Gordon Walton - Game Developer

Game Developer

He played his first computer game in 1977 on the PLATO system, and published his first computer game, Trek-X, in 1978 on the Commodore PET 2001. In 1984, he co-founded Applied Computing (later called Digital Illusions) with Don Gilman, and he was development manager for both Three-Sixty Pacific and Konami of America, Inc.

Though his work had been exclusively in the single-player game industry up until that point, in 1995 he joined the growing online game industry, managing games such as Air Warrior and Multiplayer Battletech at Kesmai. After Kesmai, Walton moved on to managing Ultima Online at Origin Systems, and then at Sony Online Entertainment in Austin he worked on Star Wars Galaxies. At Maxis, he was executive producer on The Sims Online. He worked on the MMOG Star Wars: The Old Republic at Bioware's studio in Austin until January 2011. He is now employed at the social gaming company Playdom.

He is a frequent speaker at industry conferences such as E-3, GDC, and the Austin Games Conference, and attained fame in 2003 for a talk entitled, "Ten Great Reasons You Don't want to Make a Massively Multiplayer Game." He is also active in the AIAS and IGDA, and has been on the steering committee of the IGDA's Online Games SIG.

Walton currently lives in Austin, Texas with his wife, Laura Ann Miskines Walton, and children John and Katherine.

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    Chinese proverb.