Jon Radoff is an American

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entreprene ...

author In legal discourse, an author is the creator of an original work that has been published, whether that work exists in written, graphic, visual, or recorded form. The act of creating such a work is referred to as authorship. Therefore, a sculpt ...

and

game designer Game design is the process of creating and shaping the mechanics, systems, rules, and gameplay of a game. Game design processes apply to board games, card games, dice games, casino games, role-playing games, sports, Wargame (video games), war ga ...

. His work has focused on

online communities An online community, also called an internet community or web community, is a community whose members engage in computer-mediated communication primarily via the Internet. Members of the community usually share common interests. For many, on ...

, Internet media and

computer games A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...

. He is CEO and co-founder of Beamable, a Live Game services platform that enables the creation of online games based on Unity. Radoff began his career when he dropped out of college to found NovaLink, an early internet service provider.Online Company SparkForge Formed, Coins 'MSOGs'
''GamaSutra'', September 22, 2006 In 1991, while at NovaLink, he created '' Legends of Future Past'', one of the first commercial

MMORPG A massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) is a video game that combines aspects of a role-playing video game and a massively multiplayer online game. As in role-playing games (RPGs), the player assumes the role of a Player charac ...

s. In 1997, he founded Eprise Corporation, a creator of Web content management software. Eprise went public on the

NASDAQ The Nasdaq Stock Market (; National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the U.S. by volume, and ranked second on the list ...

stock market in 2000 and was acquired by Divine Inc. in 2001. On September 21, 2006, Radoff founded

GamerDNA gamerDNA Inc. was a social media company for video game players founded on September 21, 2006. The company was part of Live Gamer ( Emergent Payments). Members may tag themselves with information on games they have played, server names and guil ...

, a

social media Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the Content creation, creation, information exchange, sharing and news aggregator, aggregation of Content (media), content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongs ...

company that developed social gaming communities and a videogame advertising network. GamerDNA is now part of Live Gamer. In March 2010, Radoff started a new social game company called Disruptor Beam that built games for Facebook. In February 2013, the company released Game of Thrones Ascent. The company ultimately sold its games to other publishers, underwent a reorganization, and relaunched as Beamable.

Writing

Radoff wrote ''Game On: Energize your Business with Social Games,'' which was published by Wiley in 2011. The book discusses social games, which Radoff views as a 5,000-year-old phenomena, and how games can be applied to businesses to make them more engaging and profitable. Radoff is generally critical of the

gamification Gamification is the process of enhancing systems, services, organisations and activities through the integration of game design elements and principles in non-game contexts. The goal is to increase user engagement, motivation, competition and ...

trend, and explains to businesses that they must incorporate story and immersion into their businesses if they really want to take advantage of the unique engagement offered by games. Radoff's blog, Metavert Meditations, contains his writing on subjects including games, internet, metaverse, AR/VR, blockchain and artificial intelligence.

Early career

Radoff lived in Northborough,

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

and was a 1991 graduate of Algonquin Regional High School. During his high school years, he develope
Space Empire Elite
a

bulletin board system A bulletin board system (BBS), also called a computer bulletin board service (CBBS), is a computer server running list of BBS software, software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, the user perfor ...

strategy game for

Atari ST Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the company's Atari 8-bit computers, 8-bit computers. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985, and was widely available i ...

BBS systems. Much of the money Radoff earned from Space Empire Elite and his other Atari ST game, Final Frontier, later became seed capital which he used to start the company NovaLink. Later authors who maintained or contributed to SEE include Jurgen van den Handel, Steven P. Reed, Carlis Darby, David Pence, Doc Wynne, David Jones, and Dick Pederson. Also while in high school, Radoff purchased the rights to port the

BBS software StarLink, which supported

FidoNet __ / \ /, oo \ (_, /_) _`@/_ \ _ , , \ \\ , (*) , \ )) ______ , __U__, / \// / FI ...

, to the

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore International, Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-b ...

; Radoff named the ported software Paragon BBS. After a brief time studying at

Worcester Polytechnic Institute The Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) is a Private university, private research university in Worcester, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1865, WPI was one of the United States' first engineering and technology universities and now h ...

, Radoff dropped out to form his first company.

Games

The games developed, co-developed and/or directed by Jon Radoff:

References

External links

Jon Radoff's blogInterview
with

Gamasutra ''Game Developer'' (known as ''Gamasutra'' until 2021) is a website created in 1997 that focuses on aspects of video game development. It is owned and operated by Informa TechTarget and acted as the online sister publication to the print maga ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Radoff, Jon Living people American entertainment industry businesspeople American video game designers Year of birth missing (living people)