He has a master's degree in Physics from the University of Missouri and was a teacher of the subject for years. He began his career as a computer games designer in 1979 with Atari. Following that phase, he created numerous hit games for Macintosh, until the latter left the field to concentrate on interactive narration systems, the most visible result of this being the Storytron technology.
He is the creator of the first newspaper on computer games design, The Journal of Computer Game Design, and founder of the Game Developers' Conference, with over ten thousand people attending every year. He has given conferences at numerous universities and is author of the books The Art of Computer Game Design (1982), considered a pioneer in the theory of computer games, and The Art of Interactive Design (2002), as well as of eleven computer games, prominently including Eastern Front (1981), Balance of Power (1985) and Patton versus Rommel (1986), among others.
