Jesse Schell


Jesse N. Schell is an American video game designer, author, CEO of Schell Games and a Distinguished Professor of the Practice of Entertainment Technology at Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center, a joint master's program between the College of Fine Arts and School of Computer Science in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Jesse Schell earned a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and subsequently, earned a Master's Degree in Information Networking from Carnegie Mellon University. Jesse’s early career consisted of his work as a Software Engineer for IBM and Bell Communications Research, and he then moved to LA to work with Disney Imagineering.
In addition to his other achievements, Jesse has also been a writer, director, performer, juggler, comedian, and circus artist for both Freihofer's Mime Circus and the Juggler's Guild.

Career

After graduating from the Information Networking Institute at CMU in 1994 with a Masters of Science in Computer Networking and Virtual Reality, Jesse Schell went on to work for Bell Labs. In 1995 he joined Walt Disney Imagineering, where he worked for seven years in capacity of programmer, manager, designer and Creative Director on several projects. These included rides for theme parks, DisneyQuest, and Toontown Online, a massively multiplayer online game. During his time at Disney, he met Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch, who was taking a sabbatical in the lab where Jesse worked. When Randy founded the Entertainment Technology Center at CMU, he invited Jesse to become a faculty member. Jesse joined the faculty in 2002.
In 2002, Jesse founded Schell Games, a full-service game design and development company with a focus on creating both educational and entertainment games on all platforms for players of all ages. The company is based in Pittsburgh, PA and employs more than 100 people. Currently Jesse serves as CEO. At Tech 50 in 2016, Jesse was awarded CEO of the year, and the year prior, Jesse was named one of Pittsburgh's 50 most powerful people.
In 2008, using the design methodologies developed during his time at the ETC, Schell published The Art of Game Design. A second edition of this book was published in 2014.
He continues to teach Building Virtual Worlds and Game Design at the ETC.
Jesse is well known for his many talks on game design, but best known for his , "Beyond Facebook", which was adopted as a TED "Best of the Web" talk, and has had over a million views online.
In 2015, Jesse Schell was honored with a Carnegie Science Award in the Entrepreneur category. The program celebrates innovators who have distinguished themselves by making unparalleled contributions to science and technology in various disciplines. The following year, Jesse received a 2016 Creator-of-the-Year award at the CREATE Festival for his work at the intersection of creativity and innovation.
Since 2016 Schell has been in talks with Disney about recreating Toontown Online. As of August 2018, Schell noted that he is actively talking to Disney about obtaining the rights to Toontown Online.

Games and rides