Company
Vortex Games, Inc. was founded on February 23rd 2010 by Richard Yale who is the
current President and CEO. Vortex Games represents the hopes and dreams of a bunch of friends
who know that they are not satisfied with the games that are currently on the market
or on Facebook. Their dreams are to make games that will entertain the masses for
hours upon hours and show the gaming industry that they need to raise their standards
in order to stay competitive now that more and more indy companies are coming into
the social gaming market.
Vortex Games' main focus will be on social games that will be on Facebook, the iPhone,
the iPad, Android phones and any browser that has Flash or html5. Our game will
range from medieval fantasy RPGs to social cooperative game that are more for the
casual gamer. We believe highly in getting the player involved in our games and
not just repetitious actions that waste your lunch break, long waits to complete
quests, or uninvolved storylines that aren't even stories. Our first game Araya
— The Awakening will be the first game on Facebook with a fully immersive
story where you will play as a main character and follow the Prince in his quest
to take back his rightful throne.
The battles will be interactive where each attack you will get to decide what type
of attack you want to make because YOU are the general of YOUR army. Your men will
die in battle and you will have to recruite more. Some unique units you'll get attached
to and when they perish you'll feel like you've lost a friend. This is the kind
of immersion we want every person to experience while playing our games the kind
you all remember from the good old days when the story mattered and you felt a connection
with the characters.
We have more games in the works but they are being kept under wraps till it's the
right time to release them to the public. Just know that we won't stop with one
because we know there are different tastes out there in the social gaming community
and we will create something for everyone. The last few months have been crazy and
we've been running around getting everything together so that we can bring you the
best games that we can.
People
Richard Yale
President/CEO
Richard Yale graduated in 2008 from the University of California Irvine with a Bachelors
in Computer Science. He's always had a passion for gaming since playing his first
game on an Atari 2600. At a young age he was programming websites and his group
of friends frequently got together to play Dungeons & Dragons. Richard worked for
Simultronics on their game Hero's Jorney and on their engine HeroEngine in 2006
and that's when he really knew that his passion was creating video games.
For the past two years Richard worked as a developer for an advertising company
creating websites for large clients such as Eli Lilly, Gilead, Dexcom, and many
more. Richard was the team lead on all of Eli Lilly's websites when they merged
their CMS from Teamsite to Sharepoint in 2009. Now the President and CEO of Vortex
Games, Inc. Richard oversees the creation of each game making sure that everything
is perfect before releasing them to the public.
Patrick Schultz
Corporate Advisor
Patrick Schultz is General Advisor to Vortex Games, Inc. He is a personal friend
to Richard and has known him since they went to college together at UC Irvine. Patrick
graduated in 2008 with Magna Cum Laude honors in Computer Science. Since then, he
has worked in the industry and has been simultaneously pursuing his Master's of
Computer Science at UCLA. He brings a high level of business acumen and directness
that will no doubt help Vortex Games continue on their promising path. We are excited
to have him.
Michael Shaneman
Director of Public Relations
Michael Shaneman is an alumnus of the University of California Irvine, where he
studied an eclectic mix of Computer Engineering, Social Ecology, Psychology, and
International Studies. A life-long passionate gamer, he grew up with Atari, Commodore
64, Famicom and Nintendo Entertainment System as his first gaming platforms. As
a funny coincidence with Richard, Michael worked for Simultronics on their game
Gemstone III (now Gemstone IV) as a charter member of the Architects and Landscapers
Association of Elanthia. Words were his paintbrush as he wrote room
descriptions to be reviewed and implemented into the game.
Michael has over a dozen years in customer service experience. From dealing with thousands
of different customers, he can literally have a conversation with anybody. He also
worked as a private tutor and proofreader, which makes reading over all Vortex Games
Inc. documents and looking over all aspects of games with a critical eye for potential
improvements his top secondary duties. As an example of his PR duties, he went to
tech geek Mecca, the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to show the Alpha build
of Disoriented and network, promoting awareness of Vortex Games Inc. He had the
awesome fortune of meeting Stevie Wonder.
Thai Q Bui
Lead Programmer
Thai gradutated from Cal State Fullerton in 2010 with a Bachelors Degree in Computer
Science. Thai worked under Richard from 2008 to 2009 on websites for Eli Lilly.
Thai is the main programmer for the company's website and Facebook browser games.
He likes to learn as much as he can about HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Since first
learning about JQuery while working under Richard he has taken a passion to learning
and programming with it.
Dennis Judd
Lead Programmer
Dennis Judd gradutated from the University of California Irvine in 2009 with a Bachelors
in Computer Science. Dennis also has a passion for creating games and has worked
for multiple game companies, the latest being SuperVillian Studios, developing games
for all different platforms. Dennis knows a multitude of programming languages and
likes to learn about new techniologies on his free time like MVC and O3D/WebGL.
Dennis joined Vortex Games, Inc. in order to pursue game programming further and
to develop his own skills as a lead programmer. Dennis is in charge of the development
of Vortex Games' second game which is a 3D browser MMO programmed in both Flash
and O3D/WebGL. He is excited to work on a new technology that is still being developed
so that when it does turn mainstream that he can claim his achievement of creating
one of the biggest games using the new technology.
Brandon Lystrup
Creative Director
Brandon graduated from Cal State Northridge in 2009 with a Bachelors Degree in English.
Brandon and Richard are life long friends since elementary school and have grown
up playing Dungeons & Dragons together. Brandon liked to take on the role as Dungeon
Master and create large worlds and enthralling storys that lasted almost a year
for a single campaign. Brandon is a hobby artist and used his art and his creative
skills to capture his worlds and characters in his drawings. Brandon is creating
the story-line for Araya — The Awakening.