Sean Kauppinen | |
---|---|
Born | South Amboy, New Jersey |
Nationality | American |
Occupation | Video game executive |
Known for | Video Game Industry Visionary |
Sean Kauppinen is an American video game executive, with particular experience as a marketer, publicist and speaker [1] on the industry worldwide. He has worked for, a number of companies including bleem!, Sony Online Entertainment, Ubisoft, and 3dfx Interactive, among others. Kauppinen is the founder and CEO of the International Digital Entertainment Agency (IDEA). Kauppinen was the marketing and public relations person for bleem!, [2] a company that helped define the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.[ citation needed ]
In 2007 he was named to the GDC advisory board [3]
In June 2008, he was quoted by Gamasutra as predicting a glut of downloadable games video game consoles by independent developers and self-publishers. [4] In December 2008, Kauppinen was named Interim CEO of Frogster America, Inc., [5] a subsidiary of Frogster Interactive Pictures, a German publicly listed company.
Kauppinen has performed marketing and PR to launch more than 570 video games over the last 20 years, [6] including EverQuest 2, Lord of the Rings Online, Star Wars Galaxies, Warhammer Online, Age of Conan [7] and The Sims 2.
In 2009 he was named to the GDC Europe Advisory Board along with Bob Bates, Don Daglow, Bob Wallace, Tom Putzki, Harald Riegler and Frank Sliwka, [8] as well as the South by Southwest (SXSW) Advisory Board. [9] In June 2009, he called for Apple to implement quality control on the iPhone platform. [10]
Nolan Kay Bushnell is an American businessman and electrical engineer. He established Atari, Inc. and the Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre chain. He has been inducted into the Video Game Hall of Fame and the Consumer Electronics Association Hall of Fame, received the BAFTA Fellowship and the Nations Restaurant News "Innovator of the Year" award, and was named one of Newsweek's "50 Men Who Changed America". He has started more than 20 companies and is one of the founding fathers of the video game industry. He is on the board of Anti-Aging Games. In 2012, he founded an educational software company called Brainrush, that is using video game technology in educational software.
The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) is a self-regulatory organization that assigns age and content ratings to consumer video games in the United States and Canada. The ESRB was established in 1994 by the Entertainment Software Association, in response to criticism of controversial video games with excessively violent or sexual content, particularly after the 1993 congressional hearings following the releases of Mortal Kombat and Night Trap for home consoles and Doom for home computers. The industry, pressured with potential government oversight of video game ratings from these hearings, established both the IDSA and the ESRB within it to create a voluntary rating system based on the Motion Picture Association of America film rating system with additional considerations for video game interactivity.
Steven Eric Meretzky is an American video game developer. He is best known for creating Infocom games in the early 1980s, including collaborating with author Douglas Adams on the interactive fiction version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, one of the first games to be certified "platinum" by the Software Publishers Association. Later, he created the Spellcasting trilogy, the flagship adventure series of Legend Entertainment. He has been involved in almost every aspect of game development, from design to production to quality assurance and box design.
Bleem! is a commercial PlayStation emulator released by the Bleem! Company in 1999 for IBM-compatible PCs and Dreamcast. It is notable for being one of the few commercial software emulators to be aggressively marketed during the emulated console's lifetime, and was the center of multiple controversial lawsuits.
The Game Developers Choice Awards are awards annually presented at the Game Developers Conference for outstanding game developers and games. Introduced in 2001, the Game Developers Choice Awards were preceded by the Spotlight Awards, which were presented from 1997 to 1999. Since then, the ceremony for the Independent Games Festival is held just prior to the Choice Awards ceremony.
The Game Developers Conference (GDC) is an annual conference for video game developers. The event includes an expo, networking events, and awards shows like the Game Developers Choice Awards and Independent Games Festival, and a variety of tutorials, lectures, and roundtables by industry professionals on game-related topics covering programming, design, audio, production, business and management, and visual arts.
Surreal Software was an American video game developer based in Kirkland, Washington, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, known for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Suffering and Drakan series. Surreal Software employed over 130 designers, artists, and programmers. Surreal was acquired by Warner Bros. Games during the bankruptcy of Midway Games in July 2009. After a significant layoff in January 2011, the remaining employees were integrated into WBG's Kirkland offices, along with developers Monolith and Snowblind.
