The Short and Sweet History

Magic Lantern was founded in November 1998 by Paul Schuytema as a small, creatively charged development studio. Our first project was going to be a "flea and tick" action shooter to help promote a flea and tick product (no, we're serious here!). Fortunately, that project was cancelled early on and it allowed us to travel down a far more interesting path (though it did allow us to solidify our initial team and get our first offices).

In 1999, Paul teamed with industry veteran John Fowler and Magic Lantern became part of Gold Creek Technology, LLC. From early 2000 through early 2003, Magic Lantern, as a creative business unit of Gold Creek (with two studios: one in Dallas, TX and one in Monmouth, IL), developed 5 game titles.

In early 2003, Magic Lantern became its own entity again, located in Monmouth, Illinois (within the Patton Block Center), focusing on developing PC games titles for the casual, value and educational game markets.

The Brainpower Behind Magic Lantern

Austin Brooks: [concept artist] Austin is a Monmouth-born artist with a wicked talent for pencil and ink sketches and a love for traditional comic book style art. See Austin's on-line portfolio here.

Cathy Fasano: [software engineer] Cathy spent 17 years in the derivatives business writing code for theoretical models and risk analysis applications.  She is interested in strong, clean code design, and in building intelligent and intuitive interfaces to programs. She has lived in Monmouth for 5 years, has 2 school-aged children and her husband is a physics professor at Monmouth College.

Vicki Jackson : [office manager] Vicki has worked in accounting and management for fifteen years. She has experience in bookkeeping and personnel, data processing, payroll, and hiring and training new employees. Vicki is a lifelong native of Monmouth.

Chris Listello : [art director] Chris comes to us from the crazed world of K-12 art education. She has a BFA in art, a BA in art education and a Masters in teaching. She comes to us with the drive to make games not only fun, but also to sneak in a little learning as well (since play is learning, after all). Chris served as the acquisitions manager during Covert Ops and is now moving more into the art side of things.

Mark Manyen : [technical director] Mark has been working in software development for over 15 years. Having held every conceivable position in software development, from tech support to junior programmer to Development Director, his skills progressed from raw programming talent to senior level code designer and team leader. Mark's passion for quality software is only surpassed by his passion for usability issues and intuitive GUI design.

Dawn Maye : [publishing director] When she's not bellydancing as a member of Al Banat Casablanca, an ATS dance troupe based in Macomb, Dawn is busy munching on organic carrot sticks and figuring out how to make Magic Lantern more self sufficient through self publishing.  Dawn readily admits everything she knows about video games is from her eleven year old son, Sam, but her Masters degree in Instructional Design has her headed in the right direction when it comes to designing and testing educational software.

Jay Powell: [Lead Artist] Jay has been creating artwork for longer then he can remember, and has been an avid gamer since Omega Race first graced his local roller rink back in the 70’s. He combined his love for games and art, which has given him the opportunity to produce a broad range of content on 11 published titles. When he is not working to make AAA quality artwork for Magic Lantern you can usually find him madly doodling in a sketchbook. www.waltzpowell.com/jaypowell/index.html

Marty Rabens : [senior software engineer] Marty has been writing game code for 20 years, and has been getting paid to do it for the last four years. His main interests are physics and quality code design. He prefers games with fun physics, and games you can "feel."

Peter Riis : [writer, researcher, editor] After receiving his degree in microbiology from the University of Illinois in 1985, Peter Riis worked in the biotechnology industry. His work concerned the application of radioactive isotopes to biological research as well as the use of newer technologies as substitutes for radioactivity. During this time, he became involved in writing and editing technical publications for Amersham International (later to become Amersham Pharmacia Biotech). He subsequently left the biotech industry to write full-time, before joining MLP.

Paul Schuytema : [producer, designer] Paul has been involved in game and software production since the early 1980s (with early programming and design work on the TRS-80 Model 1, Apple II and Atari 800 for publishers like Rocklan and Guinness), and has designed a number of exciting games over the years. Paul holds a terminal graduate degree in writing, and has also worked as a college instructor. He has authored over a dozen books and has published over 200 articles on general technology, gaming and game design. In recent years, he has been the contributing editor for game design for Computer Gaming World, the lead designer for MechWarrior 3 and the producer/designer of Prey.