Bob Bates (game developer)

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Bob Bates (2010)

Robert "Bob" Bates (born December 11, 1953 ) is an American game developer and designer.

Career

After graduating, Bates worked as a tourist guide in Washington and after a short time built his own tourism company, which became the largest company for organized group travel in Washington. Shortly after his 30th birthday, he sold the company to devote himself to writing, but in 1986, after two unsuccessful years, he was forced to work as a game developer for text adventures at Infocom . There he wrote with Sherlock: The Riddle of the Crown Jewels the last pure text adventure of the company and with Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur the last game before the closure by the new owner Activision . In 1989, Bates founded Legend Entertainment with Mike Verdu , for which he wrote five games, but for the most part was filled with his role as managing director. Legend was later bought and closed by Atari in January 2004. Between 2004 and 2011, Bates worked as a freelance consultant in the video game industry and was a lead designer a. a. Responsible for games by the Slovenian company ZootFly, a game on "Training against sexual harassment" and a training program for the CIA . From 2011 to 2014, Bates was Chief Creative Officer for the browser game company Zynga and was responsible for the titles FrontierVille and Empires & Allies as well as the commercial failure Mafia Wars 2 . After leaving Zynga, he resumed his work as a freelance game software consultant. In February 2017, Bates used the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter to raise $ 35,000 for the final production of a new text adventure called Thaumistry: In Charm's Way . In the promotional video, Steve Meretzky , Tim Schafer and Al Lowe advertised the project , which was kept in the old Infocom style but developed with TADS . The game was released in October 2017. In 2019, Bates published a fantasy novel, The Ritual .

Ludography

Non-fiction

Novels

  • 2019: The Ritual (Bobbates LLC)

Awards

The CGW nominated the text adventure Spellcasting 101, produced by Bates (and written by Steve Meretzky ) for the 1991 Games of the Year for the title "Adventure Game of the Year" and placed it in its list of "15 Funniest Games of All Time" 11 a. Bates' own game Timequest won the 1991 PC Excellence Award from US magazine Game Players. Eric the Unready was voted "Adventure of the Year" in 1993 by the CGW.

Web links

Commons : Bob Bates  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Adventure-Treff .de: Bob Bates. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on February 22, 2017 ; accessed on February 21, 2017 .
  2. ↑ Kickstarter.com: Thaumistry: In Charm's Way. A New Comedy Text Adventure Game. Retrieved February 27, 2017 .
  3. ↑ CGW # 88 (November 1991), p. 58. Accessed February 2, 2016 .
  4. ↑ CGW # 148 (November 1996), p. 113. Accessed February 2, 2016 .
  5. ↑ Timequest on Giantbomb.com. Retrieved February 3, 2016 .
  6. ↑ CGW # 111 (October 1993), p. 72. Accessed February 3, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Bates, Bob
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bates, Robert (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American game developer and game designer
DATE OF BIRTH December 11, 1953