Ragnar Tørnquist (born 31 July 1970) is a Norwegian video game designer and writer. He has been working for

Funcom Funcom Oslo AS (formerly Funcom N.V. and Funcom Productions AS) is a Norwegian video game developer and publisher that specializes in online games. It is best known for the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) titles ''Conan Ex ...

in Oslo since 1994, and founded his own studio Red Thread Games in November 2012.

Biography

Tørnquist studied art, history and English at St Clare's, a school in

Oxford Oxford () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and non-metropolitan district in Oxfordshire, England, of which it is the county town. The city is home to the University of Oxford, the List of oldest universities in continuou ...

, from 1987 to 1989. From 1989 to 1990, he studied philosophy and English at the

University of Oslo The University of Oslo (; ) is a public university, public research university located in Oslo, Norway. It is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation#Europe, oldest university in Norway. Originally named the Royal Frederick Univ ...

. After that, from 1990 to 1993 he attended the Undergraduate Film and Television department at the

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...

Tisch School of the Arts The New York University Tisch School of the Arts (commonly referred to as Tisch) is the performing, cinematic, and media arts school of New York University. Founded on August 17, 1965, as the School of the Arts at New York University, Tisch ...

. His influences included

Joss Whedon Joseph Hill "Joss" Whedon ( ; born June 23, 1964) is an American screenwriter, director, producer, comic book writer, and composer. He is best known as the creator of several television series: the supernatural drama ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer' ...

and

Neil Gaiman Neil Richard MacKinnon Gaiman (; born Neil Richard Gaiman; 10 November 1960) is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, audio theatre, and screenplays. His works include the comic series ''The Sandman (comic book), The Sandma ...

. In 1994, he returned to Oslo, Norway and started working for Funcom as producer, designer, writer, and level-editor of the video game adaptation of '' Casper''. He felt that a new term was needed for a new generation of adventure games since "the classic point-and-click 'graphical adventure' is dead... The point of the 'modern adventure' ..is to bring adventure gaming back into the mainstream, and to use technology and gameplay advances to bring the genre forward into the 'next generation'." On 1 November 2012, Funcom announced that Tørnquist founded an independent game development studio Red Thread Games, which will continue developing ''The Longest Journey'' IP under license from Funcom. Simultaneously, Tørnquist stepped down as the Game Director of '' The Secret World'' to devote more time to the third entry in ''TLJ'' series, '' Dreamfall Chapters'', while still working on ''TSW'' as the Creative Director. Tørnquist is married and has one daughter.

Games

* '' Casper'' (1996) * '' Dragonheart: Fire & Steel'' (1996) * ''

The Longest Journey ''The Longest Journey'' () is a 1999 Adventure game, point-and-click adventure video game, written by Ragnar Tørnquist, developed by Norwegian studio Funcom, and released on Microsoft Windows in November 1999; an iOS version was later develope ...

'' (1999) * '' Anarchy Online'' (2001) * '' Dreamfall: The Longest Journey'' (2006) * '' The Secret World'' (2012) * '' Dreamfall Chapters'' (2014–16) * '' Draugen'' (2019) * '' Dustborn'' (2024) * '' Svalbard'' (TBA)

Written works

Novels

* ''Anarchy Online – Prophet Without Honour'' (2001)

Short stories

* ''Rules are Rules''

Screenplays

* ''In the Dark Places''

References

External links

* * *
Red Thread Games website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tornquist, Ragnar 1970 births Living people The Longest Journey Norwegian male bloggers Norwegian video game designers People educated at St. Clare's, Oxford Tisch School of the Arts alumni University of Oslo alumni Video game writers Norwegian voice directors