about the team
Susan Wu
Susan Wu is the co-founder and CEO of ohai, a games company dedicated to creating the world’s first true flash-based MMOs for the social web. She is also currently an advisor to highly anticipated startups Square and Mixer Labs. Susan was formerly principal and venture advisor at Charles River Ventures, where she was involved with investments in companies like Twitter, Live Gamer, Metaplace and also the former CMO of Apache Software foundation, one of the world’s leading open source software organizations.
Susan’s roots in the open source community stem from her long-abiding interest in how technology catalyzes social and economic change. She began her career as the chief architect of an early text MUD and has remained active in online gaming. She was a competitive Quake player as well as being a key contributor to a leading Quake mod and open source gaming engine.
A serial entrepreneur, Susan was the co-founder of a SaaS startup that had a successful IPO and a senior executive at a publicly traded digital security company. In addition, she was the founding co-producer for Virtual Goods Summit, on the advisory committee for Web 2.0 Conferenceand has spoken at Le Web, SXSW, E3, GDC, Austin GDC, Web 2.0 Expo, and many other conferences. Finally, Susan was selected by Fast Company as being one of “100 Most Creative People” and by the San Jose Mercury News as one of the “10 Most Influential People” in 2009.
Susan’s favorite games:
Asheron’s Call, Quake 2, Knights of the Old Republic, Super Puzzle Fighter, Super Monkey Ball
Susan’s favorite movies:
Thin Red Line and New World by Terrence Malick
- Follow Susan on Twitter.
- Read Susan’s personal blog.
- Read Susan’s article on Virtual Goods in Techcrunch
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Don Neufeld
Don is the co-founder and CTO of ohai and a well-recognized technology leader in the online gaming space. He was formerly Technical Director at Sony Online Entertainment, where he was the lead technologist on 15+ major MMO releases. In this role, he ran the engineering team and drove company wide technology initiatives across the entire stack from network protocol, server optimization, gameplay engines, graphics rendering, to client side presentation.
As a chief architect of many of the original Social Games, known as Massively Multiplayer Games, his credits include EverQuest, EverQuest II, PlanetSide, Star Wars Galaxies, and FreeRealms.
Don’s favorite games:
Civilization IV, Guitar Hero II, Asheron’s Call, EverQuest II
Chris
Chris is VP of getting sh#t done and came to ohai after a stint at another gaming start-up.
After a nomadic upbringing as an Army brat, Chris is happy to call San Francisco his home. He arrived here from the East coast and found employ at an ambitious start-up in the late nineties. In the wake of the ensuing implosion, Chris surfed to SEGA, where he eventually became Director of Web Production. There he helped launch many video game titles, including the MMOs, Phantasy Star Online and Phantasy Star Universe.
When Chris isn’t working, he can be found burning things in the kitchen, pointing his camera at weird and/or wonderful objects or working on his drum fills playing Rock Band (he thinks an excellent name for a rock band would be Abra Cadaver).
Chris’ favorite entertainment experiences include: seeing Radiohead live, Blade Runner, the Wire, Neuromancer, and Apples to Apples.
Adam (senior architect)
Work background: 16 years of experience in technology from engineering and design to music and media production
Favorite games: I was unreachable for weeks when Half Life came out. More recently into Fable II and Texas Hold-em, Uno and Scrabble on the analog side.
Fun fact: producer of indie electronica music under the project name “atom(bang)”
Albert (head web apps guy)
Work background: 15 years of experience in the games industry.
Favorite games: Archon, M.U.L.E., Pools of Radiance, Star Control II, and Xenogears.
Fun fact:“If I could travel through time, I’d go back in time and fix all the bugs that I introduce into the code before I introduce them, thereby inducing a weird temporal anomaly that would teleport me to Borg space where I would meet my evil twin, who would sport a strange looking goatee and quote random lines from Shakespeare. And he would not be Victor Calanog, I swear!”
Binh (designer)
Work background: Art Institute of California – San Francisco
Favorite games: Final Fantasy VII + VIII, Chrono Trigger, Bomberman, and Tetris.
Fun fact: “One day I am going to own a ‘59 Cadillac and ride through the cornfields listening to Elvis Presley.”
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Brian (guy in charge of network operations)
Favorite games: Left 4 Dead, Borderlands, Evil Genius, and Tales of Monkey Island.
Fun fact: “If I could travel through time, I’d travel to near the end of the Cretaceous period in Earth’s history. My goal? Plant evidence in the fossil record that would implicate brain-eating as a cause for dinosaur extinction. C’mon! Zombie Dinosaurs! Science would love that!”
