch editor of top game site IGN.com. In his spare time he writes at www.incrediblystrangegames.com, builds little robots and watches an enormous amount of IndyCar and F1 racing.

Thoughts:

What I love about this effort is the focus on games as art. Not games inspiring art, not the art we create to help games, but games themselves as artifacts of the creative spirit. The notion of taking 4 core genres and exploring their evolution as technology has advanced, and presenting those games with historical context is amazing. To truly understand Picasso’s Guernica, it helps to understand the Spanish Civil War, or at least have that context. In the same way, Missile Command is much better appreciated as a work of art created in a specific time and place when one has the context of the Cold War era to help frame it. Just as the printing press enabled the novel as a new art form, computers enabled the development of interactive art. This exhibition, which will help create definitive context for a collection of seminal game art works, is an important cultural milestone as society embraces the art enabled by the rise of digital computers.

News Editor – 1UP.com

Frank Cifaldi is a videogame historian and journalist currently working as the news editor for consumer website 1UP.com. Prior to that he worked as the editorial manager of the GameTap games-on-demand service and the features editor of Gamasutra.

Founder – FigurePrints

Ed Fries created his first video games for the Atari 800 in the early 1980s. He joined Microsoft in 1986, and spent the next ten years as one of the founding developers of both Excel and Word. He left the Office team to pursue his passion for interactive entertainment and created Microsoft Game Studios. Over the next eight years he grew the team from 50 people to over 1200, published more than 100 games including more than a dozen million+ sellers, co-founded the Xbox project, and made Microsoft one of the leaders in the interactive entertainment business. In 2004, Ed retired from his Microsoft Vice President job to continue his work in the video game business as board member, advisor and consultant to a broad range of publishers, independent game developers, and media companies. In 2007 Ed launched his own startup, FigurePrints, an innovative company that uses 3D color printing technology to bring video game characters to life.

Thoughts:

In the last 40+ years we have seen the emergence of a new art form that has arguably had more impact on society than any to come before it. Today most people in the industrialized world interact with digital entertainment of some kind on a daily basis. Where did this new art form come from and where might it take us in the future? Those are the interesting questions to me that this exhibition will address.

Founder – G1M2

Scott Hawkins is an interactive entertainment industry veteran that has designed, developed, or produced more than 100 games. Scott is the Founder of G1M2, an independent game development studio and interactive entertainment consulting firm. Before his current position at G1M2, he was an Executive Producer at Vivendi Games, Scott co-founded two game developers including Sneaky Rabbit Studios and CodeFire, and he worked for SEGA for more than 10 years. Prior to his time at SEGA, Scott started in the interactive entertainment industry in 1993 as a Research Programmer at Panasonic’s speech recognition group. He was one of the founding members of the organizing committees for the Los Angeles and Orange County chapters of the IGDA and he was an adjunct professor at California State University, Fullerton teaching Technical Project Management. Scott has a Bachelors of Science degree in Computer Science from the College of Engineering at UC Santa Barbara.

Thoughts:

I am extremely excited about the upcoming video games exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Video games have been an important part of my life since I was very young. For example, growing up pizza was my favorite food because pizza parlors would always have arcade games. It is amazing to think how far games have come over the past four decades (and how games will continue to evolve in the future). Having an exhibition where people can see the transition from early games from the 70’s to console games of the 80’s and 90’s to modern gaming of the present and beyond at a major institution like the Smithsonian American Art Museum is an amazing accomplishment for the interactive entertainment industry. Games have a significant effect on our lives, they influence popular culture, create trends, introduce new ways to interact with others, and they entertain people all over the world. Video games are not just kid’s play and this exhibition is an important event that people of all ages should attend.

Co-Founders, Penny-Arcade

Penny Arcade itself began in 1998 when high school friends and life-long gamers Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik began to pen the webcomic, which featured two semi-autobiographical gamers who joked, argued and swooned over all things gaming.

As well as drawing over 100,000 game-positive geeks to the events in Seattle, Washington and now Boston, Mass. every year, the duo created the Child’s Play charity in 2003, leveraging their 3.5 million reader fanbase to help support children’s hospitals with games, toys and cash.

