Game Education Summit North America

Tom Dowd is a 20-year veteran of the game design business, having been first published while still in high-school. He is one of the co-creators of the award-winning Shadowrun role-playing game, as well as writer/contributor to other popular role-playing titles. He was a developer at FASA Corporation, working on the Shadowurn, BattleTech, and EarthDawn game lines and joined the Microprose-FASA Corp joint venture FASA Interactive in the mid-90’s where he was senior designer on the RTS computer game MechCommander.

In 1999 he was the lead designed on the Microsoft/Day:1:Studios Xbox/Xbox-Live million+ selling release, MechAssault. His other computer game credits include Shadowrun games for the NES and Sega consoles, the MechWarrior 2 and MechWarrior 3 game series, Axis & Allies: Iron Blitz , Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude, and DuelMasters. He is currently the lead of Skotos Tech’s online multiplayer text-based social/rpg game Castle Marrach and is a full-time instructor at Columbia College Chicago in the Interactive Arts and Media department teaching and building curriculum in their Game Design major, where he supervises the year-long senior capstone game studio class.