Chris Stockman
Lead Designer, Volition, Inc.
Born in Dayton, Ohio 27 years ago I quickly realized at the young age of 6
that I wanted to play video games all day long. My first system was an
Atari 2600 and a cardboard box full of games my mother bought for me at a
garage sale. Later, I received a NES for Christmas and was in heavenly
bliss. I can still remember that Christmas morning and the feeling of
euphoria after unwrapping the box. I've been hooked on games ever since.
My first job in the industry was at Park Place Productions in Carlsbad, CA.
Little known fact: Park Place were the original developers of EA's John
Madden Football and NHL Hockey for the Sega Genesis (also ported over the
SNES). I spent a considerable time there learning the ways of video game
development. After the near crash of the 16-bit market I decided to take
sometime off and pursue different interests...but that didn't last long. A
year a half later the game industry reeled me back in and I went to work at
several contract jobs in the Seattle area. Once the contracts concluded I
made my way down to Salt Lake City and joined the extremely talented crew at
Singletrac Studios. I spent a good year or so there working on several
games for GT Interactive and Infogrames. Longing for Southern California
weather I decided to make my way to Los Angeles to work as a Level Designer
for Novalogic. After shipping Armored First 3 and Tachyon: the Fringe I got
a call from a good friend of mine working at Ritual in Dallas.
I joined the tribe as Lead Designer in 2000. I spent 3+ years at Ritual
shipping a Blair Witch title and most notably Elite Force 2 for the PC. I
have many fond memories of my time there and most importantly, I can now say
I worked with the infamous Levelord!
I came up to Champaign in early Feb. 04 and am now happily at Volition
serving as Lead Designer on a next-gen console title.