Brian Goble
Name: Brian L. Goble
Date of Birth: November 15, 1967
Nickname: Scorpio
Location: Seattle, Washington
Employers: Edmark, Monolith Productions, HipSoft, Glu Mobile, Trpz.com
Interests: Computers, vehicles/modifying, weather, Disneyland
Notable Works: Windows Animation Package/32
"Accomplished lead engineer, game designer and entrepreneur in the game industry with over 20 years’ experience and a passion for developing and releasing great software. Proven track record through a variety of experiences when it comes to programming, designing, managing and shipping products. Co-founder of two successful game companies (Monolith Productions and HipSoft) with a lead role in over 35 products in the AAA, casual and mobile markets--many of which went on to win awards or spawn sequels. Specialties include lead engineering, game programming, project leadership, team management, product launches, game design and startups. — Scrum Alliance profile
Brian L. Goble (aka Scorpio) was a Monolith Productions engineer from its founding in 1994 until 2002. He is best known to the Blood community for his work as a coder on Blood II: The Chosen. The game contains the cheat code "mpscorpio" or "mpgoble" that displays the message "Brian L. Goble is a programming god!" (a similar cheat exists in Claw).
He also worked on Shogo: Mobile Armour Division, Gruntz, Get Medieval, The Operative: No One Lives Forever, Tex Atomic's Big Bot Battles, No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s Way and Tron 2.0 while at Monolith. In his position of Vice President of Engineering, he oversaw the engineering, quality assurance and technical support divisions for Monolith. He created the Windows Animation Package used in Monolith's 2D games.
He was interviewed by Tom "Mugwum" Bramwell in Bloody Interviews: History and his outside interests includes automobile modification, Disneyland, weather, and other computing topics.
Outside Career[edit]
He was making games for profit even while working on a Bachelor's of Science degree in Computer Science at the University of Washington. While in college, he worked as a Research Engineer at the school's department of technical communications and built up his programming skill. He started programming at age 12 after his first initial contact with computers, with his first real game made on a loaned Timex Sinclair in a month long spree. The first game he was offered money for was Text Adventure Maker and even though this was cancelled it started Goble's professional game programming career. Another early creation of his is Galactic Battle, a sort of enriched variant on the classic Space Invaders that was included on Big Blue Disk Issue #39 put out by Softdisk Publishing.
He left Monolith in 2002 with co-workers and co-founders Garrett Price and Bryan Bouwman to form HipSoft (later joined by Kevin Kilstrom from 2007 to 2014) and create family friendly games for the casual games market, most notably the Build-a-lot series. He left to found HipSoft after finding he no longer enjoyed working at Monolith since the company had expanded and so he quit to make small causal games with a small team that focused on fun instead of graphics technology. Prior to working at Monolith he developed children's educational software as Senior Software Engineer for Edmark Corporation as well as selling games to Softdisk. He left HipSoft in November 2014 to take up a position at Glu Mobile as technical director, before moving to Trpz.com in July 2016 as chief technology officer.
He presented a talk at the 2008 Game Developers Conference entitled "Player-Generated Content in Casual Games".
Video Games[edit]
"Brian graduated from the University of Washington in 1991. After graduation, he worked as a senior software engineer at Edmark developing award winning children's educational software. In 1994, Brian co-founded Monolith Productions. In 2002, Brian left Monolith and co-founded HipSoft with Garrett Price and Bryan Bouwman to develop family-friendly games for the casual games market. Brian has a wonderful wife, two great kids, a small dog and two playful cats. " — Old HipSoft profile
- Other HipSoft games (2002-2014).
- Build-a-lot series (2007-2009), HipSoft.
- Tron 2.0 (2003), Buena Vista Interactive.
- No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s Way (2002), Fox Interactive, Inc., Sierra Entertainment, Inc.
- No One Lives Forever - Game of the Year Edition (2001), Fox Interactive, Inc.
- Tex Atomic's Big Bot Battles (2001), Real Networks, Inc.
- The Operative: No One Lives Forever (2000), Fox Interactive, Inc.
- Gruntz (1999), Monolith Productions, Inc.
- Blood II: The Chosen (1998), GT Interactive Software Corp.
- Get Medieval (1998), Monolith Productions, Inc.
- Shogo: Mobile Armor Division (1998), MC2-Microïds, Monolith Productions, Inc.
- Claw (1997), Monolith Productions, Inc.
- "Monolith CD" (1995), Monolith Productions, Inc.
- Millie's Math House (1995), Edmark Corporation.
- Thinkin' Things Collection 2 (1995), Edmark Corporation.
- Nuclear Nightmare (1993-1994), Apogee Software (prototype).
- The Adventures of MicroMan (1993), independent shareware.
- NY Warriors (1991), Arcadia Systems, Inc.
- Big Blue Disk #39 (1990), Softdisk Publishing.
- Galactic Battle (1990), Softdisk Publishing.
- Roboman (1989), XOR Corporation.
- Pharaoh's Revenge (1988), Softdisk Publishing.
- Text Adventure Maker (1982), Antic magazine (cancelled).
External Links[edit]
- Brian Goble - LinkedIn
- Brian Goble - AngelList
- Old personal website from the late 1990s to early 2000s
- HipSoft on ModDB
- Brian Goble on MobyGames
- Interview over HipSoft
- HipSoft profile - Seattle Times
See Also[edit]
- Nick Newhard (designer of Blood, has worked for Edmark Corporataion, HipSoft partner Big Fish Games, and causal game company PopCap Games)
- Daniel Bernstein (Monolith musician, founder of the casual gaming companies Sandlot Games and UpTap)
- Kevin Kilstrom (Monolith artist, later joined him at HipSoft)
