Hi everybody! I’m Chris Ainsworth, a games guy in Las Vegas, Nv.
I grew up on Atari home computers and BBSes, dropped out of art school, and then did drugs and worked random ass design jobs and side gigs like body painting through my 20s. In hindsight, I don’t recommend it, but it’s good fodder for narrative work. Then in 1999-early 2000s I was part of a tech & culture site called Kuro5hin.org that got pretty famous for a while. Parlayed that into a job at Petroglyph Games, where I was the community manager during the tail end of Star Wars Empire at War and through Universe at War. From there I moved to game design, launched Highborn at Jet Set Games, and then proceeded to have everything I worked on for the next decade or so end up canceled (except for the game for the launch of The FP, I’m still proud of how quickly two of us cranked that out).
After all that I joined some friends at a small software company, got acqui-hired, worked for a big casino company, then rejoined those same friends to start a small software company where I do a mix of game design, user experience, copy writing, and whatever else that needs done. We’ve built everything from art installations to casino games. In between, I’ve written tech/games columns for a few outlets, contributed to some books, and am constantly on the verge of blogging again at driph.com.
I’m into interesting old movies, books, birds, and making arcade cabinets work again. I think I’m the only game developer to have worked for both Louis Castle and Brett Sperry while never having been an employee at Westwood.
altdrifter Hey you’re alt me.