Bob Bates

Quick Facts

Full Name	Bob Bates
Occupation	Game Designer
Date Of Birth	Dec 11, 1953(1953-12-11)
Age	71
Birthplace	Washington
Country	United States
Horoscope	Sagittarius

Bob Bates Biography

Bob Bates is one of the most popular and richest Game Designer who was born on December 11, 1953 in Washington, United States.

Robert “Bob” Bates (born December 11, 1953) is an American computer games designer. One of the early designers of interactive fiction games, he was co- founder of Challenge, Inc., which created games in the 1980s for the pioneering company Infocom. After Infocom’s dissolution in 1989, Bates co- founded Legend Entertainment to continue publishing games in the Infocom tradition, but with added graphics. He has designed, written, or produced scores of games, including Unreal II (2003), Spider-Man 3 (2007), and Eric the Unready (1993), listed as Adventure Game of the Year by Computer Gaming World magazine and also included on the 1996 list of “150 best games of all time”. In 1998 he wrote the award-winning game Quandaries for the U.S. Department of Justice. He has twice been the chairperson of the International Game Developers Association, which honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award in

2010. Bates has written extensively about game design and development in works such as the 2001 book Game Design: The Art and Business of Creating Games, which is commonly used as a game design textbook in college courses. From 2011–2014, Bates was Chief Creative Officer for External Studios at Zynga. He continues to work as an independent consultant with various publishers in the games industry.

In the course of his career since 1986, Bates has written, designed, produced, or overseen more than 45 games, with over six million units sold. According to Bates’ website, the games have collectively won over 70 industry awards, including two Adventure Game of the Year awards.

Bob Bates Net Worth

Bob Bates is one of the richest Game Designer from United States. According to our analysis, Wikipedia, Forbes & Business Insider, Bob Bates 's net worth $5 Million. (Last Update: December 11, 2023)

Bates was born in 1953 in Greenbelt, Maryland, the fourth of eight children to Frances and James Bates. His father was a mathematician, who from 1963–1967 moved the family to Cheltenham, England. Upon returning to the United States, Bob attended DeMatha High School in Hyattsville, Maryland, graduating in 1971, and then went on to Georgetown University, where he pursued a double major in philosophy and psychology, receiving his A.B. in philosophy in 1975. His first job after college was as tourguide for Washington Group Tours, a job he took since it allowed him free time between tours to pursue his writing efforts. In 1977 he met his future wife, Peggy Oriani, whom he married in January 1978, and then founded his own tour company, Potomac Tours. In 1982, with the approach of his 30th birthday, he sold the company to spend two years writing a novel, though did not finish. It was around this time that Bates’ father gave his old TRS-80 computer to his son, to help with the novel-writing. With the computer, Bates received a copy of the interactive fiction game Zork, and immediately fell in love with the genre, seeing it as a way that he could pursue a writing career, making games. In 1986, Bates and a friend, David Wilt, who he knew because they sang in the same choir, the Alexandria Harmonizers, started the company Challenge, Inc. to explore the possibilities of creating interactive fiction games. Needing an engine for these games, Bates reached out to the Zork publisher, Infocom, to see about licensing their fiction engine Z-machine. Several weeks later, Infocom and Challenge had worked out a development deal, with Bates doing the design/writing, the coding being done by two contract programmers from Paragon Systems, and the publishing/marketing being done under the Infocom name. Bates envisioned a game series entitled “Immortal Legends”, with his first two published game designs being the interactive fiction titles Sherlock: The Riddle of the Crown Jewels (1988) and Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur (1989), on which he was both designer and writer. A third game about Robin Hood was never finished because Infocom was dissolved by its parent company Activision in 1989.

Height, Weight & Body Measurements

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Who is Bob Bates Dating?

According to our records, Bob Bates is possibily single & has not been previously engaged. As of December 1, 2023, Bob Bates’s is not dating anyone.

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Facts & Trivia

Bob Ranked on the list of most popular Game Designer. Also ranked in the elit list of famous people born in United States. Bob Bates celebrates birthday on December 11 of every year.

Top Facts about Bob Bates

1. Bob Bates is an American computer game designer.
2. He co-founded Legend Entertainment in 1989.
3. Bates has designed over a dozen games.
4. His most famous work is “Eric the Unready.”
5. Bates was also a writer for Infocom’s “Sherlock: The Riddle of the Crown Jewels.”
6. He worked on interactive fiction games in the 80s.
7. Bates has won several awards for his work.
8. He left Legend Entertainment in 2003 to pursue other projects.
9. Bates currently teaches game design at Southern Methodist University.
10. He is considered a pioneer in the adventure game genre.