Louis Castle
, Also known as Louis J. Castle II " Lou", is an American computer game developer, entrepreneur and manager. Together with Brett W. Sperry, the company he founded Westwood Studios, which significantly helped the genre of real-time strategy games to break through.
Career
Castle interest for computer games awoke claims to already during his school days. After school, he studied fine arts and computer science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, even though he had received an offer for a scholarship for a study of architecture at Arizona State University. 1983/84 learned Castle, who was working at the time as a seller of Apple Stores Century 23 in Las Vegas, know the programmer Brett W. Sperry. In March 1985, he teamed up with Sperry in Las Vegas, the company Westwood Associates, in 1992 renamed to Westwood Studios. After a few publications in the field of computer role-playing games ( Eye of the Beholder, Lands of Lore ) and Adventures ( Legend of Kyrandia ), the company helped in the early 1990s with the titles Dune 2 and Command & Conquer the genre of real-time strategy games for breakthrough. As Westwood was acquired in 1998 by Electronic Arts for 122.5 million U.S. dollars, he and Sperry received a five- year labor contract. 2000 to 2003 he headed the studio as General Manager. While Sperry after the expiry of his contract resigned from the company, Castle remained working for EA. After the dissolution of West Woods 2003 and relocation of existing activities to EA Los Angeles Castle was responsible for the creative direction of the studio until June 2009 as Vice President. His activities included the supervision of EA's Blueprint Studio. On 15 July 2009 it was announced that Castle would join the company InstantAction as the new CEO of GarageGames. After Instant Action was closed in November 2010, Castle was in January 2011 consultant for Premium FanPage, and finally moved to Zynga as Vice President of Studios. After six months or not he left the company but again, to accept a position as Chief Strategy Officer for the casino game table manufacturer and supplier Shuffle Master. Previously Castle was for Shuffle Master six years on the Board of Directors, including as Chairman of the Audit Committee.
Personal
Castle lives with his family in Las Vegas.
Ludography (excerpt)
- Mars Saga ( 1988)
- BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk's Inception (1988 )
- A Nightmare on Elm Street ( 1989)
- Dragon Strike (1990 )
- Dungeons & Dragons: Warriors of the Eternal Sun (1992 )
- The Legend of Kyrandia: Hand of Fate (1993 )
- Lands of Lore 2 (1997)
- Blade Runner (1997)
- Lands of Lore 3 (1999)
- Command & Conquer: Renegade (2002)
- Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat (2002)
- Boom Blox (2008)
- Boom Blox Bash Party (2009)