Jeffrey Tunnell

Formerly Executive Director of Dynamix, a game development division of Sierra On-Line and Vivendi-Universal Interactive. Tunnell co-founded Dynamix in Eugene, Oregon in 1984 with Damon Slye and guided the company from an independent game developer for Electronic Arts to an affiliated label of Activision, then sold the company to Sierra On-line, a publicly traded company in 1990.

His role at Dynamix was as product and technology visionary and creative spark, directing development of new game genres and on new platforms. Tunnell has either designed, produced, or directed more than 70 titles including Rise of the Dragon, The Incredible Machine, Starsiege, and Starsiege: Tribes (Online Game of the Year, AIAS). He has pioneered new game genres such as Outdoor Sports with Trophy Bass and Family Entertainment with the 3-D Ultra line of products that includes such mass-market titles as Pinball, Maximum Minigolf, and Cool Pool.

In 1999 Tunnell founded Monster Studios with long-time collaborator Chris Cole, but left the company early 2003. In the same year he founded GarageGames with three of his Dynamix friends (Tim Gift, Rick Overman, and Mark Frohnmayer). GG is a game developer and an online community of independent developers, that also provides tools for the production of computer games and distributes the games made with those tools by independent developers.

In March 2008, the public beta release of GreatGamesExperiment.com went on line, a social networking site centered around gaming. GGE was created by Tunnell for developers and gamers, to promote, network, discover, download, and play games. On June 2, 2008, Tunnell left GarageGames to start a new company with another vision and a new set of promises. A few months later, on November 5th, 2008, his new startup Push Button Labs was announced.

Outside of games Tunnell started Furrer Farms in 2007, a 200 acre organic farm. For fun, he rides motorcycles (Yamaha FZ-1 and YZ250F), plays in a rock band Procrastinators, lifts Olympic weights, and spends a lot of time with his family. He and his wife Colleen have four kids (Heidi, Aaron, Jonathan, and Allison).