Welcome to Bobbates.com.  This is still a rough-and-ready version of what I hope will one day be a much nicer site.  For now, I've just included the basics.

I am a game consultant with 21 years of design, writing, and publishing experience.  I currently serve on the Board of Directors of the IGDA (International Game Developers Association), and give frequent seminars on design and production.

I started designing text adventures for Infocom in 1986, and since then I have written, designed, produced, or overseen the development of more than 35 computer and videogames.  Titles I have worked on have won both critical acclaim (over 55 industry awards, including two Adventure Game of the Year awards), as well as financial success -- over 5 million units sold, including a #1 game on the PC (Unreal2) and a #1 console game (Spider-Man3 for PS2 and Wii).

 

In 1989 I co-founded Legend Entertainment and served as its President until the company’s 1998 sale to Atari.  I continued as an Atari executive, Legend’s Studio Head, and an active game designer/producer until the studio closed in January of 2004.  I now work as an independent game designer, writer, and producer.

 

I am a past Chairman of the IGDA and currently serve as Secretary to the Board, chairman of the long-range planning committee and a member of its governance committee.  I often give talks at worldwide industry conferences and events, and I am also a co-founder and organizer of the Game Designer’s Workshop, an annual invitation-only conference attended by many of the top storytelling game designers in the business.  I’m also on the advisory board of the European Games Convention Developer Conference (GCDC) in Leipzig, and of Project Horseshoe, a game-designer think-tank.

 

I am the author of one of the industry’s bestselling books on game development, Game Design: The Art and Business of Creating Games, which is currently being used as a textbook by several colleges and universities.  I have lectured on game design at MIT, Columbia, George Washington University, and Carnegie Mellon, and I am also the editor of the Game Developers Market Guide from Premier Press.  In early 2007, I co-authored a report on the Serious Games Industry for a government think tank.

 

                 For a more complete version of my game industry background, including a client list, game credits and awards, click here.

                 For a picture of me, click here.

My first book, "Game Design:  The Art and Business of Creating Games" was published by Premier Press.

                 To read the Introduction, click here.

                 For the Table of Contents, click here.

                 To see the cover of the first edition, click here.

                 To buy the first edition from Amazon.com, click here.

The main additions to the second edition are:  In-depth design comments from genre experts, updates based on the fact that iterative development has won the methodology wars, and a really useful appendix full of project document templates.

                 To see the cover of the second edition, click here.

                 To buy the Second Edition of the book from Amazon.com, click here.