Biography
Hi. I founded Happion Labs in 2012. We're a growing excited company!
But I've been making games for a lot longer than that.
Up until recently, I was partner, technical director, and designer at Torpex Games where, with help from Richard Garfield, I invented the game Schizoid--"The Most Co-Op Game Ever"--available on Xbox Live Arcade.
Prior to Schizoid, I was a technical director and designer on Spider-Man 2, my biggest claim to fame being that I invented its dynamic, physical swinging system...loved even by Zero Punctuation! Other games I've worked on include Spider-Man 1 for PS2, XBox, and GameCube, Tony Hawk for the Dreamcast, Die By The Sword for the PC, and the Magic Candle series of RPGs. Heck, here's my mobygames rap sheet.
I wrote the "Manager in A Strange Land" column for Gamasutra and I think I hold the world record for writing game development post-mortems in Gamasutra and *Game Developer* magazine. I was also on the committee for the IGDA Leadership Forum.
I can be reached (or circled) at jdfristrom - at - gmail.com, or you can follow me on twitter at @happionlabs.