Thoughts:

The preservation and exhibition of game art is absolutely crucial, and the speed of its evolution makes this charge even more dire. The danger this medium faces is that its immediacy – its now-ness – risks an historical assessment on the part of outside observers as well as proponents. This exhibit, and its incredible cultural visibility at the Smithsonian, is a rite of passage.

Editor – Wired.com’s Game|Life

Chris Kohler (me) has been writing, talking and generally thinking too hard about videogames for the past couple of decades.

I have written about games for Wired.com and Wired magazine since 2002 and am the editor of Wired.com’s videogames blog Game|Life.

I am the author of two books on games: Power-Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life (Brady) and Retro Gaming Hacks (O’Reilly).

I can often be found talking about classic games on 1up.com’s Retronauts podcast.

If you put me in front of a crowd of people for an hour, I will entertain them by talking about videogames. I have moderated and appeared on panels at events like DICE, Penny Arcade Expo and the SF MusicTech Summit.

I began my foray into writing about games with Video Zone, a fanzine that I self-published during high school and college. Since then, my writing has appeared in publications such as Wired, Animerica, Electronic Gaming Monthly, and Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine and around the web on Wired.com, IGN, Gamespot, 1up.com, Gamasutra, GameSpy, and way too many others.

Thoughts:

I love visiting galleries of visual art inspired by videogames, or concerts of game music, but to some extent these miss the point. Videogames are not just delivery mechanisms for established art forms, they are art themselves. That’s why I’m thrilled to be a part of this groundbreaking exhibition.

CEO – 38 Studios

BIO FORTHCOMING

VP of Game Design – Playdom

It’s hard to have a serious conversation about gaming without mention of Steve. It’s also hard to have a humorous conversation about gaming without mention of him. Steve’s contributions to the industry began in 1981 at the legendary adventure game company Infocom, where his titles included Planetfall, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (a collaboration with Douglas Adams), Leather Goddesses of Phobos and Zork Zero. Prior to joining Playdom, Steve co-founded Boffo Games and held senior creative posts at Blue Fang Games, Floodgate Entertainment and WorldWinner.com. Over his prolific career, Steve also consulted with teams at Activision, Blizzard, Disney, EA, Harmonix, Hasbro and Legend, to name a few. A former board member of IGDA, Steve is co-organizer of the Social and Online Games Summit at the GDC, and of the annual Game Designers Workshop. Steve holds a BS in construction project management from MIT, but otherwise assures us that he did not waste his four years there.

Thoughts:

Electronic games are not only one of the most widely experienced art forms of the 21st century, they are perhaps the most challenging to create — because they include all the challenges of other audio-visual art forms, and then greatly increase the complexity by requiring the work to be interactive and, in most cases, a non-linear experience. It is becoming clear that fully understanding the possibilities of this new art form will take lifetimes, but even in its infancy, the promise of electronic games is quite evident. I see this exhibit as both a celebration of the meaningful experiences that games are already delivering, and a way to anticipate the greater heights that lie in the future.

Head of Development – Other Ocean

Mike Mika has been developing games for nearly twenty years. He has worked with some of the biggest properties in the game and movie industry, managed studios and developed award winning original IP. He has run the gambit of roles, from engineer, to animator, to writer. Most of his career was spent with Foundation 9, where he was Studio Head for Backbone Entertainment – running day to day operations as well as spearheading the creative and business development of the company. From there he went on to help launch ngmoco:) with some of the industry’s top talent, and is a prominent figure in the preservation of videogame history. He’s shipped games for every platform since the original Game Boy, and still enjoys writing games in his spare time. In total, he has shipped more than 120 games throughout his prolific career.

Mike also has one of the largest, as well as most unique, gaming collections in North America and contributes his time to various groups and magazines to further the cause of game preservation and documenting the history of videogames and their impact on society. Mike has also spearheaded many of the classic game collections that have been re-issued on consoles over the years, as well as led the development of the re-imagining of several classic videogame franchises.

Thoughts:

With this exhibition, video games officially move from “fad” status to serious studies. Having the Smithsonian American Art Museum recognize not only the importance and value of games as an entertainment medium, but to see past the outward face of teenage indulgence and see their impact on society and that they, as moments in time, captured the fears, joys and concerns of society in the last few decades is amazing. I’m honored to be a part of this groundbreaking exhibit and plan to contribute everything I can to further the study and preservation of one of the greatest artistic mediums of all time.

