Josh Holmes (video game designer)
| Josh Holmes | |
|---|---|
| Born |
December 25, 1973 Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada |
| Occupation | Video game designer |
| Notable work | Halo 4 |
Josh Holmes is a Canadian game producer and video game designer originally from Vancouver, British Columbia. Holmes is currently an Executive Producer for 343 Industries blockbuster franchises based in Kirkland, Washington, the Microsoft Studios unit formed to coordinate the Halo franchise.
Holmes was born and grew up in British Columbia and attended Kitsilano Secondary School in Vancouver. Josh turned to game design after several years pursuing a career as a film actor in Los Angeles, including filming a television pilot.
Holmes got his start in the video-game business in 1995 at Electronic Arts’ campus in Burnaby, Canada as a game tester, and a year later he was hired to make games. While there, he created the Def Jam series of fighting games, as well as the NBA Street series. His passion for storytelling was demonstrated when he worked on NBA Street as the lead designer, ensuring that even a sports game had a plot. After finishing Def Jam Vendetta, many ideas remained for another game, and in the development process early on that the gameplay would move away from the wrestling found in the original and be shaped by combat from other fighting games and genres.
In 2005, he co-founded Propaganda Games. While there he worked on the reboot of the Turok first person shooter game series. Propaganda Games was acquired by Disney Interactive shortly after it opened. In 2008, Holmes left Propaganda Games and Disney Interactive, citing creative differences.
He joined 343 Industries in 2009 and was an executive producer on Halo Waypoint and Halo: Reach. Holmes stated he was drawn to the challenge of working at 343 Industries because it was founded specifically to become the caretaker of the Halo series, with only approximately 25 people working there when he joined. The Halo Waypoint website was a labor of love, Holmes has stated, and he and his team were "blown away" by the number of people accessing the site. As part of the development of Halo: Reach, Holmes worked with Bungie who had made the previous Halo installments. One of Holmes' favorite aspects of Reach was the "melancholy feel you had that you were understanding the stakes of the challenge and things weren't necessarily going to end up all rosy".
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