Blog:More About Michael Knox and Park Place
From Game Developer Research Institute
- Further confirmation of Park Place Productions co-founder Michael Knox's death in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin: He died on the 15th in Kaneohe, Hawaii, surrounded by family members after a battle with colon cancer. He was 48.
- We shouldn't talk about Park Place without mentioning Troy Lyndon, the other co-founder. Along with Knox, he received Inc. Magazine's Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 1993 for his accomplishments with the company. He previously started Lyndon & Associates, which later became Pacific Dataworks International. He is now the CEO of Inspired Media Entertainment, makers of the Christian video game based on the Left Behind novels. In 2007, Lyndon and Knox were reunited in a sense when Knox was appointed to the board of directors. He resigned from his post earlier this month.
- As fast as Park Place grew, it seemed to unravel even faster. Come 1994, not only did the company have massive debt, but Sony opened up a studio nearby and managed to snatch up many Park Place employees. Park Place later sued Sony.
- Knox is only one of two prominent black figures in the American video game industry I can think of. The other is Jerry Lawson, who worked on the Fairchild Channel F and started Videosoft in the early 1980s. If I'm leaving out anyone, I would like to know. Why aren't there more prominent people of color? Should there be more? Does the American game industry workforce reflect the American game-buying public? Should it? Is this even an issue? Is this actually symptomatic of bigger social and cultural issues like the "digital divide?" I'd like to see sites like Gamasutra tackle the subject. There's plenty of stuff on women in gaming, but anything involving race usually only deals with racial stereotypes in games.
CRV 13:37, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
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GENE DEVITO said ...
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Michael was my Video Production partner when we were together in Las Vegas, 2004-2005. He really started what YOUTUBE eventually came out with. Mike and I started The Personal Show TV in Vegas. It did the same thing YOUTUBE currently does except we had sponsors for our assigned Leased Access Cable Channels.
--GENE DEVITO 20:36, 16 October 2011 (CDT)