Jeffrey Ashbrook

My dad was really into old film-noir, black and white adventure movies, and we used to watch them together when I was a kid. It gave me a solid respect for the power of the story and I carried that with me to USC where I studied computer science, electrical engineering, and game design. At the time, USC was known more for its film school with games being thought of more as an offshoot. So I had a decision to make on whether to start my career by telling stories in the game genre or in physical spaces. As it has turned out, a few of my USC classmates who went right into games have had great success and attained almost a celebrity status based on their work. But I made a very different choice at the time. Instead of trying to make a blockbuster game right out of the gate, I ended up deciding to dig into the physical world of theme parks and try to bring stories to life in physical spaces. I started at Disney Imagineering before founding Adventure Works, and I loved it because you could build these huge elaborate places and even before you break ground you could imagine walking through them and seeing the sights and sounds and physically being there. That led to over a decade of interesting work, but it also meant that Adventure Works has been largely unknown to the video game world and the mass market.