Paradox Interactive AB is a video game publisher based in Stockholm, Sweden. The company started out as the video game division of Target Games and then Paradox Entertainment before being spun out into an independent company in 2004. Through a combination of expanding internal studios, founding new studios and purchasing independent developers, the company has grown to comprise nine first-party development studios, including their flagship Paradox Development Studio, and acts as publisher for games from other developers.
Robert Bates is an American computer game designer. One of the early designers of interactive fiction games, he was co-founder of Challenge, Inc., which created games in the 1980s for the pioneering company Infocom. After Infocom's dissolution in 1989, Bates co-founded Legend Entertainment to continue publishing games in the Infocom tradition, but with added graphics. Notable games that he has designed, written, or produced include Unreal II (2003), Spider-Man 3 (2007), and Eric the Unready (1993), listed as Adventure Game of the Year by Computer Gaming World magazine and also included on the 1996 list of "150 best games of all time". In 1998 he wrote the award-winning game Quandaries for the U.S. Department of Justice. He has twice been the chairperson of the International Game Developers Association, which honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010. Bates has written extensively about game design and development in works such as the 2001 book Game Design: The Art and Business of Creating Games, which is commonly used as a game design textbook in college courses. From 2011–2014, Bates was Chief Creative Officer for External Studios at Zynga. He continues to work as an independent consultant with various publishers in the games industry.
Don Daglow is an American video game designer, programmer, and producer. He is best known for being the creator of early games from several different genres, including pioneering simulation game Utopia for Intellivision in 1981, role-playing game Dungeon in 1975, sports games including the first interactive computer baseball game Baseball in 1971, and the first graphical MMORPG, Neverwinter Nights in 1991. He founded long-standing game developer Stormfront Studios in 1988.
Michael S. Wilson is an American business executive, video game producer, and film-maker. Beginning his career at DWANGO as Vice President of Development before being hired to lead marketing and publishing at id Software in 1995, Wilson has subsequently co-founded multiple independent video game publishers, including Gathering of Developers, Gamecock Media Group, Devolver Digital, Good Shepherd Entertainment, and DeepWell DTx.
Jack Tretton is a member of the advisory boards for Genotaur, an artificial intelligence startup, and LifeApps Digital Media, a digital publisher of products and services focused on health, fitness, and sports topics. He is best known for being the former President and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) from 2006 to 2014.
S. Gregory Boyd is an American author, attorney, and professor specializing in intellectual property, the game industry, and high technology media. He is currently a partner and the chairman of the Interactive Entertainment Group at Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz PC and an adjunct professor for the New York Law School. He also sits on the Board of Advisors for MobyGames.
Within the video game industry there are several awards that are given to individual video games, development studios, and other individuals to recognize their merit. Most video game awards are given out on an annual basis, celebrating the best games of the previous year. Most of these awards come from organizations directly within the industry, but there also exist several that come from broader media groups. In addition, many video game publications supply their own end of the year awards.
The Maw is an action-adventure video game developed by Twisted Pixel Games and released for Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows. The game centers on the extraterrestrial Frank and a purple, amorphous creature called The Maw, who have crash-landed their spacecraft on an alien planet. The player assumes the role of Frank and directs The Maw—which can take on the abilities of objects and fauna it consumes—via a leash.
GamersGate AB is a Sweden-based online video game store offering electronic strategy guides and games for Windows, macOS, and Linux via direct download. It is a competitor to online video game services such as Steam, GOG.com, and Direct2Drive.
Atari SA is a French video game holding company headquartered in Paris. Its subsidiaries include Atari Interactive and Atari, Inc. It is the current owner of the Atari brand through Atari Interactive.
Christoph Gerlinger is a German venture capitalist and Internet entrepreneur. He is best known as the founder and CEO of the former venture capital investor German Startups Group, which is publicly listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and was transformed into a Private Equity firm in late 2020. Prior to that he was a senior executive and entrepreneur in computer and online games companies since 1996. He was CEO of the MMO Games publisher Frogster Interactive Pictures AG, listed at Frankfurt stock exchange from 2006 until its takeover in 2010. Gerlinger was named one of Germany's most 50 interesting young entrepreneurs by a leading German business magazine.
The 20th Game Developers Choice Awards was an annual awards ceremony by Game Developers Choice Awards for outstanding game developers and video games held on March 18, 2020, hosted by Kim Swift. Though normally held at the Game Developers Conference, due to the 2020 coronavirus outbreak, the conference was postponed to later in 2020, and the awards were presented via online streaming media, alongside the Independent Games Festival awards.