Alexander Peter Rigopulos (born 1970s in

Boxford, Massachusetts Boxford is a town in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the town's population was 8,203 in 2020. The original town center of Boxford, along with East Boxford and other areas in the eastern part of t ...

) is an American

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

designer and musician, best known as the former CEO and current creative director of Harmonix Music Systems, a company he founded with

Eran Egozy Eran Egozy is an Israeli chief technical officer and VP of engineering of Harmonix Music Systems, a company he founded with Alex Rigopulos in 1995. He also works as professor of the practice at MIT. Biography Egozy is a native of Israel. He m ...

in 1995. He is also a member of the band Newfane with his brother Chris Rigopulos.

Career

Rigopulos, born in

, is a graduate of

Deerfield Academy Deerfield Academy is an elite coeducational preparatory school in Deerfield, Massachusetts. Founded in 1797, it is one of the oldest secondary schools in the United States. It is a member of the Eight Schools Association, the Ten Schools Admis ...

along with two other brothers. He graduated with a B.S. in music and theater arts in 1992 and an M.S. in media arts and sciences in 1994 from the Media Lab at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

.Interview with Alex Rigopulos
at GameCritics.com While there, he met Egozy, an electrical engineer, and they discovered ways to create interactive music devices. After they received their degrees, the two formed Harmonix to create

music video game A music video game, also commonly known as a music game, is a video game where the gameplay is meaningfully and often almost entirely oriented around the player's interactions with a musical score or individual songs. Music video games may take a ...

s such as ''

Frequency Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit of time. It is also occasionally referred to as ''temporal frequency'' for clarity, and is distinct from ''angular frequency''. Frequency is measured in hertz (Hz) which is eq ...

'' and ''

Amplitude The amplitude of a periodic variable is a measure of its change in a single period (such as time or spatial period). The amplitude of a non-periodic signal is its magnitude compared with a reference value. There are various definitions of am ...

'', but the company became highly successful with its contributions to both the ''

Guitar Hero ''Guitar Hero'' is a series of music rhythm game video games first released in November 2005, in which players use a guitar-shaped game controller to simulate playing primarily lead, bass guitar, and rhythm guitar across numerous songs ...

'' and '' Rock Band'' series of games, both which used specially designed controllers based on instruments like guitars and drum kits to mimic the playing of numerous rock songs. Rigopulos and Egozy were listed in ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...

'' magazine's 2008 list of the

100 most influential people ''Time'' 100 (often stylized as ''TIME'' 100) is an annual listicle of the 100 most influential people in the world, assembled by the American news magazine ''Time''. First published in 1999 as the result of a debate among American academics, po ...

for their work on ''Rock Band''. In May 2014, amid layoffs at Harmonix, Rigopulos announced that he would step down as CEO, being replaced by Steve Janiak, while he would become the chief creative officer for the company. Rigopulos personally cites Japanese game designers

Masaya Matsuura (born June 16, 1961) is a Japanese musician and video game designer based in Tokyo, Japan. He was born in Osaka on June 16, 1961, and majored in Industrial Society at Ritsumeikan University. He has worked extensively with music and images, and h ...

Tetsuya Mizuguchi is a Japanese video game designer, producer, and businessman. Along with ex-Sega developers he is the one of the co-founders of the video game development firm Q Entertainment. He formerly worked for Sega as a producer in their Sega AM3 'arcade m ...

, and

Keita Takahashi is a Japanese game designer and artist, his most notable titles being ''Katamari Damacy'' and its sequel, ''We Love Katamari''. The original ''Katamari'' game was a surprise hit and was praised for its quirkiness, originality, and charm. Takahas ...

as some artists that have inspired his work at Harmonix.Behind the Games: Alex Rigopulos
at

GameSpot ''GameSpot'' is an American video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information on video games. The site was launched on May 1, 1996, created by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. In addition ...

In August 2010, Rigopulos joined the advisory board of the AbleGamers Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to bringing the rich world of digital entertainment to people with disabilities. In September 2015, he joined the advisory board for the crowdfunding platform

Fig The fig is the edible fruit of ''Ficus carica'', a species of small tree in the flowering plant family Moraceae. Native to the Mediterranean and western Asia, it has been cultivated since ancient times and is now widely grown throughout the world ...

. Rigopulos also donated $2,000 to the ScoreHero website, a website used to track ''

'' and ''Rock Band'' scores. He donated $9600 to the

Colbert Super PAC Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow (better known as the Colbert Super PAC) was a United States political action committee (PAC) established by Stephen Colbert, who portrayed Dr. Stephen T. Colbert, a mock-conservative political pundit on ...

in 2011. He was also one of the highest backers of the Kickstarter campaign for Double Fine Productions' ''

Broken Age ''Broken Age'' is a point-and-click adventure video game developed and published by Double Fine. ''Broken Age'' was game director Tim Schafer's first return to the genre since 1998's ''Grim Fandango'', and was released for Microsoft Windows, ...

'', which led to a character named Alex, loosely based on Rigopulos' own image and voiced by Rigopulos, being included in the game. In April 2015, rock band The Warning met their

GoFundMe GoFundMe is an American for-profit crowdfunding platform that allows people to raise money for events ranging from life events such as celebrations and graduations to challenging circumstances like accidents and illnesses. From 2010 to the be ...

goal thanks in large part to Rigopulos.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Rigopulos, Alex 1970s births Living people Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni People from Boxford, Massachusetts American technology chief executives American people of Greek descent Deerfield Academy alumni Video game producers Game Developers Conference Pioneer Award recipients