Andy Looney
American game designer and programmer (born 1963)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Andrew J. Looney (born November 5, 1963) is a game designer and computer programmer. He is also a photographer, a cartoonist, a video-blogger, and a marijuana-legalization advocate.[1]
Andrew J. Looney | |
|---|---|
| Born | November 5, 1963 |
| Occupation | Game designer |
| Employer | Looney Labs |
| Known for |
|
| Title | Chief creative officer |
| Spouse | Kristin (Wunderlich) |
| Website | wunderland |
Andrew and Kristin Looney together founded the games company Looney Labs,[2] where Andrew is the chief creative officer.[1] Looney Labs has published most of his game designs, such as Fluxx, Chrononauts, and the Icehouse game system.[3] His other game designs include Aquarius, Nanofictionary, IceTowers, Treehouse, and Martian Coasters.[1]
Early life and education
Andy Looney's mother encouraged her children to play board games. Looney recalled "she knew that playing a board game was a great way to keep a group of kids occupied, entertained, and even educated ... even before we could read, she was teaching us games like Sorry, Moustrap, and Booby-Trap."[4] Looney's father worked for NASA, and Looney started playing computer games in his father's office at an early age, using his father's mainframe access to play text adventures and an ASCII-based Star Trek game. When Looney's father built a home computer, Looney used it to write primitive computer games.[4]
Looney joined the Boy Scouts and became an Eagle Scout.[1] He entered the University of Maryland at College Park in 1981 as a freshman with an undecided major between English and computer science. He eventually selected computer science,[5] thinking that he could get a job in computer programming and pursue a free-lance writing career in his spare time.[4]
Game designer
When Looney started at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center as a software programmer in 1986, he met his future wife, Kristin Wunderlich, a computer engineer designing computer chips.[6]
Pursuing his dream to become a freelance write, Looney wrote "The Empty City", a science-fiction short story. Wanting a game in the story but feeling a card game was too boring, he created a fictional game, Icehouse, that used pyramids. Readers wanted to learn how to play the game, and Looney responded by co-creating (with John Cooper and Kristin) actual rules, then plastic pyramid pieces to play Icehouse.[5] The pieces were made from resin in his apartment, which upset the landlord due to the smell. This led them to launch their own game company, Icehouse Games.[6] After several years, Looney shut down Icehouse Games, Inc.[5][7]
Looney and Kristin launched Looney Laboratories in 1996 as a part-time home based design company. Andrew soon designed the Fluxx card game.[5] He then went on to a brief career as a game programmer at Magnet Interactive Studios, where he created that company's only entry to the market, Icebreaker.[citation needed] Aquarius was Andy's and Labs' next game, launched in 1998.[5] In 2002, a few years after Kristin went full-time with their company, Andy followed.[6]
Patents & awards
Andy has three U.S. patents and five Origins Awards.[2]
Looney holds patents on the game mechanics for:
- Icehouse – U.S. Patent 4,936,585 - Method of manipulating and interpreting playing pieces
- IceTowers – U.S. Patent 6,352,262 - Method of conducting simultaneous gameplay using stackable game pieces
- Chrononauts – U.S. Patent 6,474,650 - Method of simulation time travel in a card game
Looney has won the following game design awards:
- 1999 – Mensa Mind Games: Mensa Select Award for Fluxx[2]
- 2000 – Origins Award: Best Abstract Board Game for Icehouse: The Martian Chess Set[2]
- Chrononauts
- 2001 – Origins Award: Best Abstract Board Game for Cosmic Coasters[2]
- 2003 – Parents Choice Silver Honors Nanofictionary[8]
- 2007 – Origins Award: Best Board Game or Expansion of the Year for Treehouse[9]
- 2008 – Origins Award: Best Traditional Card Game of the Year for Zombie Fluxx[10]
- Fall 2013 – Parents' Choice Recommended Seal category Games for Fluxx: The Board Game[8]
- Spring 2014 – Parents' Choice FunStuff Award for Loonacy[8]
Works
- Aquarius
- Chrononauts
- Early American Chrononauts
- Cosmic Coasters
- Fluxx
- EcoFluxx
- Family Fluxx
- Zombie Fluxx
- Monty Python Fluxx
- Martian Fluxx
- Stoner Fluxx
- Star Fluxx
- Cartoon Network Fluxx
- Regular Show Fluxx
- Adventure Time Fluxx
- Holiday Fluxx
- Cthulhu Fluxx
- Pirate Fluxx
- Oz Fluxx
- Monster Fluxx
- Icebreaker
- Icehouse and other games played with the Icehouse pieces:
- IceTowers
- Martian Chess
- Treehouse
- Zark City
- Nanofictionary
- Proton
- Q*Turn