Christopher Weaver

Christopher S. Weaver
Alma mater Wesleyan University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Occupation software and technology innovator, entrepreneur
Known for founder of Bethesda Softworks and ZeniMax Media

Christopher S. Weaver is an American entrepreneur, author, software developer, scientist, and educator at MIT.[1] He is best known as the founder and CEO of Bethesda Softworks, where he was one of the creators and Executive Producer of the original The Elder Scrolls role-playing series.[2][3] Weaver and Bethesda are also credited with the development of the first real-time physics engine for sports simulation used in Bethesda's Gridiron! videogame, that led to Bethesda being hired to create the original John Madden Football for Electronic Arts.[4] Weaver also developed game screen captioning for the deaf - similar to closed captioning for television - and made it available as open source to all other game developers.[5]

Weaver was sole stockholder and CEO of Bethesda Softworks from 1986 to 1999. In 1999 Weaver co-founded ZeniMax Media to expand the company's development of multimedia platform products beyond videogames and became CTO.[6] Today, ZeniMax is one of the largest private videogame companies in the world, with ownership of numerous development studios and intellectual property comprising some of the best known titles in videogame history (listed below). As of 2016, Zenimax has fifteen divisions, seven wholly owned development studios, and offices in the US, UK, Germany, France, Belgium, Netherlands, China, Japan and Australia.

An expert in interactive media, telecommunications, and entertainment software development, Weaver was the subject of a recent Mashable That Was Me episode entitled, How One Man's Vision Helped Change the Videogame Industry. He was also a subject of the book Gamers at Work, which features "Interviews with the World's most successful entrepreneurs in the video game industry."[3]

Early Life and Education

Weaver excelled early in science. During High School, he worked at a microbiology laboratory and entered the New York Science Fair, winning first prize. He went on to win numerous other science awards on the national level.

After his baccalaureate degree, Weaver earned dual graduate and post-graduate degrees in Computer Science and Japanese Ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University. After returning from Japan on a student exchange program and Princeton-in-Asia Scholarship, he was elected a University Scholar at Wesleyan and went on to complete an advanced dual degree (CAS) with specialty in Japanese and Physics. He also earned a graduate degree in Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[1]

A former associate of the Architecture Machine Group and Fellow of the MIT Research Program on Communications Policy, Weaver was appointed a Fellow of the Robotics Simulation Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon in 1995.[2] He is currently a Research Scientist in the Comparative Media Studies program at MIT.[7]

Weaver is also a Fellow of the Futures of Entertainment Consortium,[8] a Board Member of the Communications Technology Roadmap Group and Visiting Scientist in the MIT Microphotonics Center[9] and a member of the MIT Communications Forum.[10]

Career

In College, Weaver helped redesign and rebuild the campus radio and television studios and modified Link Trainers to better simulate situational spatial awareness. This experience resulted in his creating AeroTechnology Enterprises specializing in analog training simulators for aviation.[3]

Weaver moved to New York where he did post-graduate work at Columbia University and got a night job as an Assistant Director of News at NBC. He was then hired by the American Broadcasting Company, where he established the first office of Technology Forecasting for the network. After ABC, he became the Vice-President for Science and Technology at the National Cable Television Association (NCTA) in Washington D.C.. This was followed by an appointment to the position of Chief Engineer to the Congressional Subcommittee on Communications and Technology in the US Congress.[3]

Following his Congressional position, Weaver started Videomagic Laboratories, a company working in vehicular simulators for military and entertainment purposes.[3] While new editing technology for this project was being designed in their DC offices, Weaver temporarily moved to Los Angeles to work on the Universal Studios lot in Burbank; there he helped develop new camera technology with Panavision specifically designed for interactive media. During this time, Weaver contributed to some of the early work in graphic interface, optical storage and computer-assisted editing, including encoding spatial information for tracking camera shots.[3] Videomagic also produced the first interactive catalog for Federated Department Stores, helped redesign the Western Union satellite network, and participated in the schematic design of the data communications system for the US Congress.

Weaver was introduced to video games when he was asked by one of his engineers to look at a football game idea he was developing – Weaver's assessment being that it "was boring". His fix was a physics engine, bounded by football rules and the result was the formation of Bethesda Softworks and the release of "Gridiron!" which was created for the Atari ST and Commodore 64/128 and released in 1986.[3] Following the success of "Gridiron", Weaver and his team were hired by Electronic Arts to build the first John Madden Football, now the top-selling sports game in history.[11]

Bethesda went on to create more than 100 hit titles, including Wayne Gretzky Hockey, The Terminator, NCAA Basketball, Fallout 3, and The Elder Scrolls, the role-playing series which has become a reference RPG in the genre and earned some of the highest Metacritic scores of all time.[12] Weaver's website division, Vir2L Studios, developed the award-winning websites for Victoria's Secret first televised fashion show (Limited Brands), Lifetime Television, Steelcase, and other major brands.

