Gas Powered Games Corp.

Bert "Sleepy" Bingham began his career in the games industry as a co-founder and Senior Mission Director for the combat simulation center known as "The Otherside".

Mike Swanson has been in the games industry for 18 years. Working for several major publishers; Electronic Arts Canada, Lucasarts Entertainment and Take Two Interactive. Game Credits include Supreme Commander, SSX, Armed and Dangerous, Triple Play Baseball, FIFA Soccer and NHL Hockey. Mike has also lectured extensively on game art and animation creation throughout China, Taiwan, Scotland and North America. Mike is currently the Studio Art Production Manager at Gas Powered Games in Seattle, Washington.

Ben grew up in a tiny town in northern New Hampshire, and moved to Washington for college. After four grueling years at DigiPen, he decided that he should probably be getting paid to work this hard. When he isn't writing brilliant code for GPG's upcoming titles, he's relaxing at home with his girlfriend and friends with such activities as good music, old movies, and frustrating video games. Ben also enjoys playing poker locally, but doesn't enjoy losing his money so often.

Bob always has a difficult time coming up with a witty and clever bio but finds it most disturbing to write about himself in the third person. After an academic stint in Japan where he met his wife and then spending several years of his life running a game development studio, he (that would be me) has returned to the wonderful world of being a code monkey. When not programming for bananas, Bob (again, that's me) enjoys playing and making music, reading, gaming, and a few other antisocial activities. He (who?) has worked on several games in the past and has been in and out of the industry since 1993. Bob has an identity crisis and spells his name backwards to prove it.

With a degree in music and a biophysics student at RPI, Brett initially got into the gaming industry in 1996 when he was contacted by Valve software. Initially hired as a level designer, he rapidly began to show his skills as a game designer, laying the foundations for what would soon become 1998's game of the year, Half-Life. Before long, the desire to grow as a designer drove him to explore other game genres. He didn't have to look far before he teamed up with Chris Taylor who had been at work on the action FRPG title "Dungeon Siege". The desire to expand his design vocabulary and work with an industry veteran proved too powerful to pass up. Now, at Gas Powered Games, Brett serves as lead level designer where his skills can continue to grow and expand into the action/adventure genre.

Brian Fricks, aka Trailstorm-Radeem, recently embarked on his first official adventure into the world of game design. Formerly a tenured teacher of visual arts at a most amazing public elementary school in Durham North Carolina, Brian found his way to Kirkland Washington and GPG through modding in the Dungeon Siege Community. Yes, it really can happen. Spending forty or more hours weekly (on top of the typical super-hero teacher's work schedule), and working on several small and large modding projects, including his own Circle of Lorent, Brian achieved sufficient levels of sleeplessness to qualify for a career change. Three thousand four hundred miles, two tires, and the entire collection of Harry Potter books on CD later, Brian now contentedly cranks out dungeons, wilderness, caves, and ruins in between eager requests for mule-i-corns, light-rays, and scale 5 Krug with scale 10 sledgehammers.

Rising from the slums of Shaolin, trained in the art of shadowboxing, tiger claw, and tapping fools on the back of their heads with his pimp cane! Byron graduated from Digipen and started in the games industry at Pipeworks Software were he worked on 2 Godzilla titles, Rampage: Total Destruction, and designed and built additional levels for two PSP Prince of Persia titles. He is very excited to be working with such a talented and motivated group at GPG and hopes to learn all he can venturing forward! An avid gamer (when he has time) some favorite titles include: Metal Gear Solid series, Castlevania Symphony of the Night, Okami, Shenmue series, Street Fighter III, Ikaruga, Doom, Resident Evil 4, Fatal Frame, Metal Slug, and two many more modern titles plus classic games to possibly list them all. Also a major film fanatic owning slightly over 2000 movies on DVD, some of his favorite movies are: Anything by Akira Kurasawa (Ran and Ikiru being favorites), Apocalypse Now, Pantle">Triple Play Baseball at Electronic Arts.

Chad got his start in the game industry working as a technical support representative for Humongous Entertainment. He decided that was too much fun for him and so he became a production assistant where he worked on various Humongous Entertainment children's titles. A little more work and some schooling and now he's an engineer at GPG and loving every minute of it. Chad loves console gaming and will hopefully master the Samba de Amigo maracas to the point where he doesn't look like a flailing drunken monkey.

Chris has been an avid gamer since the days of the Colleco Vision. He enjoyed Art at an early age and eventually attended Cornish College of The Arts studying Illustration. After a few years realizing that he enjoyed the idea of creating video games much more than becoming a traditional illustrator he decided to switch over to a Game Design Degree and attended courses at Lake Washington Technical College. Soon after he went into QA and then Production at GPG. In addition Fallout 2 is the greatest game ever made!

