Louis Castle is an American video game designer. He is known for co-founding

Westwood Studios Westwood Studios, Inc. was an American video game developer based in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was founded by Brett Sperry and Louis Castle in 1985 as Brelous Software, but got changed after 2 months into Westwood Associates and was renamed to Westw ...

, designing the PC game ''

Blade Runner ''Blade Runner'' is a 1982 science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott from a screenplay by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples. Starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Edward James Olmos, it is an adaptation of Philip K. Di ...

'', and collaborating with

Steven Spielberg Steven Allan Spielberg ( ; born December 18, 1946) is an American filmmaker. A major figure of the New Hollywood era and pioneer of the modern blockbuster, Spielberg is widely regarded as one of the greatest film directors of all time and is ...

on the '' Boom Blox'' and '' Boom Blox Bash Party'' video games for the

Wii The Wii ( ) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released on November 19, 2006, in North America, and in December 2006 for most other regions of the world. It is Nintendo's fifth major home game console, f ...

console based on Spielberg's design ideas.

Career

Castle co-founded

with Brett Sperry in 1985. Castle has multiple credits on Westwood games, including executive producer, technical director, and art director for the 1997 video game ''

''. Castle is also known for his contributions to multiple games in the ''

Command & Conquer ''Command & Conquer'' (''C&C'') is a real-time strategy (RTS) video game franchise created and originally developed by Westwood Studios and currently owned by Electronic Arts. The first game was one of the earliest of the RTS genre, itself ba ...

'' series. Westwood was acquired by EA in 1998, and Castle continued on with EA in a number of executive and creative roles. He was executive producer of '' Boom Blox'' and '' Boom Blox Bash Party'', developed for the

in a collaboration with

. From 2003 to June 2009, Castle was Vice President of Creative Development at the Los Angeles studio of Electronic Arts (

EA Los Angeles Danger Close Games (formerly DreamWorks Interactive LLC and EA Los Angeles) was an American video game developer based in Los Angeles. The company was founded in March 1995 as joint venture between DreamWorks SKG and Microsoft (later moved to Mi ...

). On July 15, 2009, Castle joined

InstantAction InstantAction was a game portals, web gaming site and Digital distribution, digital distributor featuring 3d rendering, 3D, browser-based games. The site was created by GarageGames after being acquired by IAC/InterActive Corp in 2007 and released ...

as the new

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

GarageGames GarageGames was a game technology and software developer. GarageGames was the parent company of GG Interactive, developers of educational technology in the areas of computer science, video game development and Computer programming, programming. I ...

. After InstantAction was shut down in November 2010, Castle went on to become Senior Advisor for Premium FanPage in January 2011, and later joined

Zynga Zynga Inc. () is an American video game developer and Video game publisher, publisher known for its social video game services. It was founded in April 2007, with headquarters in San Mateo, California. The company primarily focuses on mobile an ...

as VP of Studios. Castle took a detour out of the video gaming industry to serve as Chief Strategy Officer for Shufflemaster (which became SHFL entertainment) in late 2011. He returned to video games as Creative Director for

Kixeye Kixeye (stylized as KIXEYE, formerly known as Casual Collective) is a video game company founded in July 2007 and headquartered in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. The company creates, develops and publishes massively multiplayer online real ...

's ''War Commander: Rogue Assault'' which launched worldwide in 2016. On March 9, 2017, Castle became the head of the newly formed Amazon Game Studios Seattle.

Games

Recognition

Castle was given the second annual Lifetime Achievement Award by the

Computer 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 ...

at the Spotlight Awards in 1999. Castle was also given a

BAFTA The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA, ) is an independent trade association and charity that supports, develops, and promotes the arts of film, television and video games in the United Kingdom. In addition to its annual awa ...

award (along with

and Amir Rahimi) for his work on '' Boom Blox'' in 2009.

Personal life

Castle lives in

Las Vegas, Nevada Las Vegas, colloquially referred to as Vegas, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and the county seat of Clark County. The Las Vegas Valley metropolitan area is the largest within the greater Mojave Desert, and second-l ...

with his family. Castle was the Grand Master of Masons in Nevada in 2020.

References

External links

Louis Castle
at

MobyGames MobyGames is a commercial website that catalogs information on video game A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controlle ...

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Castle, Louis Year of birth missing (living people) American entertainment company founders American technology company founders American video game artists American video game businesspeople American video game designers American video game producers American video game programmers Creative directors Dungeons & Dragons video game designers Living people Westwood Studios