James Portnow Information

Writer / Author
Extra Credits
USA

Biography:
James Portnow is a one-of-a-kind gaming gallivanteer based in Seattle, Washington. He gained a Masters of Entertainment Technology degree at Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center and afterwards got a job at Activision working on the early Call of Duty series.

He then raised funds to help start an indie studio called Divide By Zero Games, and became a journalist for Edge, Gamasutra, and The Escapist. During his time as a journalist, he started attending game conferences and became a major speaker for game design theories.

After hitting some financial problems at DBZ, he left to run Rainmaker Games, a consulting firm that has worked with such clients as Warner Bros. Interactive and Zynga. He also lectures for students at DigiPen Institute of Technology taking their Bachelors and Masters degrees of Game Design.

He recently co-wrote a book about invented languages being published by Oxford University Press this fall.