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(from www.davidkushner.com):
I'm a contributing editor of Wired, Rolling Stone, and IEEE Spectrum. I'm a former contributing editor of Spin and columnist for the Village Voice. I've also written for New York, Details, the New York Times, Salon, and other publications.
I'm the author of two non-fiction books. My latest is Jonny Magic and the Card Shark Kids: How a Gang of Geeks Beat the Odds and Stormed Las Vegas [Random House, 2005]. My first book is Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture [Random House, 2003]. Both books are being developed into films.
I'm currently working on a new narrative non-fiction book, which will be published in 2008. As an adjunct professor, I teach a graduate course in magazine journalism at New York University in New York City.
My Story
I grew up in the suburbs of Tampa, Florida on a steady diet of MAD magazines, video games, and illegal fireworks. In college, I started writing for the school paper to get free CDs and concert tickets. I came to New York City in 1989 at age 20 with a lot of ambitions. I wrote four novels (unpublished), played in a band (insert devil horns hand salute here), and collaborated on a screenplay based on one of my books (never filmed, though I have a cool poster).
I got my first break writing for Mondo 2000, the early "cyberculture" magazine. That led to a job with SonicNet, an early online music site, in 1994. Those were fun and heady times, pre-Web, pre-boom. We rode the wave. When magazines needed someone to chronicle this new digital world, I started freelancing. I discovered that I preferred nonfiction to fiction. Pretty soon, I was writing full-time about all kinds of people: gamers, carnie kids, rock stars, hackers, car designers, federal agents, monster truck racers, dot com moguls, card sharks, and George Hamilton. And here we are.
Rob is a real-time programmer and educator living in South Harlem. He started out in the liberal arts, but a few years with Chase Manhattan and Citibank turned Rob into a technophile which led him into game development and education. In his capacity as Associate Course Director of Gaming Final Project at Full Sail, Rob acted as producer for over 100 student games in 3-5 month development cycles and created quite a few of his own while developing project methodologies for implementing complete real-time software packages within restrictive time-frames and with a minimum of expense.
Using his knowledge of AI game practices, Rob spent the last year and a half writing AI and Gameplay routines for a simulation company in Orlando. This latest venture introduced him to the intricacies of Epic’s Unreal Engine and scripting language. Rob is currently pursuing a career in Educational Technology in New York City. His current writing interests include AI in games, MMO community building and culture, and the educational/training uses of real-time technologies.
Rob’s educational background includes a B.A. in English Literature from Carleton College, a foray into a poetics M.F.A. at Brooklyn College (where he studied with Allen Ginsberg) and an Associate’s Degree in Game Development from Full Sail Real World Education in Winter Park, Florida. He spent a few years in publishing in New York where he edited an avant-garde writing journal called Full Bleed and worked for Grand Street and Bomb Magazines to name a few.
Harry Teasley is an artist and game designer, and has been developing games professionally for over sixteen years. A graduate of the Maryland Institute, College of Art, he never touched a computer before getting a job at MicroProse Software to work on the original Civilization by Sid Meier. Working with Meier and other game design gurus at MPS quickly addicted Harry to games, game design, and the issues of problem solving in both creating and playing games.
From the strategy of Civ and the adventure of Pirates Gold, to first-person shooters like Half-Life and Counterstrike, Harry's involvement in the game industry has been wide-ranging. Currently Art Director at Turbine for the MMO Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar, he is most interested in exploring the limits of design as it relates to player perception, social networks, and user interface interaction.
And baseball. Go M's.
Automaton
The Risk Factor
Tech Talk
