James PORTNOW

James Portnow received his masters from Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center, went on to work for Activision as a designer on the Call of Duty series before raising funds to start his own company, Divide by Zero Games. Recently he’s opened Rainmaker Games a design and narrative consulting firm that has worked with partners from Warner Bros. to Zynga.

James Portnow has written for every major trade publication including Gamasutra, The Escapist, Edge &c. He is currently the writer on the hit consumer facing series about game design: Extra Credits. He is known for his theories on socially positive design and has been asked to speak at universities and companies around the world. He is the co-author of a book on Invented Languages being published by Oxford University Press to be released this fall.

James Portnow also holds a professorship at Digipen Institute of Technology where he teaches masters level game production and undergraduate level game design.