Jon loves to understand how technology works and the challenges of making it work for him. Near the end of earning his Computer Science degree from a University in Canada, the opportunity to combine his love for games and programming arose in Texas. At SMU he learned not only how to program video games, but also how to manage and work with the team necessary to make a complete game.

Upon graduation he was hired by Archimage and quickly rose to the position of Lead Programmer. He was directly responsible for managing the programming effort on multiple serious games and also for doing a large portion of the actual work. Jon’s work is a major part of many interactive projects, including those for Rice University, Playnormous, UT Health Science Center, and Baylor College of Medicine.

Making Serious Games

Jon was in the first cohort that went through the Guildhall at SMU, a Masters program focusing on video game development. He was the producer on the final six month group project while there which helped him to easily transition to his first job afterwards at Archimage.

There he worked as Lead Programmer on the NIH funded Escape From Diab and Nanoswarm: Invasion from Innerspace. Once those multi-year projects were successfully completed he led the programming efforts on games with Abramson Center for the Future Health, UT Health Science Center, Center for Technology in Teaching and Learning at Rice University, Children's Research and Nutrition Center at Baylor College of Medicine, and Playnormous.

Multiple Technologies

Jon's Computer Science background gives him flexibility when it comes to using different technologies. He has worked with large commercial game engines and created his own game frameworks in Flash Actionscript. He has created tools to help with production in Adobe Air, Python and Perl.

Jon has worked on websites in Coldfusion and PHP, as well as used javascript libraries like jquery and YUI. He also has done the system administrator thing, using operating systems other than Windows, managing version control systems and databases, and setting up servers to name a few things. Learning how to use new technologies is something he thoroughly enjoys.