Group General Manager, BioWare Group and Senior Vice President, Electronic Arts, and Co-founder and CEO, BioWare

Dr. Ray Muzyka is the Group General Manager of the BioWare Group and Senior Vice President of BioWare’s parent company, Electronic Arts. The BioWare Studio Group of EA includes BioWare studios in Edmonton, Austin, Montreal, and Mythic (based in Fairfax, Virginia).

Ray co-founded the award-winning development studio BioWare in 1995 with Dr. Greg Zeschuk. Ray and Greg operated BioWare successfully for 10+ years, leading to a private equity investment by Elevation Partners in 2005; BioWare was then acquired by Electronic Arts in 2007. BioWare’s games include the Baldur’s Gate series, Shattered Steel, MDK2, Neverwinter Nights, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire, Mass Effect, Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood and the dark fantasy epic Dragon Age: Origins, as well as the acclaimed sequel to 2007’s Game of the Year, Mass Effect 2.

BioWare, respected industry-wide for its high quality, emotionally engaging and rich, deep cinematic games, has numerous highly anticipated upcoming titles including Star Wars: The Old Republic, a story-rich massively multiplayer online (MMO) title in development at BioWare Austin, in collaboration with partner LucasArts.

Director of Content Strategy, Intel
Kim is Director of Content for Intel’s Visual Computing Group. He’s been involved in the games industry for over fifteen years with companies like Intel, Microsoft and Matrox. He’s a contributor to numerous print and web publications and speaks regularly at game industry conferences. He also blogs at www.kimpallister.com

Thoughts:

It is always important that we reflect upon and celebrate art. The games here celebrate some of the first significant works in forging a new medium – something we only see every fifty years at best. It’s especially important that people understand how the games changed and evolved along with the pace of the technology upon which they were crafted and played. It is important people get to see how the games evolved as the artists were given and evolving palette and canvas year upon year.

CEO – GaiKai, Inc.

David Perry was the Founder & President Shiny Entertainment, Inc. for over 12 years (bought by Atari), he’s one of the best known Video Game Industry veterans.

Over 29 years, Perry has developed or programmed over 100 games across 29 video game platforms. All told, Perry’s games (including #1 Hits like The Terminator, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Disney’s Aladdin & Warner’s Matrix projects) have totaled over a billion dollars in retail sales.

Perry sits on the Advisory Board of the Game Developers Conference, Indiecade, VGEXPO, and has spoken at TED, E3, Hollywood and Games Summit, CGDC, MIT, USC, UCI, UCLA, QUB, Montreal Game Summit, Digital Hollywood, What Teens Want etc.)

In his last position Perry was the Co-Founder & Chief Creative Officer of Acclaim.com, directing multiple MMORPG games, Social Network Games & Casual Titles. All games used the ‘free-to-play’ model, supported by in-game advertising, subscriptions or micro-transactions.

Now Perry is the CEO and co-founder of Gaikai.com, a company that’s developed a cutting-edge video game streaming technology that allows any Windows game or application to run in any browser with just one click.

Perry also recently launched a book for students called David Perry on Game Design – GameDesignBook.org (the largest non-profit book on Game Design ever written.)

Thoughts:

I’ve been fortunate enough to work with some of the best artists in the video game industry. My office was in Laguna Beach a city renowned for having endless art galleries. I walked into a Gallery and asked them to frame an image one of our video game artists had made. They literally gasped as they opened it, and within seconds we realized there was nothing in the entire gallery as good. There are countless talented artists that have never been discovered in the games industry and I’m really excited when I hear they might finally get the chance to be recognized.

Industry Analyst, Foundation 9 Entertainment

BIO FORTHCOMING

CEO, Double Fine Productions

Tim Schafer is the President and CEO of Double Fine Productions, a San Francisco-based video game studio, makers of the critically acclaimed games Psychonauts and Brütal Legend. Prior to Double Fine, Tim was a Project Leader at LucasArts Entertainment Company, where he was responsible for several classic PC adventure games, including Full Throttle and Grim Fandango. Tim also co-designed Day of the Tentacle, and served as a writer and assistant designer on The Secret of Monkey Island 1 & 2.

