James Portnow

James Portnow is an American writer and game designer, co-founder of the YouTube channel Extra Credits for which he wrote many of the episodes from 2013 to 2019. He is known for his theories on socially positive design and has worked as a design consultant with Zynga and Riot Games. In 2013 he was listed by Complex Media on their list of "25 Video Game Personalities You Should Know Who Aren't Developers."[1]

James Portnow
NationalityAmerican
Alma materSt. John's College
Carnegie Mellon University
OccupationGame designer
Years active2007 (2007)—present (present)
Known forExtra Credits video lesson series; theories on socially positive game design

About

Portnow received his undergraduate degree from St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and a master's from Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center before getting a job as a designer at Activision, working on the Call of Duty franchise. He has also done consultant work for game development companies Zynga and Riot Games. For four years, he taught undergraduate game design and master's-level game software production courses at DigiPen Institute of Technology.[2]

In 2008, Portnow co-founded the video lesson series Extra Credits, creating 16 seasons with hundreds of videos discussing issues pertinent to video games and game studies such as video game development, the legitimacy of video games as art, and sparking intellectual discourse on important issues in gaming culture.[3] He wrote a majority of the episodes on a wide variety of topics such as narrative creation, level design, gamification, tangential learning, sexuality and gender discrimination both within games and in the gaming community, and bullying in the community. In 2012, Microsoft invited Portnow to a special meeting to discuss potential solutions to the toxicity present on Xbox Live, and he was interviewed by the New York Times[4] and Al Jazeera for his fight against toxicity.[5]

In 2013, the British game development company Creative Assembly sponsored a series of episodes about the Punic Wars. After a positive reception, the crew launched a Patreon campaign to create Extra History, a spin-off series designed to teach viewers global history. Portnow wrote a majority of the series, including Sengoku Jidai, The Battle of Kursk, and "The History Of Non-Euclidean Geometry".

In late 2017, Extra Scifi started with Portnow's exploration of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein before becoming a regular series on the Extra channel.

In September 2019, Portnow stepped down from the Global Game Jam board of directors after facing continued allegations of abusive behavior towards Extra Credits employees the previous year.[6] In October, in the episode "The Perfect Horror Protagonist - Writing a Character for Fun & Terror", it was mentioned that Portnow, the only member of the original lineup, was leaving Extra Credits after 10 years of being the show's writer, even though his scripts would be used for future episodes.[7]

Public speaking

Portnow has been a regular speaker at many gaming conferences, including being the keynote speaker at the Argentina Video Games Exposition in Buenos Aires in November 2011,[8] the Konsoll 2014 conference, hosted by the Game Developers Guild of Norway, [9] and in 2018 was keynote speaker at the Georgia Game Developers Association's 12th annual Southern Interactive Entertainment and Game Expo.[10] He has also regularly been asked to give talks on gaming at many universities and colleges, including Vancouver Film School,[11] Indiana University Bloomington,[12] and Smith College.[13]

References
  1. "25 Video Game Personalities You Should Know Who Aren't Developers". Complex Media. January 23, 2013.
  2. "The Many Roles of James Portnow". DigiPen Institute of Technology News. March 2013.
  3. Force, Sebastian. "Extra Credits: The Web Show That Changed How I Think About Games". BnBGaming. Archived from the original on 2012-04-06.
  4. "In Virtual Play, Sex Harassment Is All Too Real". New York Times. August 2012.
  5. "She got game". Al Jazeera. June 2014.
  6. "Global Game Jam Parts Ways With Extra Credits' James Portnow". One Angry Gamer. 5 September 2019. Retrieved 20 December 2020.
  7. Krol, Matt. "The Perfect Horror Protagonist - Writing a Character for Fun & Terror - Extra Credits". YouTube. Retrieved 30 October 2019.
  8. Brian Byrnes (November 15, 2011). "Argentina's video gamers take on world". CNN.
  9. "Antagonist, one of Norway's 5 best game studios?". Antogonist. October 28, 2014.
  10. Colin Solan (July 24, 2018). "Extra Credits' James Portnow to Keynote SIEGE Con 2018". Convention Scene.
  11. VFS Web Team (February 3, 2012). "Guest Post: Extra Credits' James Portnow Visits VFS". Vancouver Film School News.
  12. Ellen Glover (18 October 2016). "Portnow encourages young designers to explore 'magic of games'". Indiana University Bloomington News.
  13. "James Portnow of Extra Credits – More Than A Pastime: A Promise to Future Generations Public Lecture and Q&A Sessions". Smith College Student Engagement Hub. 28 February 2018.
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