Author Archive for Johnathan Erickson

Respawn

On March 1, 2010 Activision reported the firing of two senior employees to the Security and Exchange Commission. One of these employees was Jason West the Infinity Ward president, game director, co-CCO, and CTO. The other was Vince Zampella the CEO and co-founder of Infinity Ward.

They were dismissed and replaced by Activision, the same company who helped fund their own company Infinity Ward during the golden days of their Call of Duty franchise.

-Jason West on left and Vince Zampella on right

On April 12, 2010, the Los Angeles Times wrote an article about West and Zampella’s new ambitious venture. They were forming a new game developing studio called Respawn Entertainment.

West and Zampella got funding from Electronic Arts (EA) while keeping all intellectual property. After hearing about West and Zampella leaving and starting a new project, a bunch of their old employees from Infinity Ward left to join thier LLC, Respawn.

In June 2013, they debuted Titanfall their new and revolutionary take on first person shooters. The game was released on March 11, 2014 only for xbox. By October 5th of 2015 IGN reported that Titanfall’s sales passed 10 million globally (awesome for a game only on xbox). Recently they have been even more successful with their multi-platform sequel, Titanfall 2.

-Respawn developing team

Official site: http://www.respawn.com/

Los Angeles Times article on Respawn: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/12/entertainment/la-et-ct-callofduty12-2010apr12

IGN article on 1o million in Titanfall sales: http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/10/05/titanfall-sales-pass-10-million-globally

 

Bungie

Founded by Jason Jones and Alex Seropian in May 1991 in Chicago, Illinois. Bungie is an American video game developer located in Bellevue, Washington.

Jason Jones is a video game developer who began programming on Apple computers in high school. One of his early games he assembled was Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete. It was a multiplayer game he worked in partnership with Seropian to publish while attending the University of Chicago.

Eventually Marathon, Myth, Oni and Halo: Combat Evolved came along. Marathon did well but paled in comparison to the success of Halo.

Microsoft acquired Bungie in 2000 to develop the Halo games for their Xbox console.

On October 5, 2007, Bungie become an independent company, Bungie LLC and Microsoft still had ownership of the Halo IP.

More recently Bungie has made a deal with the Call of Duty developer Activision. The partnership is a ten year long project called Destiny.

Bungie.net

Activision

Destiny

Wine to Water – Doc Hendley

Doc Hendley, born 19 March 1979, founder of the non-profit organization Water to Wine. Hendley came up with the idea for Water to Wine in 2003 while he was still a bar tender. He dreamed of building an organization that fought water shortage and sanitization issues.

In February of 2004 Hendley conducted his first fundraiser and was soon living across the world in Sudan, Africa installing water systems for the people living there amidst the government sanctioned genocide.

His experiences changed his life forever. While there two of his team member were killed. After returning home he only felt more compelled to continue his philanthropy.

In 2009 Doc Hendley was recognized as a CNN Hero.

For more of the Wine to Water story click here

Life is Good

Image result for life is good

The Life is Good Company was founded in 1994 by Bert and John Jacobs. They started by designing and selling t-shirts out of their van in the streets of Boston.

Image result for life is good

Jake, the iconic stick figure, was created in the same year the company started. Jake was the beginning of Life is Good. The two brothers printed shirts of Jake and found that they were selling like a wildfire.

Their mission is to “spread the power of optimism”

Image result for life is good brothers

Their story: https://www.lifeisgood.com/our-story.html

SpaceX

Private space exploration technology corporations are rising fast and are getting closer to commercializing space flight. SpaceX, currently the most successful company in the field, is an American manufacturer with the highest ambitions. They have plans for helping the human race in colonizing the solar system. There first crazy objective is to safely transport humans to mars in hopes of colonization.

SpaceX was founded in June of 2002 by the same entrepreneur who founded Tesla and PayPal, Elon Musk.

On April 8th 2016 the falcon 9 successfully launched and landed. This was a huge step in the right direction, successfully landing with propulsion methods will prove useful for landing on any and all sorts of surfaces within the solar system. A new age of space exploration is almost in reach.

See Musk’s plans in more detail here

Aaron Gotwalt

– Penn State University’s Alumni Achievement Awards Dinner, 2015

 

Aaron Gotwalt is an Entrepreneur in San Francisco, California who grew up in Lititz, PA. He is the Co-Founder, CTO, and occasional software engineer at Projector. He Previously founded CoTweet (acquired in 2011 by ExactTarget), and graduated from Schreyer Honors College in 2004.

 

Schreyer’s news

http://news.psu.edu/story/370942/2015/09/22/academics/gotwalt%E2%80%99s-transformational-experiences-helped-launch-startup

AngelList

https://angel.co/gotwalt

His Blog

https://blog.projector.com/@gotwalt

 

Casey Neistat

Casey Neistat is a film maker and entrepreneur who started on you-tube in 2010. He was born in Gales Ferry, Connecticut on March 25, 1981 and moved to Manhattan, New York City when he was 20. More recently he has founded a video sharing platform called Beme and has crossed 1 billion views on you-tube. He has had massive success and he has been taking advantage of his name recognition by making connections with large businesses, like Samsung or Sony for instance. He has made very eye opening videos about his average day and after watching them I would credit Neistat’s work ethic and personality for his success. He is always working or spending time with his family. He has made his hobbies into his work, and thoroughly enjoys what he does. This video by Nerdwriter1 is a favorite of mine because of how well he explains what makes Neistat’s videos so great.