Anarchy Online: Official Funcom Press Statement - 21 October 2003

I have always been a passionate gamer. I started playing games on the
C64, and got interested in BASIC programming. The real interest came
with the Amiga 500 however, which opened a new world of possibilities on
demo programming and games design. I made a few games, which admittedly
were pretty crappy to be quite honest, but hey, I was only like 14 years
old.

In 1998 I got my degree in Information Technology here in Oslo, and
started to work in Funcom shortly thereafter. At first I was responsible
for building up the Customer Service (CS) team for Anarchy Online,
working with the dev team to prepare them for the CS aspects of
launching an online game. It was a huge challenge, but also one which
gave me highly valuable experiences. In that period I was also
responsible for hiring GM's, while aiding in opening our US Customer
Service office. In 2001 I was appointed Customer Service Manager in
Funcom, but doing only administrative tasks was not my cup of tea. In
2002 I hence became Lead GM. During this period I basically worked on
all aspects on Anarchy Online, ranging from liaisons work between
CSMarketing and the dev team to tools programming to increasing in-game
possibilities for GM's. Seen in hindsight this period will prove to be
of essential value to me since I was so close to the players, the GMs
and our ARK's. It gave me a very empathic view on how it feels to be a
player in AO.

After Notum Wars I started as a full-time Game Designer on Anarchy
Online, and was given a central and challenging design position. I was
the key designer on numerous aspects of the expansion. This includes
design and implementation of the Shadowbreed, the initial design on the
new Shade profession, implementing most of the new Shadowlands Nanos, as
well as co-creating and implementing the new Perk system.

On a more personal level I enjoy hanging out with friends, watching a
good movie, reading (both fact and fiction), and of course playing
computer games.