Greg Costikyan

Personal life and education Greg Costikyan was born in New York City, the son of attorney and politician Edward N.Costikyan and Frances (Holmgren) Costikyan. He is a 1982 graduate (B.S.) of Brown University. He married Louise Disbrow (a securities analyst), September 4, 1986. He is a frequent speaker at game industry events including the Game Developers Conference and E³.

Career Greg Costikyan has been a game designer since the 1970s. Costikyan worked at SPI until it was closed by TSR in 1982; he came to West End Games in 1983. His 1983 game Bug-Eyed Monsters brought West End Games into the science-fiction and fantasy genres, and the following year he licensed his Paranoia role-playing game to West End Games for publishing after trying unsuccessfully to find a publisher. In May 2011, he joined Disney Playdom as senior games designer and in January 2014 assumed the same role at Loop Drop. In June 2015, Costikyan joined Boss Fight Entertainment as senior games designer.

He has written on games, game design, and game industry business issues for publications including The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Salon, The Escapist, Gamasutra, and the magazine Game Developer.

He has lectured on game design at universities including the IT University of Copenhagen, Helsinki University of Art & Design, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Stony Brook University.

Games Costikyan's notable works include: Web and Starship (1984, a starships combat science fiction board game) Toon (1984, a humor role-playing game) ) ) Paranoia (Origins Award Winner for Best Roleplaying Rules of 1984 ) The Creature That Ate Sheboygan (Charles S. Roberts Award Winner for Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Game of 1979 ) MadMaze Violence: The Roleplaying Game of Egregious and Repulsive Bloodshed The Price of Freedom (1986)

Costikyan's other RPG credits include Acute Paranoia (1986) for Paranoia, is widely read as a conceptual approach to framing game design.

Costikyan worked on game design for many years, including writing and consulting for Nokia. In September 2005, he left Nokia to join with Johnny Wilson, former editor of Computer Gaming World, in founding the startup indie game publisher Manifesto Games. He regularly contributed to the now defunct Manifesto Games' website, and was editor in chief of their now defunct offshoot game review blog Play This Thing.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Costikyan was a leading player of Slobbovia. His novel One Quest, Hold the Dragons includes several stories about "crottled greeps", a Slobbovian meme.

In 1997, he designed the video game Evolution: The Game of Intelligent Life.

In February 2009, Costikyan updated the rules and re-released his 1979 space combat game, Vector 3, under a Creative Commons license as a free PDF download.

Books Costikyan has written four novels. The first two were parodies of genre fantasy: Another Day, Another Dungeon (1990, ) and its sequel One Quest, Hold the Dragons (1995, ). By the Sword (1993, ) is another irreverent fantasy about a young barbarian who is forced by circumstances to make his way in the larger world; it was originally serialized on the Prodigy online service.

His latest novel, First Contract (in French : Space O.P.A. - 2000, ), depicts (with much dry humor) the vast sociological and economic changes that happen after aliens arrive on Earth, and one entrepreneur's efforts to survive and make a new start.

In 2013, Costikyan's non-fiction look at the role of uncertainty in game development Uncertainty in Games was published by MIT Press. A paperback edition was subsequently published in 2015. .

Awards and recognition Costikyan is the winner of five Origins Awards. He was inducted into the Adventure Gaming Hall of Fame in 1999.