Abstract :
Paul Reiche began his career as a professional game designer in 1981 at TSR Hobbies in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, where he wrote rules for Dungeons & Dragons. He returned to the San Francisco Bay Area and began to create computer games, co-designing the fantasy classics Archon, Mail Order Monsters, and Murder on the Zinderneuf, a murder mystery game set entirely within a zeppelin. In 1989, Reiche founded his own studio, Toys for Bob, with programming partner Fred Ford. Together with their friends and coworkers, Fred and Paul created Star Control I & II, The Horde, Pandemonium and many other games for a wide variety of computer and videogame platforms. Reiche´s hobby of making plastic and rubber monsters proved unexpectedly useful in 2009, when Toys for Bob began the development of Skylanders Spyro´s Adventure, a hybrid physical-toy/video game in which players use real toys to control play in the game. Since its debut in 2011, Skylanders has become an international best-seller. According to Reiche, “To date, Skylanders has sold enough toys that if placed end-to-end, would stretch from Novato, California (where Toys for Bob is based), all the way to Bismark, South Dakota.”
