Jason Rohrer

Jason Rohrer
Jason Rohrer at the 2011 Game Developers Conference
Born	(1977-11-14) November 14, 1977
Occupation	Computer programmer, game designer, writer, musician

Jason Rohrer (born 1977) is an American computer programmer, writer, musician, and game designer. He publishes most of his software under the GNU GPL or into the public domain, and charges for the iPhone ports of his games.^[1][2] He is a graduate of Cornell University.^[3][4] From 2004 until 2011 he practiced simple living, stating in 2009 that his family of four had an annual budget of less than $14,500. They have since relocated from Las Cruces, New Mexico to Davis, California. ^[5]

Games

• Transcend – Rohrer's first game, released in 2005. Transcend is "an abstract 2D shooting game that doubles as a multimedia sculpture."
• Cultivation – Rohrer's second game, released in 2007, is "a social simulation about a community of gardeners."
• Passage – Rohrer's third game, which was released in 2007 and garnered much attention from the mainstream and independent gaming communities.^[6][7][8][9] The game lasts exactly five minutes, and focuses on life, mortality and the costs and benefits of marriage. It was featured in Kokoromi's curated GAMMA 256 event. In 2012 Passage became part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art.
• Gravitation – Rohrer's fourth game, released in 2008. That same year, it won the Jury award at IndieCade.^[10]
• Between – Rohrer's fifth game, released in 2008. It is hosted by Esquire Magazine as an adjunct to Rohrer's profile in the December 2008 issue^[11] and was the recipient of the 2009 Independent Games Festival's Innovation Award.^[12]
• Primrose – Rohrer's sixth game, designed for the iPhone (although released for home computers as well). It was released on February 19, 2009. It is a departure from the art-game theme, and is a simple puzzle game.^[13]
• Sleep is Death – Adventure-game-making software, released April 16, 2010. Sleep is Death games require the creator to be present to respond to the players actions in near real-time. It has received favorable reviews from a number of mainstream game review sites.^[14]
• Game Design Sketchbook – In 2008 Rohrer created a number of games for The Escapist. These would usually be unpolished prototype games that explore a single theme, with an accompanying article by Rohrer describing the creative process of making games.^[15]
• Inside a Star-filled Sky – An "infinite, recursive tactical shooter"^[16] released in February 2011, favorably reviewed.^[17][18] Selected for presentation at the 2011 Tokyo Game Show's Sense of Wonder Night.^[19]
• Diamond Trust of London – A two-player strategy game for the Nintendo DS.
• The Castle Doctrine – An MMO burglary and home defense video game.
• Cordial Minuet – A two-player online strategy game played anonymously for real money.

GDC 2011 Game Design Challenge

At the 2011 Game Developers Conference Rohrer won the annual Game Design Challenge by proposing a game that could only be played once by a single player and then passed on to another.^[20] This idea was based on stories of his late grandfather that had been passed down. He stated "We become like gods to those who come after us." With this in mind he created a Minecraft mod, Chain World, that was put on a single USB flash drive, which he then passed to an audience member. The rules of the game were simple;

• No text signs are allowed in the game
• Players may play until they die once.
• Upon respawning they must quit the game.
• The game must then be passed onto someone that is interested and willing to respect the rules.

GDC 2013 Game Design Challenge

In March of 2013 the Game Design Challenge was held at the Game Developers Conference for the final time. Its theme was "Humanity's Final Game." Rohrer was among the six contestants and won with his entry A Game For Someone, a physical game constructed of titanium. After its completion Rohrer buried it in an undisclosed location in the Nevada desert. At the challenge he released lists containing over one million discrete GPS coordinates, one of which was the actual burial spot. He estimated that with coordinated searching it would take at least 2,700 years to locate the game.^[21]

Other projects

• konspire2b, a pseudonymous channel-based file-distribution system
• token word, a Xanadu-style text editing system
• tangle, a proxy server which attempts to find relationships between websites and user visits.
• MUTE, a file sharing network with anonymity in mind.
• Monolith, a thought experiment that might be relevant to digital copyright. This has expanded to a computer program implemented on his ideas.
• seedBlogs, a modular building block that lets you add PHP and MySQL-backed dynamic content to any website.
• silk, a web-based hypertext system to simplify web page linking. Similar to wiki markup.
• hyperlit, a literary hypertext authoring system.
• subreal, a distributed evolution system.

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Jason Rohrer.

• Jason Rohrer official website