Interview with Greg Costikyan, Game Designer and Author, 2013
Uploaded on Oct 05, 2013 / 8 views / 104 impressions / 0 comments
Description
I've been in the game industry for more than 30 years -- my first job, at 14, was assembling and shipping games in the warehouse at SPI. I've designed more than 30 commercially published board, roleplaying, computer, online, mobile and social network games; my ludography is here.
I have, in fact, been something of a pioneer in new and emerging game markets -- I designed the first online game to attract more than a million players (MadMaze, for the old Prodigy COLS), founded one of the first mobile game publishers in North America, and today run a website devoted to promoting independently developed games -- Play This Thing!, which reviews one independently created game each day.
In 2007, I received the Maverick Award at GDC for "tireless promotion of indie games;" I've also won five Origins Awards, and am an inductee into the Adventure Gaming Hall of Fame. I've written scads of articles on games; as well as four novels and a bunch of short stories. My piece "I Have No Words & I Must Design" is widely used in game studies programs across the globe, and I've lectured at universities in both Europe and North America; I also speak frequently at industry conferences.
I have also consulted to a wide variety of companies on game design and game industry business issues.
Free Games
The following have been released under a creative commons license:
•Vector 3, a space combat board game in 3D with vector mechanics, originally published in 1979.
•Violence: The Roleplaying Game of Egregious and Repulsive Bloodshed, originally published by Hogshead Publishers Ltd., but now released under a Creative Commons license.
•Dot Boom, a satirical card game of the dot com era.
•Peg Solo, a Blitz Basic implementation of classic peg solitaire.