Jason Rohrer

Jason Rohrer
Jason Rohrer at gamma 256 in 2007
Born	1977
Occupation	Computer programmer, game designer, writer, musician

Jason Rohrer (born 1977) is a computer programmer, writer, musician, and game designer. He publishes most of his software under the GNU GPL or into the public domain, and charges for the iPhone ports of his games. He practices simple living and said in 2009 that his family of four had a budget less than $14,500 per year.

Games

Transcend – Rohrer's first game, released in 2005. Transcend is "an abstract 2D shooting game that doubles as a multimedia sculpture."

Cultivation – Rohrer's second game, released in 2007, is "a social simulation about a community of gardeners."

Screenshot from Rohrer's Passage

Passage – Rohrer's third game, which was released in 2007 and garnered much attention from the mainstream and independent gaming communities. The game lasts exactly five minutes, and focuses on life, mortality and the costs and benefits of marriage. It was featured in Kokoromi's curated GAMMA 256 event.

Gravitation – Rohrer's fourth game, released in 2008.

Between – Rohrer's fifth game, released in 2008. It is hosted by Esquire Magazine as an adjunct to Rohrer's profile in the December 2008 issue and was the recipient of the 2009 Independent Games Festival's Innovation Award.

Primrose – Rohrer's sixth game, designed for the iPhone (although released for home computers as well). It was released on February 19, 2009. It is a departure from the art-game theme, and is a simple puzzle game.

Sleep is Death – Adventure-game-making software, released April 16, 2010. Sleep is Death games require the creator to be present to respond to the players actions in near real-time. It has received favorable reviews from a number of mainstream game review sites.

Game Design Sketchbook – In 2008 Rohrer created a number of games for The Escapist. These would usually be unpolished prototype games that explore a single theme, with an accompanying article by Rohrer describing the creative process of making games.

Inside a Star-filled Sky – An "infinite, recursive tactical shooter" released in February 2011, favorably reviewed. Selected for presentation at the 2011 Tokyo Game Show's Sense Of Wonder Night.

Diamond Trust of London – A two-player strategy game for the Nintendo DS.

GDC 2011 Game Design Challenge

At the 2011 Game Developers Conference Rohrer won the annual Game Design Challenge by proposing a game that could only be played once by a single player and then passed onto another. This idea was based on stories of his late grandfather that had been passed down. He stated "We become like gods to those who come after us." With this in mind he created a Minecraft mod, Chain World, that was put on a single USB flash drive, which he then passed onto an audience member. The rules of the game were simple;

• No text signs are allowed in the game
• Players may play until they die once.
• Upon respawning they must quit the game.
• The game must then be passed onto someone that is interested and willing to respect the rules.

Other projects

• konspire2b, a pseudonymous channel-based file-distribution system
• token word, a Xanadu-style text editing system
• tangle, a proxy server which tries to find relationships between websites a user visits.
• MUTE, a file sharing network with anonymity in mind.
• Monolith, a thought experiment that might be relevant to digital copyright. This has expanded to a computer program implemented on his ideas.
• seedBlogs, a modular building block that lets you add PHP and MySQL-backed dynamic content to any website.
• silk, a web-based hypertext system to simplify web page linking. Similar to wiki markup.
• hyperlit, a literary hypertext authoring system.
• subreal, a distributed evolution system.

External links

• Official website
• Passage
• Sleep is Death
• Quote