In 1999, Weaver cofounded Zenimax Media. Zenimax is the parent company of Bethesda Softworks. Collectively, Zenimax/Bethesda has won every major national and international industry award, including more than 400 "Best Game of the Year" Awards, three Codies, two Clios, and the Gold Cyber Lion at Cannes.[3]

A partial list of game titles and credits is on MobyGames: (http://www.mobygames.com/developer/christopher-weaver/credits/developerId,41987/)

Current

Weaver teaches computational media in the College of Integrative Sciences at Wesleyan University.[13] He also teaches in the Comparative Media Studies and Engineering departments at MIT.[14] He is a Fellow of the Futures of Entertainment Consortium; a Board Member of the Communications Technology Roadmap Group and a Visiting Scientist in the Microphotonics Center.[3] Recently, he was asked to co-direct a new Center at MIT, which will use the science and epistemology of game tools to enhance STEM education for children of multiple age groups.

Weaver continues to serve on committees for various national and international organizations. Some of his past and present appointments include: American Association for the Advancement of Science, National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, National Research Council, International Game Developers Association, Cable Telecommunications Research Institute, Society of Cable Television Engineers, Aspen Institute, and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. In 2016, as part of the MIT educational contingent, he is Director of Interactive Simulation for the AIM Photonics Academy.[15]

Weaver is featured in online courses on MIT edX and MIT OpenCourseWare.[16]

He has acted as technical advisor to various governments and organizations, including the White House, Office of Technology Policy, Congressional Committee of House Administration and the Department of Homeland Security. Weaver has been a technical advisor to numerous films including Independence Day, where writer/producer Dean Devlin used Weaver as the basis for the film character David Levinson (played by Jeff Goldblum) and on the science fiction film, Geostorm, slated for release in 2016.[3][17]

In 2005, Weaver was inducted into the Cosmos Club for excellence in Engineering.[18]

In 2016, Weaver was appointed a Distinguished Research Scholar by the Smithsonian Institution[19] and installed as the first (co)Director of the newly created Videogame Pioneers Archive within the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation.[20]

Publications

Weaver has been published in a number of science and technology journals and periodicals, including: the MIT Microphotonics Center, IEEE Spectrum, Techline, Edge Magazine, SCTE Journal, NCTA Bulletin, ITU Standards, Video Magazine, and Next Generation Magazine on subjects ranging from microprocessors to copyright law.[21][22] He is also a co-writer/creator of the multi-volume science-fiction series The Tenth Planet published by Ballantine Books[23] and was the technical editor and contributor for Fundamentals of Game Design.[24]

Personal life

Weaver is a volunteer air ambulance pilot for AngelFlight[25] and holds numerous FAA licenses and type certificates. He is married to Nanci Weaver.

References

  1. 1 2 "MIT Comparative Media Studies: Visiting Scholars and Postdocs". Cms.mit.edu. Archived from the original on 2012-07-18. Retrieved 2010-01-12.
  2. 1 2 "Christopher Weaver". MobyGames. Retrieved 2010-01-12.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Ramsay, Morgan (2012). Gamers at work : stories behind the games people play. [New York]: Apress. ISBN 9781430233510.
  4. ↑ "Games and Their MIT Makers". MIT Technology Review. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved 1 April 2015.
  5. ↑ Ramsay, Morgan (2012). Gamers at Work:Stories Behind the Games People Play. New York: Apress. ISBN 978-1-4302-3351-0.
  6. ↑ Ramsay, Morgan (2012). Gamers at Work. New York: Apress. p. 281. ISBN 978-1-4302-3351-0.
  7. ↑ "People, Comparative Media Studies". Comparative Media Studies. MIT. Retrieved 19 April 2015.
  8. ↑ Futures of Entertainment: People. Convergenceculture.org. Retrieved on 2013-04-25.
  9. ↑ Microphotonics Center Visiting Scientists. Mph-roadmap.mit.edu. Retrieved on 2013-04-25.
  10. ↑ Jenkins, Henry (2006). Convergence Culture. New York: New York University Press. ISBN 978-0-8147-4281-5.
  11. ↑ The Unbreakable Madden. Retrieved on 2015-03-30.
  12. ↑ Metacritic Results: Elder Scrolls. Retrieved on 2015-03-30.
  13. ↑ "Video Game Entrepreneur Returns to Teach Design Course". Wesleyan Argus. Wesleyan University. Retrieved 22 March 2016.
  14. ↑ "CMS People". Comparative Media Studies. MIT. Retrieved 19 April 2015.
  15. ↑ https://aimphotonics.academy/about/team/
  16. ↑ "Media Industries and Systems". MIT Open Courseware. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
  17. ↑ Starzynski, Bob (August 19, 1996). "Erol's sees C&W deal as ticket to business market". Washington Business Journal. Retrieved July 17, 2016.
  18. ↑ . Retrieved on 2015-03-31.
  19. ↑ "Smithsonian Institution".
  20. ↑ "Smithsonian Institution".
  21. ↑ "Microphotonics:Hardware for the Information Age". mphotonics.mit.edu. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved 1 April 2015.
  22. ↑ . Retrieved on 2015-03-31.
  23. ↑ . Retrieved on 2015-03-31.
  24. ↑ Adams, Ernest (2010). Fundamentals of Game Design. Berkeley: New Riders. ISBN 0-321-64337-2.
  25. ↑ "Angel MedFlight Worldwide Air Ambulance". angelmedflight.com. AngelFlight. Retrieved 1 April 2015.
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