Greg Johnson

Greg Johnson (born 1960) is an American video game designer who has worked for Binary Systems and Electronic Arts, was co-founder with Mark Voorsanger of ToeJam & Earl Productions Inc., and in 2006 founded his own company, HumaNature Studios. He is known for the iconic ToeJam & Earl series (1991–present), and his design credits additionally include Starflight (1986), Game of the Year Starflight 2: Trade Routes of the Cloud Nebula (1989), the multi-award-winning Orly's Draw-A-Story (1997), Kung Fu Panda World (2010), and Doki-Doki Universe (2013), Back in the Groove (2019), Early life Johnson was born in Passaic, New Jersey to an African-American father and a Jewish mother whose family had escaped Russia during World War II. He is one of five children, three of whom are step-siblings. His mother was an administrator for a special education school, and his father was a professor of philosophy and musicology. When Johnson was three, his parents separated and his mother moved the family to Los Angeles, where, when Johnson was 12, his mother married a child psychologist who became Johnson's stepfather. Johnson attended Alexander Hamilton High School, and then Colorado College, where he learned his first programming language, Fortran. There, he designed a simple sword fight simulator (which he later called "boring as hell"). After Colorado College, he went on to the University of California, San Diego, studying biolinguistics. It was while at university that he first played the influential dungeon crawler video game Rogue, which influenced many of his later works. Electronic Arts Johnson made ends meet by providing graphics for software such as Deluxe Paint, and was also hired by Binary Systems, though with minimal pay. He was living off money loaned to him by a friend, to whom he promised a cut of royalties from his first game. The game's development was never assured and it was almost cancelled several times, but eventually, with the help of Electronic Arts producer Joe Ybarra, the game Starflight was released in 1986 to positive reviews, and sales which continued to climb for the next year (and Johnson's friend got quadruple his money back). Johnson then continued to work for Electronic Arts, at the time a small company with about 30 employees, contributing graphics to titles such as Adventure Construction Set and F/A 18 Interceptor.