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Andy Looney

{{Short description|American game designer and programmer (born 1963)}}

{{Infobox person

| name = Andrew J. Looney

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| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1963|11|5|mf=y}}

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| nationality = American

| known_for = {{ubl|Game designing|Eagle Scout}}

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| employer = Looney Labs

| occupation = Game designer

| title = Chief creative officer

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| spouse = Kristin (Wunderlich)

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| website = {{url|wunderland.com}}

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Andrew J. Looney (born November 5, 1963) is a game designer and computer programmer. He is also a photographer, a cartoonist, a video-blogger, and a marijuana-legalization advocate.

Andrew and Kristin Looney together founded the games company Looney Labs,{{cite journal | last = West | first = Susan | title = The Looney Labs Experiment | journal = GAMES magazine | publisher = Games Publications |date=October 2005 | url=http://www.wunderland.com/LooneyLabs/Press/200510_gamesmag.html }} where Andrew is the chief creative officer. Looney Labs has published most of his game designs, such as Fluxx, Chrononauts, and the Icehouse game system.{{Cite book | last = Salen | first = Katie | author-link = Katie Salen | last2 = Zimmerman | first2 = Eric | author2-link = Eric Zimmerman | title = Rules of Play | place= Cambridge, Mass. | publisher = The MIT Press | year = 2003 | pages = 546 | isbn = 978-0-262-24045-1 }} His other game designs include Aquarius, Nanofictionary, IceTowers, Treehouse, and Martian Coasters.

Biography

Andrew Looney as a youth became an Eagle Scout.{{Cite book | contribution=Cosmic Wimpout | title=Hobby Games: The 100 Best | last=Looney | first=Andrew | editor-last=Lowder | editor-first=James | editor-link=James Lowder | publisher=Green Ronin Publishing | year=2007 | pages=69–72 | isbn=978-1-932442-96-0}} He entered the University of Maryland at College Park in 1981 as a freshman with an undecided major between English and computer science. He eventually selected computer science.{{cite news|last1=Barnes|first1=Denise|title=The Looneys devise a game plan|url=http://www.wunderland.com/LooneyLabs/WashingtonTimes.8.27.98.html|access-date=June 18, 2015|work=Washington Times|date=August 27, 1998}}

He and Kristin, his future spouse, met in 1986 when he started at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center as a software programmer. Kristin was a computer engineer designing computer chips.{{cite news|last1=Ford|first1=C. Benjamin|title=Looneys working through the serious business of fun|url=http://ww2.gazette.net/gazette_archive/2002/200247/business/news/132311-1.html|access-date=June 16, 2015|work=The Gazette|publisher=Post Community Media, LLC|date=November 22, 2002|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150617194419/http://ww2.gazette.net/gazette_archive/2002/200247/business/news/132311-1.html|archive-date=June 17, 2015|url-status=dead}} Keeping English as a side interest, he wrote "The Empty City", a science-fiction short story. Wanting a game in the story but feeling a card game as too boring, he created a fictional game, Icehouse, that used pyramids. Readers of the short story requested to learn how to play the game. Thus actual rules were invented for Icehouse, then plastic pyramid pieces were made to play the game. The pieces were made from resin in his apartment, which upset the landlord due to the smell. This led them to launch their own game company to sell the Icehouse game. After several years, Looney shut down Icehouse Games, Inc.{{cite news|title=History of Icehouse Games, 1987-1998|url=http://wunderland.com/icehouse/IcehouseHistory1987-98.html|access-date=June 22, 2015|work=wunderland.com|publisher=Looney Labs|date=1998}}

He and his wife launched Looney Laboratories in 1996 as a part-time home based design company. Andrew soon designed the Fluxx card game. He then went on to a brief career as a game programmer at Magnet Interactive Studios, where he created that company's only entry to the market, Icebreaker.{{citation needed|date=June 2015}} Aquarius was Andy's and Labs' next game, launched in 1998. In 2002, a few years after Kristin went full-time with their company, Andy followed.

Patents & awards

Andy has three U.S. patents and five Origins Awards.

Looney holds patents on the game mechanics for:

  • Icehouse – U.S. Patent 4,936,585 - Method of manipulating and interpreting playing pieces
  • https://patents.google.com/patent/US4936585A
  • IceTowers – U.S. Patent 6,352,262 - Method of conducting simultaneous gameplay using stackable game pieces
  • https://patents.google.com/patent/US6352262B1
  • Chrononauts – U.S. Patent 6,474,650 - Method of simulation time travel in a card game
  • https://patents.google.com/patent/US6474650B1

Looney has won the following game design awards:

  • 1999 – Mensa Mind Games: Mensa Select Award for Fluxx
  • 2000 – Origins Award: Best Abstract Board Game for Icehouse: The Martian Chess Set
  • Chrononauts
  • 2000 – Origins Award: Best Traditional Card Game
  • 2001 – Parents Choice Silver Honors
  • 2001 – Origins Award: Best Abstract Board Game for Cosmic Coasters
  • 2003 – Parents Choice Silver Honors Nanofictionary{{cite web|title=Parents' Choice Award-Winning Company: Looney Labs|url=http://www.parents-choice.org/company.cfm?the_co=3516&from=Loonacy|website=Parents-Choice.org|publisher=Parents' Choice Foundation|access-date=June 24, 2015}}
  • 2007 – Origins Award: Best Board Game or Expansion of the Year for Treehouse{{cite news|title=2007 Origins Award Winners|url=http://icv2.com/articles/games/view/10881/2007-origins-award-winners|access-date=June 8, 2015|work=ICv2|date=July 9, 2007}}
  • 2008 – Origins Award: Best Traditional Card Game of the Year for Zombie Fluxx[http://www.originsgamefair.com/aagad 34th Annual Origins Award Winners] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080418005900/http://www.originsgamefair.com/aagad |date=2008-04-18 }}
  • Fall 2013 – Parents' Choice Recommended Seal category Games for Fluxx: The Board Game
  • Spring 2014 – Parents' Choice FunStuff Award for Loonacy

Works

{{See also|:Category:Andrew_Looney_games}}

References

{{Reflist}}

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Category:1963 births

Category:Board game designers

Category:Chess variant inventors

Category:Living people