Bob (lead client engineer)
Work background: 11 years at Sony Online Entertainment, working on projects like EverQuest, PlanetSide and Free Realms.
Favorite games: A lot of Facebook, iPhone, and Nintendo DS games.
Fun fact: Walked across the Oregon mountain range in two weeks.
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Eric (lead mmo engineer)
Work background: Sony Online working on PlanetSide and EverQuest II
Favorite game: : “When the next Civ comes out, don’t count on getting in touch with me”
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Franky (user experience and design lead)
Work background: Flash & design lead for other interactive virtual worlds.
Favorite game: Super Nintendo, Sega, and Gameboy games. “I’m insane for playing Castlevania and old school games like Donkey Kong Country, Street Fighter, Killer Instinct, and Mortal Kombat.”
Fun fact: “When i was 12 I wanted to work in some kind of art department for Nickelodeon. Specifically, I wanted to draw for the Monsters in Ahh Real Monsters, my favorite cartoon.”
James (writer/designer)
Work background: Worked at Linden Lab during the launch of Second Life; author of The Making of Second Life (HarperCollins), and the SL blog, New World Notes; wrote for the ground-breaking ARG, Majestic (EA).
Favorite games: Thief 1 and 2, Desktop Tower Defense, Advance Wars, BioShock, Halo, Jagged Alliance 2, and Nethack.
Fun fact: “I’m originally from Kailua, Hawaii, which I’m proud to say has become President Obama’s vacation retreat.”
Jill (user interface programmer)
Work background: Programming for Shopiks (iphone apps) and WMS Gaming (slot machine supplier).
Favorite game: Dynasty Warriors, Little Big Planet, and Soul Calibur.
Fun fact: “If I could have any superpower, I’d pick teleportation so that I would never have to worry about missing Caltrain again!”
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John (designer)
Work background: Art Institute of California – San Francisco.
Favorite game: Currently playing Left for Dead 2, Assassins Creed 2, Modern Warfare 2 and Lego Batman.
Fun fact: “When I was 12, I wanted to be the first black president… will never happen now.”
Joseph (code monkey)
Work background: Coded for AvantGo and KnowledgePlex.
Favorite game: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Killzone 2 and Little Big Planet
Fun fact: “If I could travel through time, I would want to go back and visit historic places. See the colosseum, Stonehenge, kick Hitler in the nuts as a teenager, check out the pyramids. You know, fun stuff.”
Julia (marketing manager)
Work background: More than 5 years experience with companies like MySpace, Livra.com, Latin3 and Ebay Latin America.
Favorite things: Seinfeld, Friends, Sex & the City, 30 Rock, SNL
100 years of solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Shanghai Baby by Wei Hui, My life in France by Julia Child, hiking, playing the piano.
Fun fact: “I was born in Tandil, Argentina and lived in Buenos Aires for 8 years before moving to San Francisco in December 2008. I’m a chef, a blogger, a make up artist, a pianist, and there’s more to come!”
Matt (online community manager)
Work background: Peace Corps, architecture professor, landscape architect
Favorite things: Wong Kar Wai and Kurosawa movies, the Dismemberment Plan, the Unicorns, the Mountain Goats, Talib Kweli, Brother Ali, Danko Jones, Flight of the Conchords, Arrested Development, The Office, Neal Stephenson, China Mieville, ultimate frisbee, my dog Penelope.
Fun fact: “Spent two years teaching (and practicing sweet bow-hunting skills) in Mongolia, and a year in Rome making collages from things I found in the street (yes, really.)”
Mike (art director)
Work background: 4 years as a freelance artist with full time stints at Ocean of America, and Sierra. 9 years at Totally Games with 5 as Art Director.
Favorite game:: Street Fighter, Diablo Series, Half-Life Series, Baldur’s Gate, and Patapon.
Fun fact: “If I could choose a superpower, I’d pick drama-destroying vision rays. With them, I would make everyone stop the selfishness, get over themselves and join the human race.”
Phil (designer)
Work background: Art Institute of California – San Francisco
Favorite games: Currently addicted to Left 4 Dead 2, Borderlands, and Torchlight.
Fun fact: “I was born and raised in Nebraska. I bet you’re wondering what Asians are doing in Nebraska. I have no clue to this day.”
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Randy (all around design utility player)
Work background: Nine years in freelance from the thrifty mom and pop up to Fortune 500 giants
Favorite game: Star Control 2. “Still enjoy a good melee on the open-source ported version.”
Fun fact: “When I was 12 I was either playing Space Quest, or tying flies for my fly-fishing exploits. In the end, I guess games won out over fish.”
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