When Daniel was growing up, his parents enforced a half-hour per day video games limit. It was a tough-but-fair policy that helped him become an educated, well adjusted, social young man with a variety of interests. Unfortunately, Daniel has been overcompensating for that limit ever since leaving home, and his obsessive devotion to video games not only undid all the benefits of his sophisticated, diverse upbringing, but left him with no marketable skills outside the field of game development. Luckily, he's managed to avoid normal jobs for a surprising number of years because his last name is so often listed first in alphabetical order. A Pacific Northwesterner at heart, he is thrilled to be in Washington after several years in California, and is even more thrilled to be able to continue working on projects that he believes in.

Daniel's programming experience started in 1992, working for Chris Taylor at EA Canada on a Mickey's ABC port. Since mastering his alphabets, he's been credited on a number of titles with EA including Need for Speed (1 through 5), Earth & Beyond MMORPG, C&C Generals Zero-Hour and most recently LotR: Battle for Middle Earth. His career started with EA Canada, then moved to Westwood Studios in 2000 when he realized the Y2K bug had failed to end the world. His moved to EA-LA in 2003 gave him an opportunity to enter the RTS mix - he now looks forward to using that experience on GPG's latest RTS title. His programming passion is with creating realistic physics and AI for super uber cool fun games.

David Kirwan (a.k.a. Kirwanatron Prime 3000) started using Apple IIGS and Macintosh computers in 1989 while in kindergarten. David became the 'go to' 8-year old for Thoreau Elementarytd align="left" class="name">Mike Marr

Andres arrived to the US from Colombia many moons ago. He lived a few years in Long Island, NY, but eventually made Seattle his home. Andres has always had a passion for programming, especially soccer games (or football as it should be called). Trying to combine all three, he joined Humongous Entertainment as a programmer for Backyard Baseball and Backyard Soccer, what a match! Once the projects were completed Andres decided to start a game company with a friend. Financial paradoxes, zodiac misinformation, and the weather played key roles in the eventual suspension of the project. Since then, Andres has ventured to a few projects in and out of the industry. He has finally found a home here at GPG where he stares at individual pixels a frame at a time while consuming tremendous amounts of coffee and soda.

Evan began his career in the industry as a Mission Director at The OtherSide (TOS), writing and performing PC game missions for the public (with an emphasis on advanced military flight simulations), before becoming Lead Mission Director and ultimately Content Director for the online component of TOS: SimCorps.com. Evan joined GPG in 2001 to help finish the original Dungeon Siege by assisting in story/quest development and producing the in-game cutscenes and press movies, then moved on to preliminary story, background, and quest work for the Dungeon Siege: Legends of Aranna expansion and Dungeon Siege II.

Frank Rogan is originally from Orange County, California, but please don't hold it against him. He has a journalism degree from Cal State Fullerton, but please don't point and laugh. Frank was an award-winning reporter and editor for The Orange County Register, The San Bernardino Sun and The Seattle Times, but please hold your applause. Frank was an editor for Microsoft Encarta, but please don't get him started on the encyclopedia topics of pets, hobbies, sports and performing arts. Frank was a Web producer at Cavedog Entertainment, but please don't ask him how cool that was. Frank was the Editor-in-Chief of GameSpy Industries and was the producer for the original launch of GameSpy Arcade, but please don't ask him if he remembers any of it. Frank was a designer at Shiny Entertainment and shipped Enter the Matrix and The Matrix: Path of Neo, but please don't ask him if he can dodge bullets. Frank has a wonderful wife he doesn't deserve, two wonderful boys he's lucky to have, and an energetic dog he can't keep up with. Please, please, PLEASE don't ask him for home repair tips.

The first thing Gautam learned to program were games. Starting with programming text-adventures, and eventually moving on to arcade games and first-person shooters, Gautam found himself game-programming professionally after graduating from UCLA in 2003. Now at Gas Powered Games, Gautam continues to forge his game-creation legacy through his programming skills. His hobbies include playing tennis (when the Northwest weather cooperates), feeding his inner info-junkie, and honoring his Canadian roots with his unwavering support of the Calgary Flames.

After achieving all the glory and financial reward one could hope for as a stage actor and Improvisation teacher, Greg Stackhouse found himself wanting to contribute more to productivity and his checking account. He gathered his office skills (both of them) and his charm and found a new daytime home at Gas Powered Games. The sunlight still hurts his eyes, but luckily the office is kept pretty dark. It's almost like sitting in his recliner at home, but the people around him are no longer imaginary.

Jeff Petkau was born in the frigid wastes of Canada, where he learned to survive eating only seals, polar bears, and Canada's excellent selection of chocolate bars. But eventually the cold proved too much, and he decided to move to tropical Seattle and live the carefree life of a game programmer. He enjoys rock climbing, kayaking, juggling, playing poker and playing piano, but after years of effort he remains surprisingly bad at all of them.

