Jordan Weisman is an American game designer, author, and serial entrepreneur who has founded five game design companies, each in a different game genre and segment of the industry.

Early life

Weisman graduated from Francis W. Parker High School, in Chicago, Illinois. He went to the Merchant Marine Academy and briefly attended University of Illinois at Chicago, before leaving school to pursue his business interests.

Career

In 1980, Weisman founded role playing game publisher FASA Corporation (short for the Freedonia Aeronautics & Space Administration, named after the fictional country in the Marx Brothers film Duck Soup) with partner L. Ross Babcock. Weisman and Babcock made a few hundred photocopies of the early adventures that Weisman wrote for the pen and paper role-playing game, Traveller, and sold the adventures to a local store in Chicago before sending them to nationwide distributors.

Weisman had been developing a computer game design called Corsairs!, which took place in the United States of an alternate universe, and he arranged for FASA Corporation to publish the board game Crimson Skies (1998) with the intend of increasing the value of computer game. (named after the characters in The Wizard of Oz). Weisman relicensed his FASA properties through Smith & Tinker.

The same year Weisman co-founded the start-up Fyreball with Pete Parsons (formerly of Bungie and currently serves on the Board of Advisors along with Ed Fries). The company is now operating under the name Meteor Solutions.

On May 27, 2009 Weisman's Smith & Tinker announced their first game had been released to public beta. This was Nanovor, an online battle game targeted to 7-12 year olds. However, it was not a success, and was closed down in December 2010. Smith & Tinker closed down November 8, 2012.

On June 9, 2009 Weisman and J.C. Hutchins released Personal Effects: Dark Art (Griffin). On the same day Weisman along with Russ Bullock announced that the MechWarrior franchise would be seeing a relaunch.

Jordan is currently an adjunct professor in the Interactive Media Division at the USC School of Cinema-Television. In 2012 he started to raise money, through Kickstarter, for Shadowrun Returns, a new video game adaptation of Shadowrun. His new company is Harebrained Schemes and they released their 3rd game Shadowrun Returns on July 25, 2013. Shortly after, on September 10, 2013, Jordan's company launched a Kickstarter for its first tabletop game, Golem Arcana. After successfully funding, Golem Arcana released the following year on August 13, 2014. On January 13, 2015, Harebrained Schemes launched another Kickstarter campaign to partially fund development their next Shadowrun game, Shadowrun: Hong Kong. Shadowrun Returns was in many top 10 lists for 2014 and several No 1s for RPGs that year. Shadowrun Hong Kong was in many top 10s lists in 2015 and several No. 1 RPGs for 2015. In 2015 HBS did a kickstarter for Battletech/MechWarrior another property created by Jordan Weisman. They raised just short of 3 million and the game was released on April 24, 2018.

In June 2018, it was announced and completed Harebrained's acquisition by Paradox Interactive for a fixed purchase price of US$7,500,000.

Awards and honors

Weisman has won more than 100 awards, including election to the Hall of Fame by the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design.

Design credits

Weisman's design credits in paper RPG and miniature game design include:

  • The click base concept for miniature gaming, MageKnight, HeroClix, etc.
  • Star Trek III: Starship Combat Game Box Set (1984)
  • Battletech (1984)
  • Shadowrun (1989) - game concept
  • Earthdawn (1993) - game concept
  • Crimson Skies (1998)
  • MechWarrior: Dark Age (2002)
  • Aerotech 2, Revised Ed. (BattleTech) (2004)
  • Golem Arcana (2014)

He also served as production manager and/or graphic designer on a long series of titles, and is co-author with Sean Stewart of Cathy's Book, a young-adult novel with ARG components.

References

  • Harebrained Schemes
  • Weisman's credits at MobyGames
  • Escapist Magazine's biography/article on Weisman
  • John Cook's Venture Blog at SeattlePI.com