Paul Furio
| Paul Joseph Furio | |
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| Born | April 29, 1974 Farmingdale, New York |
| Occupation | Software Development Manager at Amazon.com[1] |
| Net worth | $300,000+ |
| Spouse | Mary McDonagh |
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Paul Joseph Furio (born 1974) is a veteran of the game development industry and a former musician. As a musician, he was the founder and creative force behind the band Static Engine, as well as the keyboardist for the band SMP. In the video game development industry, he has produced games for the Xbox, PC, and downloadable web platforms.
Furio holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His minor was in Electronic Arts, with a tertiary concentration in Psychology.
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[edit] Recent
Furio is currently a Software Development Manager at Amazon.com[1]. He resides in Seattle, Washington with his wife Mary.
[edit] Music career
Furio's interest in musical performance began in High School, where he participated in several musicals, eventually playing the role of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. Inspired by bands such as Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails, Furio formed his own industrial rock band, Static Engine, in 1994. He released several CDs, two professionally through the Seattle label ADSR Musicwerks, before going on musical hiatus. From 2001 through 2003, he was also the keyboardist and studio tech for the Seattle band SMP, and went on to direct the first music video for SMP in 2005. Furio's current music involvement is limited to studio engineering for the band SD6, and sporadic collaboration with other Seattle area electronic musicians.
Furio also co-founded (with Assemblage 23 frontman Tom Shear) a short-lived contract video game audio production company named "Seattle Sound Solutions". This company created music and sound effects for three casual games, including Pizza Frenzy, before shutting down.
[edit] Software Development Career
Furio began his software development career as an intern at Reuters. After graduation from Rensselaer, he spent over three years in the control systems industry, at a Massachusetts company named Owl Control Systems, followed by a year at a small financial company named ITS Associates.
In 1999, he moved to Washington to enter the video game industry, applying his client/server experience to become a multiplayer/networking developer at Cavedog Entertainment. From Cavedog, he spent time at several area game studios, finally settling in at Microsoft in 2004, first as a contractor, then as a full time employee from 2005 to 2009. He led the engineering team at the Playdom Seattle studio, from December 2009. After spending nearly a year as Technical Director at Novel, Inc., Furio now works at Amazon.com.
Furio has designed and developed code for several video game titles, including:
- Social City, on Facebook
- XBox Live 1 vs 100[2]
- MSN Games Flowerz
- MSN Games Hop-It![3]
- MSN Games Bicycle Texas Hold'Em Poker
- Forza Motorsport[4]
- Shadow Ops: Red Mercury[4]
- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone[4]
- Hot Wheels Slot Racer[5]
- Williams F1 Team - Team Driver[4]
- Total Annihilation: Kingdoms[4]
Furio maintains a passion for Interactive fiction, having authored two publicly released works, Splashdown (8th place winner of the 2004 Interactive Fiction Competition) [6] and Artifice.
Furio was also a coworker of Wes Cumberland at the Seattle game development studio Escape Factory.
[edit] References
- ^ a b "Twitter Profile". http://twitter.com/#!/PaulFurio.
- ^ "1vs100 Credits". http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/1vs100/credits.htm.
- ^ "MSN Games - Casually Speaking Series". http://zone.msn.com/en/general/article/casuallyspeakingpaulf.htm.
- ^ a b c d e "MobyGames - Paul Furio". http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,51970/.
- ^ "MobyGames - Paul J. Furio". http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,94808/.
- ^ "2004 Annual Interactive Fiction Competition". http://ifcomp.org/comp04/.
