About Me

I am a computer and video game maker, former director, husband, father, Californian, Ravenclaw, and general worrier.

I'm married to a wonderfully talented artist 🎨 and strong, inspiring mother.

I like to cook, taste wine 🍷, read when I have time, argue about politics, and I'm part of a friends & family peloton that cycles on Sundays. 🚴

In my career, I've had the great fortune to work with incredible people, and for incredible companies like Activision, EA, Zynga, and Warner Brothers.

You can find me on LinkedIn,

IMDB,

MobyGames,

and Twitter.

I'll never be the top search on Google thanks to New Kids on the Block. (Yes, I once had to take my name out of the Boston phone book, back when there were phone books. And land lines.)

I'm currently the GM of Games for The New York Times, working with a talented and passionate group of people who put out some of the world's finest daily puzzles, including Wordle, Spelling Bee, and the iconic New York Times Crossword.

But before that...

Like a lot of folks, from a young age I kind of always wanted to be a writer. 📚

I was heavily influenced by Roger Zelazny's Amber series, and the play-turned-movie The Lion in Winter. I was one of three boys, and I guess there was a sibling rivalry theme there that was a bit too obvious.

My father brought home an Apple II computer one day in 1977, and I became a self-taught child programmer, and wrote some goofy games. I got hooked on Wizardry and Zork.

Later, I got bit by the theatre bug 🎭, but also continued to code. At Colorado College, I majored in Drama and minored in Math & Computers. I wrote a program on my Mac called How to Cut Hamlet, which recommended cuts to the 4+ hour play based on the themes in which a would-be director was most interested. And I was involved in over 30+ theatre productions.

I was President of the Studio Theatre Workshop, and did publicity for the school's Drama Department.

I directed a haunting version of The Glass Menagerie by my then-hero Tennessee Williams. It might be the most creatively successful thing I ever did. Gareth Saxe played a dazzling Tom Wingfield, the original music and live sound effects were chilling, and it wasn't until opening night that we realized there was a pattern of blue roses on the dress that the actress playing Laura wore.

I wrote a play called The End of Billy Prancer which won that year's writing award and was produced.

I was so worried I hadn't been born with enough talent. My playwriting teacher Heather McDonald told me, "we're all born with the ability to become great writers, but it's suppressed in us as we get older." I still don't know if that's right.

Thanks to my mentor Rick Seer, I got a summer internship at The American Stage Festival in Milford, New Hampshire, where I stage managed a children's theatre troupe, and got to do some writing and directing. I set The Frog Prince to the tunes of Harry Connick Jr.'s soundtrack for When Harry Met Sally.

And I drove a school bus full of actors and props around rural New England. 🚌

I later earned a Masters in Directing from Boston University, where I directed The Actor's Nightmare, Principia Scriptoriae, Steel Magnolias, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, The 15 Minute Hamlet, and Translations. I got to be an Assistant Director on some professional productions, like the Boston Huntington Theatre's production of Tartuffe, and King Lear at San Diego's Old Globe (where I worked beneath Jack O'Brien and the late great Hal Holbrook).

I'm fascinated with William Shakespeare. I wrote a paper on Hamlet, and regret never having the opportunity to direct a full length version.

I believe the historical Shakespeare (the actor) didn't write the plays credited to him, and that Christopher Marlowe did, from exile, after having faked his death. It's a legit theory, detailed in the book The Murder of the Man Who Was Shakespeare by Calvin Hoffman. (Looks like the book is hard to find now, so if you can find it -- get it!) I later wrote my own (bad) fictional screenplay centered around this theory.

I worked as a secretary at M.I.T. to pay my way through graduate school. With my M.F.A. in hand, I was subsequently rejected by every theatre in the country.

But I had continued my computer programming habit on the side, and with my brother Kevin Knight, wrote a movie personalized recommendations program, called MovieMan (worst title ever), which was about 15 years ahead of its time. Kevin bought me a suit and sent me to a conference called Digital Hollywood in 1994, where I tried to find a buyer for MovieMan.

I didn't make a deal, but I met Brian Fargo and he liked my dual creative/programmer background, and offered me a job as a Line Producer at Interplay Productions.

A couple of years later, I ended up at Activision as a Producer for Mitch Lasky's department we called StudioX. I produced PC games, including NetStorm, Fighter Squadron, Star Trek: Hidden Evil, Star Trek: Bridge Commander, and eventually Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

I directed Patrick Stewart in voice-over sessions, and he was a class act.

I met my wife touring across Europe demo-ing games to journalists. She got something like 30 covers for our little game NetStorm!

After about 5 years at Activision, I joined Maxis (an EA company), and got to work down the hall from Will Wright, who coincidentally went to the same high school as me in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, nine years ahead of me, and just four years ahead of my brother (they did not meet). I produced various expansion packs to The Sims -- at the time, the best selling computer game of all time.

The Sims Unleashed, my first expansion pack, went to #1 in the sales charts. Turns out, people like their pets. 🐶 🐱

I worked with an incredible team to give birth to an incredible sequel, The Sims 2, rated 90 and "must play" on metacritic.com.

I was the Creative Director and Sr. Producer for The Simpsons Game, and got to work with Matt Groening and all the talented writers and actors from the most successful animated TV series ever. The highlight of the project was when I got a line of dialog changed in the Writer's Room on the FOX lot, and Tim Long told me: "That's a great note, for a non-writer."

EA was crazy enough to make me an Executive Producer and said "do whatever you want." I dreamed up a video game based upon Dante Alighieri's 13th century poem The Divine Comedy, and delivered an M-rated demon-crushing romp through the 9 circles of hell: Dante's Inferno. I put my 18-month-old son in a motion capture suit, making him the youngest MoCap actor that House of Moves had ever seen. The game had a Super Bowl commercial, and I got to direct Mark Hammil in a voice-over session for game's accompanying animated feature.

I had a brief stint at a Facebook game startup, where I met William Shatner, completing my Picard-Skywalker-Kirk "hat trick" of celebrity encounters.

I then had an incredible almost-five years at Zynga, where I ran studios, and worked alongside great people to deliver ChefVille (#1 on facebook), CastleVille: Legends, Farmville: Country Escape (#1 Top Free), and New Words With Friends.

I nourished a prototype called Warlords that was the greatest run of game engineering I've ever witnessed (from Szymon Swistun); sadly, it was not meant to be.

At Warner Bros. Games, I ran the San Francisco studio, and we launched and operated DC Legends. I got to work on the Harry Potter ⚡️ franchise, and among many other amazing moments, got a private demonstration of the Fantastic Beasts costumes from the great Colleen Atwood herself.

We co-developed Harry Potter Wizards Unite with Niantic and launched at #1 Top Free.

(By the way, Hermione should have been a Ravenclaw.)

In 2017, at my wife's cajoling, I hopped on the Hamilton: An American Musical bandwagon, and volunteered to direct a cast of 5th graders in a production of Act I of Hamilton in our backyard. A year later, we did it again with both acts. 🎶 🇺🇸 🎭

I've got two amazing sons, who both tower over me!

I work on the puzzles team for The New York Times 🧩 and was named in Adweek 50 for 2022 for my work acquiring and integrating Wordle.

I live in Northern California, surrounded by the beauty of coasts, bays, vineyards, and mountains.