Jim Greer

Current

Founder & CEO at Kongregate

Past

Technical Director, Pogo at Electronic Arts
Senior Manager, Engineering (for Pogo.com) at Electronic Arts
Interactive Artist at Mine Control

Software Engineer (contract) at shockwave.com
Co-founder / Product Director at Titanic Entertainment
Programmer at Origin Systems

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Education

Princeton University
Princeton High School

Recommended

5 people have recommended Jim

Connections

500+ connections

Industry

Computer Games

Websites

Jim Greer’s Summary

I have over ten years experience in game development, as an engineer, team leader, and tech director. The bulk of that experience has been in online and web games.

Jim Greer’s Specialties:

Java, C++, Ruby on Rails, web development, game development

Jim Greer’s Experience

Founder & CEO

Kongregate

(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Computer Software industry)

May 2006 — Present (3 years 7 months)

Currently in beta, Kongregate seeks to create the leading online hub for players and game developers to meet up, play games, and operate together as a community.

By wrapping user-submitted Flash games with various community features, Kongregate's site serves as a unique way for users to play great web-based games alongside friends. Anyone can add their own games to Kongregate’s library in a process that’s fast and simple.
Technical Director, Pogo

Electronic Arts

(Public Company; 5001-10,000 employees; erts; Computer Software industry)

March 2006 — May 2006 (3 months)

Responsible for overall technical strategy and stability for Pogo and Club Pogo. Spearheaded and led development of next generation platform for Pogo casual games.
Senior Manager, Engineering (for Pogo.com)

Electronic Arts

(Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; erts; Computer Software industry)

November 2001 — March 2006 (4 years 5 months)

I managed a group of game developers for the Pogo.com site, the #1 games site on the web (in usage and stickiness, second to Yahoo in uniques). My group consisted of 12 developers. We developed client-side game applets in Java, as well as the multiplayer server-side code. Pogo.com is also a very dense web application, written in Java and running on Tomcat and Apache. I started at Pogo 11/2001 as a developer.
Interactive Artist

Mine Control

(Partnership; 1-10 employees; Fine Art industry)

2001 — 2002 (1 year )

Assisted my former business partner and Spain’s leading theater company on several interactive art installations and performances. Collaborated on concepts, design, programming, installation and other production. Photos and video at www.mine-control.com.
Software Engineer (contract)

shockwave.com

(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Computer Software industry)

1999 — 2001 (2 years )

- Integrated a classic arcade emulator into shockwave.com’s browser plugin. This was used in ten 80s arcade classics (Defender, Robotron, Joust, Spy Hunter, Rampage, etc) published on shockwave.com’s entertainment web site. These are still going strong four years later.

- Real time client-side sound processing plugin for shockwave.com. Allowed real-time visualization, reverb, and graphic equalization in a web browser. This is an Xtra that is still in active use by Director developers.
Co-founder / Product Director

Titanic Entertainment

(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Computer Software industry)

September 1995 — April 1998 (2 years 8 months)

- Co-founded game development studio.
- Helped to procure capital and development funding.
- Co-designed and implemented highly-acclaimed CD-based Internet strategy game – NetStorm: Islands at War, pusblished by Activision.
- NetSorm received an 89% rating in PC Gamer, and was described as the "#1 Game of All-time that Nobody Bought", by C-Net.
- Co-designed and implemented client-server communications system that allowed hundreds of units to fight in sync on up to eight machines over the Internet.
- Co-designed and implemented shared-process system to reduce bandwidth requirements to 9600 baud.
- Designed and implemented animation system to maintain smooth animation of hundreds of units in real time, even under Internet packet latencies as high as 10 seconds.
- Oversaw production of music voice content for game. Cast and directed actors, composer, and supervised recording sessions.
Programmer

Origin Systems

(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Computer Software industry)

1991 — 1992 (1 year )

- Managed team of five game world designers and two behavior programmers for Ultima VII: The Black Gate, an award-winning role-playing game
- Coded spells, monsters, traps and many other elements of a huge fantasy universe.

Jim Greer’s Education

Princeton University

BA , Computer Science , 1991 — 1995

Activities and Societies:

- University Scholar
- National Merit Scholar
- Columnist for The Daily Princetonian and music critic for The Nassau Weekly.
Princeton High School

1985 — 1989

Additional Information

Jim Greer’s Websites:

Jim Greer’s Interests:

- Had a bilingual upbringing in Spain, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic. Speak near-native Spanish and fluent Italian. - Hobbies include snowboarding, poker, golf, running. - Less formal work experience as canal boat captain in Amsterdam, English teacher in the Dominican Republic, cook in Telluride, Colorado. (Photo by Joichi Ito.)