Dan Hon, Co-founder and CEO
Dan has been at the forefront of alternate reality gaming since its inception in 2001, when he co-moderated the groundbreaking online community Cloudmakers, formed to play The Beast, Microsoft’s production for AI. Before co-founding Six to Start with his brother, Adrian, Dan was COO at Mind Candy, where he worked on award winning alternate reality game Perplex City.
Six to Start, launched in September 2007 recently went public with its first project, We Tell Stories, for Penguin Books, received to great critical and commercial acclaim. The company is now working on interactive, cross-platform projects for the BBC, Channel 4 and other clients.
Dan has spoken extensively on both social software and cross media gaming, and was recently a jury member for the BAFTA Videogames and RTS Education Awards. Dan has most recently spoken at The Media Festival, Hello Digital 2008, Sheffield Doc/Fest 2008, WildScreen, South by Southwest 2008, South by Southwest 2007 and the London Games Festival. He appears to be spending most of his free time levelling his Horde Rogue in World of Warcraft to get ready for Wrath of the Lich King.
Read more about Dan at his blog.
Adrian Hon, Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer
Adrian is one of the world’s leading alternate reality game designers, having been influential in the genre since its birth. Previously, Adrian was Director of Play at Mind Candy, where he designed and produced Perplex City, the world’s first commercially successful ARG. Some of the venues at which Adrian has spoken include TED, Google, GDC, Nordic Game and the Montreal Games Summit.
Adrian previously studied neuroscience at Oxford University and Cambridge University, and is the founder of the innovative Let’s Change the Game competition to produce an ARG to raise funds for charity.
Read more about Adrian at his blog.
Kass Schmitt, Technical Project Manager
Kass Schmitt joined Six to Start in February 2008 after nearly five years at the BBC doing things like nursing Celebdaq, engineering elusive pop sensation Jamie Kane and rescuing Leeds from forecasts of 188°C at the Weather Centre. Kass is a technical project manager at Six to Start which means that she spends most of her time figuring out how to deliver amazing things on time and under budget or, when no one’s looking, reminiscing about life on the high seas. Kass can currently be found at her desk practicing knots.
Mink ette, Junior Game Designer
Mink ette joined Six to Start in January 2008. Before this she had several interesting escapades, some of which involved making ARGs with the mysterious Coney, being a scenographer and ‘Mask Mistress’ for Punchdrunk and invading the London Underground with her site-specific live-action radio-play.
In her spare time she attempts to design street games and helps organise the Hide and Seek Pervasive Games Festival.
Mink may or may not be fictional.
Paul Mison, Developer
Paul Mison joined Six to Start in July 2008, continuing a long career through the web development industry. Previously a self-identified Perl programmer at companies such as Fotango, Paul has emerged from a period developing Java applications and now writes the web applications behind the games that Six to Start run, usually in Python.
In his spare time Paul does even more programming (and has been known to try and talk about it to groups of other developers) and sometimes attempts to take photographs. A while ago he spent all day walking across London, twice, but he doesn’t really recommend that one.
Read more about Paul at his blog.
Andrew Hayward, Interaction Designer
Andrew declined to write a bio, so we exquisite-corpsed/Consequences-d one for him.
Andrew “Fibonacci” Hayward is a cyclist who enjoys trees and weak lemon drink. “Lemon drink” being the codename of a new MicroGooHoo Web 4.0 HTML 7.0 rich internet application technology. Previously, Andrew has had other jobs, but they’re not as cool as this one, especially seeing as he’s getting compulsory ninja training.
LISA, Operations
LISA is our Lightweight Interactive Systems Actuator, and handles all of our operational tasks from finding office space to crunching numbers for the accountants. It’s the latest in artificial intelligence, though we do find some bugs every once in a while. Apologies for any inconvenience caused, this is truly a work in progress.
When it’s not trying to resolve the conflicting feeds on Health & Safety from the government, it seems to spend a lot of time on the traveling salesman problem (possibly a remnant of the time spent at INSEAD.) Perhaps it’s going to file its own holiday request someday…
Marc McGinley, Junior Game Designer
Marc joined Six To Start after completing his degree in computer wizardry, whizz bangs and entertainment, which younger folks now call Multimedia Technology and Design. In the past he’s done shiny/web/programming/design things and game related things (such as Operation Sleeper Cell).
Unfortunately, Marc was hit by an ARG during his degree years, and he’s never quite been the same again. Although this does mean he has some crazy ideas, it does sometimes have it’s advantages.
Marc can often be found by his Playstation 3 of a nervous disposition, mumbling to himself and staring at the screen with watery eyes. Do not be alarmed! It’ll just be yet another attempt to obtain the last trophy or two in Wipeout HD.