Kevin was born in Hong Kong but immigrated to the U.S. when he was twelve. Even as a wee little kid, he wanted to draw and draw he did. He drew on the floor, the wall, school books, you name it. Some of his favorite subjects were drawing various Japanese anime and live action heroes. In the U.S. Kevin initially had some trouble speaking English but thanks to religously watching TV shows like Happy Days, Brady Bunch and Family Ties, his language barrier was broken in no time flat. School was a significant period for Kevin. Among many things, he discovered girls, comics and D&D. Unbelievably even with his dashing good looks, he would have little luck with girls but he was hooked on role-playing and superheroes. He found much pleasure creating his own Melinda the Fox comic, drawing D&D character portraits and illustrating modules that he would run. By the time he was ready for college his art was looking pretty decent but unfortunately majoring in art was never in the deck. Citing many examples of starved artists, Kevin's parents successfully talked Kevin into studying Civil Engineering. Eventually Kevin graduated from the University of Washington. While waiting for job interviews, he dabbled in the professional comics field, trying one last time to get an art career going. In 1990, he penciled a short story in Manga Monthly #2 (Fathom Press) and made a pin-up of Trixie from Speedracer sitting on top of the Mach 5 in a Amazing Heroes Swimsuit Issue (Fantagraphics). Kevin's parents were almost right as he discovered that comics work paid very little and Fathom Press closed down, killing the deal to do more Manga Monthly. As fate would have it, just when he was about to give up on art, a local upstart games company was desperate for artists. Having to choose between engineering or making game art, it took him about two seconds to make the right decision. The rest was history. Over the years Kevin worked with many different games companies and various gaming platforms. Some of his past published games included: Inspector Gadget (PC), King Arthur and the Knights of Justice (SNES), Secret of Evermore (SNES), and Total Annihilation (PC). A member of GPG since February 2000, Kevin is proud to be a part of the Dungeon Siege development team. Kevin enjoys spending his spare time with his wonderful wife, Sophia. Whenever she is not paying attention he collects a scary amount of action figures and Gundam models. One prized toy in his collection is the 1979 18 inch Alien figure from Kenner. Music and movie wise, he digs Hong Kong pop singer, Gigi Leung and wishes that the obscure 80's romantic comedy, Electric Dreams will make it on DVD soon.

Kim Aue comes to Gas Powered Games as a recruiter and HR Representative with a remarkable attitude. She's a spunky, sassy, marathon running, spark plug with uncompromising values. She's worked with some notable personalities in the software world and also volunteers her time feeding the homeless. As she likes to say "today is a good day to have choices," And given a choice, she is glad to be working on this team.

Marc Scattergood has a penchant for writing biographies in a mad-libs format. This is not one of those times. Born and raised in the Northwest, he has spent most of his life either in Oregon or Washington. Three years of high school were spent in Pennsylvania, but other than that, only some short stints in California have forced him to leave. He has worked in the game industry since 1998, on such titles as Asheron align="right" valign="top">top

Mike's 10 years of industry experience have been served at Gas Powered Games and Radical Entertainment. Mike's most recent work experience includes architecting and implementing many critical graphics systems, distributed AI control systems, and art process tools on Dungeon Siege. His work included prototyping the Dungeon Siege terrain engine, creating the Dungeon Siege skin/bone animation system, building the 3d Studio Max tools for terrain and actor asset creation as well as maintaining the art asset creation pipeline. These art tools were later released to the public as a gamepak for Discreet's gmax. Immediately prior to Dungeon Siege, Mike was the lead programmer on NHL All Star '98 for the Sega Saturn. Mike has been credited as a programmer on seven shipped titles.

As he grew to be a young man, Robert refined his career goal from "making games" to "writing game logic and AI". Robert is ecstatic to be doing his dream job while working with and learning from very talented people. Standing by Robert's side through the years of educational masochism (read: debt) is his long-time girlfriend Julie Lao. Now that Robert is gainfully employed, he looks forward to getting married to Julie and raising a mess of kids together.

Ruth Tomandl is a level 24 Mathematician, having recently completed the graduate school quest Mastery of Mathematics, for which she received the Degree of the Master and a Rare Black Robe. Prior to that, she completed the Marriage Quest for the Ring of Wedding; upon completion of that quest, she got her first party member, Dave, a level 26 Level Designer. Ruth is currently trying to level up her own Level Design skill by wielding the Siege Editor (+5 to shrubbing).

After getting a degree in theatre, Scott Tengelin decided he was being too grown-up and switched careers to games. He is known in the Dungeon Siege community as Claymore Dragon, lead world designer of the mod Ultima V: Lazarus. Scott is thrilled to join Gas Powered Games as a level designer in an unannounced project.

After getting his degree from Washington State University, Steven created character animation and multimedia artwork for the business and broadcast industry. His game career began in 1997 at Cavedog Entertainment where he worked on units, props, special effects, and FMV sequences for Total Annihilation and the follow-up TA:The Core Contingency expansion pack. Next, he supervised the FMV sequences for Cavedog's first person action game Amen: The Awakening. Steven joined Gas Powered Games in December 1999 and became GPG's Art Director in April 2001, serving in this capacity for the Dungeon Siege franchise.