Gordon Bellamy
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Gordon P. Bellamy (born November 9, 1970) is an American video game executive. He has over 19 years of experience and leadership in the interactive entertainment industry. Gordon was the executive director of the
International Game Developers Association The International Game Developers Association (IGDA) is a nonprofit professional association whose stated mission is to "support and empower game developers around the world in achieving fulfilling and sustainable careers." The IGDA is incorp ...
from August 2010 until July 2012.


Childhood

Bellamy was born in
Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...
, and raised in Reston, Virginia. Gordon attended Beauvoir School and Kent Gardens, where he was a member of Shainisville, a 3rd grade gifted and talented class taught by Lara Shainis. Shainisville alumni include Andy Gavin, Gary Shenk, and Sarah Hung Ying. He went on to attend the Johns Hopkins University's Center for Talented Youth and Duke University's Talent Identification Program. In 1984, Gordon was a member of the National Champion Mathcounts Team from Virginia, who won the inaugural competition. Gordon attended South Lakes High School, Phillips Exeter Academy, the Virginia Governor's Schools Program and St. Paul's School (Maryland), St. Paul's School. In 1987, he was chosen to join the prestigious Research Science Institute.


College

Gordon was admitted early and earned a BA degree from Harvard College in engineering, where he was also a John Harvard scholar and an AT&T Bell Labs Engineering scholar. He wrote sports articles for the ''Harvard Crimson'' in 1992.


Games industry

Gordon has spent the past 19 years producing and marketing interactive content, and developing strategic business partnerships with video game publishers, social media developers and technology partners. As an executive consultant for MTV, Bellamy provided creative guidance on the content, direction and strategic marketing partnerships for the annual Spike TV Spike Video Game Awards, Video Game Awards show and the highly rated weekly program GameTrailers TV with Geoff Keighley, also on Spike TV. Previously, he was executive director of the game industry's trade organization, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. Bellamy has also played key business and product development roles at Electronic Arts, where he was named the company's Rookie of the Year for his work on the ''Madden NFL'' franchise, THQ, and Activision subsidiary, Z-AXIS. Gordon previously served as chair of the board of the
International Game Developers Association The International Game Developers Association (IGDA) is a nonprofit professional association whose stated mission is to "support and empower game developers around the world in achieving fulfilling and sustainable careers." The IGDA is incorp ...
and serves as a judge for the Promax/BDA MI6 Awards, which celebrate the best in marketing, advertising and design within interactive and game entertainment. In the Netflix documentary miniseries ''High Score (TV series), High Score'', Bellamy is interviewed in some detail about his role in having ''Madden NFL '95'' reflect that the NFL had a majority of African American players,. including showing Black players Erik Williams and Karl Wilson on the cover, whereas ''John Madden Football (1994 video game), John Madden Football'' had depicted all the players as white, partly because the technology at the time made it difficult to show ethnically diverse teams in the game. He also talks about race — "For marginalized people, a lot of energy is devoted to justifying your existence in spaces" — and how being gay alienated him from real-world sports, leading him to sports-based video games.


Personal life

Bellamy is gay and married his husband Joe Heally on May 3, 2014, who he had met in 1998 and become engaged to a decade later; they live together in the San Fernando Valley with their dogs and son. Bellamy played soccer for a gay team, the San Francisco Spikes.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bellamy, Gordon 1970 births Living people People from Reston, Virginia American video game programmers American video game businesspeople Harvard College alumni Phillips Exeter Academy alumni The Harvard Crimson people American LGBTQ businesspeople American gay men Gay businessmen LGBTQ video game developers