Harvey Smith (game designer)

Harvey Smith
Harvey Smith in Seoul, South Korea in 2006
Born	1966 (age 50–51)
Occupation	Video game designer, writer
Employer	Arkane Studios

Harvey Smith (born 1966) is an American video game designer and writer, currently working at Arkane Studios.

Smith has lectured in various places around the world on topics such as level design, emergent gameplay, leadership, game unit differentiation, future trends and interactive narrative. At the Game Developers Conference in 2006, Smith won the Game Designer's Challenge: Nobel Peace Prize, for his design featuring a mobile video game that facilitates political social action.

Smith was born and raised on the Texas Gulf Coast. His mother overdosed on drugs in front of him when he was only six years old. He grew up playing games like Pong as well as Dungeons & Dragons. He also read books by Ursula K. Le Guin, William Faulkner, Vladimir Nabokov and Roger Zelazny, among others. After graduating high school, he worked at a gas station for a short time. Having grown tired of his environment, Smith joined the U.S. Air Force. During his six-year enlistment, Smith spent time in Germany as well as Saudi Arabia. After his discharge, Smith moved to Austin at the behest of a friend to try his hand at video game design.

Early in his career, Smith worked in QA at the Austin-based Origin Systems, where he became the QA Lead for System Shock. In 1995, Smith became an associate producer for Ultima VIII, working with co-founder of Origin, Richard Garriott. After leaving Origin in 1996, Harvey Smith went to work at Multitude where they released Fireteam.

After Multitude, Smith's game development career continued in Austin, Texas working with Warren Spector at Ion Storm as lead designer on the award-winning Deus Ex as well as its sequel, Deus Ex: Invisible War. Smith left Ion Storm to work at Midway Games as lead designer on BlackSite: Area 51. On November 29, 2007, Harvey Smith, as designer of BlackSite: Area 51, came out publicly to announce how unrealistic the game's development schedule was and through mutual agreement left Midway a day later. He claimed the schedule caused the low reviews due to the fact they were not able to test the game properly.