President and Co-Founder – ThatGameCompany

Kellee Santiago is President and Co-Founder of thatgamecompany. thatgamecompany designs and develops artistically crafted, broadly accessible video games that push the boundaries of interactive entertainment. Their first two commercial releases, “flOw”(2007), and “Flower”(2009) went on to become award-winning and two of the top downloaded games on PlayStation Network, and were hailed as truly artistically-crafted video games. Kellee received a TED Fellowship for her work in 2010 and has spoken on video games as an artistic medium, the responsibilities of game makers, and how to create better, more creatively-focused design and production processes for game development.

Thoughts:
Video games have evolved quite a lot in the past five decades. As this ever-growing medium is becoming the most predominant form of entertainment, moving to the center of our approach to education, and highlighted in our political and sociological debates, it’s important that the history of video games be codified so we can better discuss and evaluate it’s potential. This exhibition will allow children, parents, educators, and enthusiasts to better understand the medium of video games so they can come to their own conclusions about it’s importance in 21st Century culture.

Professor of Entertainment Technology – Carnegie Mellon University

Prior to launching Schell Games in 2002 and subsequently growing it into the largest and most successful game development company in Pittsburgh, Jesse was the Creative Director of the Disney Imagineering Virtual Reality Studio, where he worked and played for seven years as designer, programmer, and manager on numerous projects for Disney theme parks and DisneyQuest. He has helped design and develop interactive theme park attractions such as Disney’s Toy Story Mania and The Sum of All Thrills, as well as mass market MMOs such as Pixie Hollow and Toontown Online.

Jesse currently holds a faculty position as Professor at the Carnegie Mellon University Entertainment Technology Center where he teaches classes in Game Design and collaborative teamwork. Jesse recently authored the critically acclaimed book The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses, which Game Developer Magazine named book of the year in 2008.

Thoughts:

Looking back at the art of videogames is important, because the form of it shows us a clear picture of the past, while the content of it shows us a clear picture of the future.

Founder – 8 Bit Weapon

Seth Sternberger founded the pioneering Chipmusic band “8 Bit Weapon” in 1999. As part of 8 Bit weapon, he is known for creating original music using his collection of vintage computers and classic video game consoles as musical instruments. Seth and his band have had coverage in the Los Angeles Times, A live performance on G4′s Attack of the Show, and performances at the E3 Gamimg Expo. Seth has also scored both chiptune and traditional music for Video games, TV shows, Movies, and more. Seth was also a honorary performer at Commodore’s 25th anniversary party for the Commodore 64 computer.

Thoughts:

When I first heard about the project I just felt like this was amazing. I love video games and their history. I particularly enjoy the history of each video game generation’s music and sound effects. Video Games deserve to be recognized for the art they truly are. There’s hardly anyone in today’s society that hasn’t participated in the thrill of a video game at some point in their life. The rich history of video games is a tale that needs to be told. Now we have an opportunity to share the technological genius and artistic wonders of gaming’s golden age with the generation to come. I’m honored to participate in such an endeavor.

Group Creative Officer, BioWare Studio Group, Electronic Arts Vice President, and Co-founder of BioWare

Dr. Greg Zeschuk has been in the game industry for over 15 years in a variety of roles, primarily at BioWare, the award-winning development studio based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and responsible for such games as the Baldur’s Gate series, Neverwinter Nights, MDK2, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire, Mass Effect and Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood. After co-founding the studio with Dr. Ray Muzyka in 1995, Greg and Ray operated BioWare successfully for 10 years before it was purchased by Elevation Partners. BioWare started a studio in Austin and began working on Star Wars: The Old Republic, a massively multiplayer game in partnership with Lucasarts.

BioWare was purchased by Electronic Arts in 2007 and at that time Zeschuk became a Vice President of EA. Recently Electronic Arts formed the BioWare Studio Group and Greg was named the Group Creative Officer, responsible for BioWare studios in Edmonton, Austin and Montreal and MMO developer Mythic Entertainment (now BioWare Mythic) based in Fairfax, Virginia.

In addition to being a medical doctor, Greg completed his executive MBA program at the Queen’s School of Business and serves as a Director and Co-Chairman of CodeBaby Corp. (www.codebaby.com), a software company developing a next generation interface for digital media and the Internet.