Gordon Walton

Background

Walton was born on March 2, 1956 in Houston, Texas, to Conrad G. Walton, Senior, an architect, and Rilda Akin, an artist.

Education

Texas Agricultural and Mechanical University.

Career

Since 1977 he has personally developed over thirty games, and overseen development of hundreds more, working as a producer, vice-president or executive producer. He is currently Executive Producer of the Kickstarter-backed MMORPG Crowfall. He was stationed at Fort Ord, Fort Gordon, Fort Hood, Fort Chaffee, and Kaiserslautern, Germany.

In 1977 he left the army to enroll at Texas Agricultural and Mechanical University, and continued serving in the United States. National Guard until 1979.

In 1981, he received his Bachelor of Science degree in computer science. From 1990-1992 he also served briefly in the United States Army Reserve.

He played his first computer game in 1977 on the PLATO system, and published his first computer game, Trek-X, in 1978 on the Commodore Positron Emission Tomography 2001. In 1984, he co-founded Applied Computing (later called Digital Illusions) with Don Gilman, and he was development manager for both Three-Sixty Pacific and Konami of America, Incorporated.

Though his work had been exclusively in the single-player game industry up until that point, in 1995 he joined the growing online game industry, managing games such as Air Warrior and Multiplayer Battletech at Kesmai.

After Kesmai, Walton moved on to managing Ultima Online at Origin Systems, and then at Sony Online Entertainment in Austin he worked on Star Wars Galaxies. At Maxis, he was executive producer on The Sims Online. He worked on the MMOG Star Wars: The Old Republic at Bioware"s studio in Austin until January 2011.

He was last employed at the social gaming company Playdom and is currently starting a new company in 2013.

He is on the advisory boards for the Full Sail University, University of Texas at Austin and Austin Community College Game Programs, while informally advising other educational programs.

Achievements

• He attended Spring Woods High School in Houston, and then enlisted in the United States. Army from 1974-1977, attaining the rank of Sergeant. He is a frequent speaker at industry conferences such as East-3, GDC, and the Austin Games Conference, and attained fame in 2003 for a talk entitled, "Ten Great Reasons You Don"t want to Make a Massively Multiplayer Game." He is also active in the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences and IGDA, and has been on the steering committee of the IGDA"s Online Games SIG.