When Steve began designing games, music was
primarily purchased on vinyl records, mobile phones were the size of a small
suitcase, and Roger Clemens had not yet started using steroids.Steve began his game career as a tester, at the legendary adventure game company Infocom, in 1981. A year later, he began designing games, and has been doing so continuously for more than a quarter century.
His first game for Infocom was Planetfall, celebrated in the annals of gaming for its lovable robot sidekick character, Floyd. Other Infocom titles by Steve include Zork Zero, Leather Goddesses of Phobos, A Mind Forever Voyaging, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The latter was a collaboration with Douglas Adams, author of the original work.
Following the demise of Infocom, Steve wrote a number of games for Legend Entertainment, including Superhero League of Hoboken and the Spellcasting trilogy, which featured the adventures of a would-be sorcerer at a university for teaching magic. (And, ahem, this was a good 8 years or so before the first Harry Potter book...)
In 1994, Steve co-founded Boffo Games, along with fellow MIT alums Mike Dornbrook and Leo DaCosta. During its 3 year existence, Boffo produced two notable games: The Space Bar, a hilarious graphic adventure game, and Hodj 'n' Podj, a collection of mini-games set in a whimsical fairy tale world, presaging the entire casual game explosion that was to follow in another 5 years or so.
Steve spent more than five years as Creative Content Director for WorldWinner.com, creating casual games for online cash tournaments, and helping to guide it from pre-launch to the point where the site was earning tens of millions of dollars per year. He created numerous original games for WorldWinner, such as Word Cubes, Paint Buckets, and Skillgammon, and also adapted many existing games for tournament play, such as Cubis, Collapse, and Wheel of Fortune. Steve continues to serve as an advisor to WorldWinner.
Steve has also worked for publishing giant THQ, for mobile game developer Floodgate Entertainment, and for Blue Fang Games, the creator of the Zoo Tycoon series. He is currently VP of Game Design for Playdom, the leading provider of games for MySpace and other social networks. Steve has done consulting work for companies throughout the game industry, including Blizzard, Harmonix, Disney, Electronic Arts, Activision, Microprose, and Hasbro.
A frequent speaker at industry events and at colleges and universities, Steve also directs and organizes the Casual Game Summit at the Game Developers Conference, the industry's premier annual event. Steve is a charter member of the International Game Developers Association, and served a term on its Board of Directors. He is co-founder of the Boston chapter of the IGDA, known as Post Mortem, one of the first such chapters in the world. He is co-organizer of the annual Game Designers Workshop, which annually brings together the elite of the game design world for a weekend of hobnobbing and deep thinking. Steve is the author of four "choose-your-path" novels for young people, set in the Zork universe, and is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.