Noah Falstein (born June 1957) is a game designer and producer who has worked in the video game industry since 1980. He has won "Game of the Year" awards for games such as Battlehawks 1942 and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. He has created games for many platforms, including arcade video games, Commodore 64, and MS-DOS.

He was one of the first 10 employees at Lucasfilm Games, joining in 1984. He was the third employee at DreamWorks Interactive in 1995 and also worked early on at The 3DO Company. He was elected as the first chairperson of the International Game Developers Association, a role he held from 1997 to 1998. He wrote the "Better by Design" column for Game Developer magazine from 2002 to 2007.

From 2013 to 2017, he served as Chief Game Designer at Google. As of 2021, he works for The Inspiracy, a game consulting company he founded in 1996.

Early life

Falstein was born and raised in Chicago, the youngest of three children. His father, Wilbert Falstein, worked as an advertising professional, and his mother, Kay Falstein, taught at a nursery school. As a young child, he enjoyed designing toys, such as adding cardboard covers to wind-up toy cars to turn them into boats or spaceships. He also liked drawing blueprints of science fiction vehicles and spaceships. He created his own board games and improved their designs over time to make them more fun. He first learned about computers in 1970 at Rogers Elementary School, where he studied a programming language called Fortran using punch cards. At Mather High School, there was limited access to computers, but when he was 15, he saw a game called Computer Space created by Nolan Bushnell. This inspired him to use PLATO terminals at a nearby community college. He graduated from high school in 1975 and later attended Hampshire College, where he began programming his own games. At first, these were simple text-only games played on teletype machines. Later, he created a larger project in a programming language called APL, titled Koronis Strike: A Simulation of Mining and Combat in the Asteroid Belt. The game used accurate space movement and ran on a video terminal connected to a shared computer system at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In the game, players fired at asteroids to learn about their makeup. Although he planned to add enemies and combat, he ran out of time before finishing school. He later used the same name in another project, Koronis Rift, which he designed for LucasFilm Games.

Career

He earned a bachelor's degree from Hampshire College in 1980. One week after graduating, he began working at the Milton Bradley Company's research department. This led to a job at Williams Electronics, where he helped design the arcade game Sinistar. In 1984, he became one of the first 10 employees at LucasFilm Games. There, he led brainstorming sessions with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas and developed games for the Commodore 64, including Koronis Rift (1986), Battlehawks 1942 (Action Game of the Year, 1992), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (Adventure Game of the Year, 1992). In 1995, he became one of the first employees at DreamWorks Interactive, where he created games such as Chaos Island.

In 1996, Falstein formed The Inspiracy, a consulting firm that specialized in game design and production for clients in five continents. These clients included companies in corporate training (Cisco, Microsoft), medical education (Hopelab, Health Media Lab, Medical Cyberworlds), and entertainment (LucasArts, Disney, DreamCatcher, Micro Forte).

The Inspiracy also allowed Falstein to assist with various game startups. He was actively involved in the growing worldwide community of game developers. In 1997, he became the first elected chairperson of the International Game Developers Association, a position he held for one year. He has served on the advisory boards of the Games for Health Conference, the Serious Games Summit, and Akili Interactive Labs.

In 2013, Falstein paused his consulting work when Google hired him as Chief Game Designer. He held this position for four years before returning to consulting.

In 2002, Falstein and fellow LucasArts alum Hal Barwood started "The 400 Project," an effort to collect computer game design rules under a standard format. They predicted the project would include around 400 rules. Over several years, they gathered lists of rules on their websites and gave follow-up talks at events like the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California. The project received widespread attention and is now often cited in academic articles.

As of 2021, Falstein is active in developing the emerging field of serious games, particularly games for health. One example is EndeavorRx, created by Akili Interactive Labs. This game is the first to receive official approval from the FDA. Doctors can legally prescribe the game for children with pediatric ADHD.

Public speaking

Falstein has given talks at many places around the world, including game conferences, universities, and the Goddard Spaceflight Center. In 2017, he was the main speaker at the Øredev software developers conference in Sweden.

Games

• Joust (arcade video game) – Helped fix problems and tested the game (Williams Electronics, 1982)
• Sinistar (arcade video game) – Led the project and co-designed the game (Williams Electronics, 1983)
• Mystic Marathon (arcade video game) – Created enemy characters (Williams Electronics, 1984)
• Koronis Rift (Commodore 64) – Led the project, designed, and programmed the game (Lucasfilm Games, 1985)
• PHM Pegasus (Commodore 64) – Led the project, designed, and programmed the game (Lucasfilm Games, 1986)
• Strike Fleet (Commodore 64) – Led the project and designed the game (Lucasfilm Games, 1988)
• Battlehawks 1942 (MS-DOS) – Oversaw the project and contributed to the design (Lucasfilm Games, 1988)
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure (MS-DOS) – Co-led the project and co-designed the game (LucasArts, 1989)
• Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (MS-DOS) – Co-designed the game (LucasArts, 1992)
• Chaos Island (Windows) – Designed the game (DreamWorks Interactive, 1997)
• Total Annihilation: Kingdoms (Windows) – Wrote the game's content (GT Interactive, 1997)
• Hungry Red Planet (Windows) – Designed the game (Health Media Lab, 2002)
• Mata Hari (Windows) – Designed and wrote the game (DTP Entertainment, 2008)