James Portnow
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| James Portnow | |
|---|---|
| Born | |
| 🏳️ Nationality | American |
| 🎓 Alma mater | St. John's College Carnegie Mellon University |
| 💼 Occupation | Game designer |
| 📆 Years active | 2007—present |
James Portnow is an American writer and game designer, co-founder of the YouTube channel Extra Credits for which he wrote many of the episodes from 2013 to 2019. He is known for his work as a design consultant with Zynga and Riot Games.
About[edit]
Portnow received his undergraduate degree from St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and a master's from Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center before getting a job as a designer at Activision, working on the Call of Duty franchise. He has also done consultant work for game development companies Zynga and Riot Games. For four years, he taught undergraduate game design and master's-level game software production courses at DigiPen Institute of Technology.[1]
In 2008, Portnow co-founded the video lesson series Extra Credits, creating 16 seasons with hundreds of videos discussing issues pertinent to video games and game studies such as video game development, the legitimacy of video games as art, and sparking intellectual discourse on important issues in gaming culture.[2] He wrote a majority of the episodes on a wide variety of topics such as narrative creation, level design, gamification, tangential learning, sexuality and gender discrimination both within games and in the gaming community, and bullying in the community. In 2012, Microsoft invited Portnow to a special meeting to discuss potential solutions to the toxicity present on Xbox Live, and he was interviewed by the New York Times[3] and Al Jazeera for his fight against toxicity.[4]
In September 2019, Portnow stepped down from the Global Game Jam board of directors after being cleared by an independent HR firm of allegations of bullying Extra Credits employees the previous year.[5] In October, in the episode "The Perfect Horror Protagonist - Writing a Character for Fun & Terror", it was mentioned that Portnow, the only member of the original lineup, was leaving Extra Credits after 10 years of being the show's writer, even though his scripts would be used for future episodes.[6]
Public speaking[edit]
Portnow has been a regular speaker at many gaming conferences, including being the keynote speaker at the Argentina Video Games Exposition in Buenos Aires in November 2011,[7] the Konsoll 2014 conference, hosted by the Game Developers Guild of Norway, and in 2018 was keynote speaker at the Georgia Game Developers Association's 12th annual Southern Interactive Entertainment and Game Expo.[8] He has also regularly been asked to give talks on gaming at many universities and colleges, including Vancouver Film School,[9] Indiana University Bloomington,[10] and Smith College.[11]
References[edit]
- ↑ "The Many Roles of James Portnow". DigiPen Institute of Technology News. March 2013.
- ↑ Force, Sebastian. "Extra Credits: The Web Show That Changed How I Think About Games". BnBGaming. Archived from the original on 2012-04-06.
- ↑ "In Virtual Play, Sex Harassment Is All Too Real". New York Times. August 2012.
- ↑ "She got game". Al Jazeera. June 2014.
- ↑ "Global Game Jam in turmoil following Black Lives Matter silence". gamesindustry.biz. 29 June 2020. Retrieved 8 July 2021.
- ↑ Krol, Matt. "The Perfect Horror Protagonist - Writing a Character for Fun & Terror - Extra Credits". YouTube. Retrieved 30 October 2019.
- ↑ Brian Byrnes (November 15, 2011). "Argentina's video gamers take on world". CNN.
- ↑ Colin Solan (July 24, 2018). "Extra Credits' James Portnow to Keynote SIEGE Con 2018". Convention Scene.
- ↑ VFS Web Team (February 3, 2012). "Guest Post: Extra Credits' James Portnow Visits VFS". Vancouver Film School News.
- ↑ Ellen Glover (18 October 2016). "Portnow encourages young designers to explore 'magic of games'". Indiana University Bloomington News.
- ↑ "James Portnow of Extra Credits – More Than A Pastime: A Promise to Future Generations Public Lecture and Q&A Sessions". Smith College Student Engagement Hub. 28 February 2018.
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