Ben Sawyer
Games in Maine
Ben Sawyer is the co-founder of Digitalmill, a Maine-based games consulting firm.
Since beginning his career in game development over ten years ago, Sawyer has pioneered major initiatives in the field of serious games, and has become a nationally recognized leader within the games community.
In 2013 The SxSW Interactive Festival recognized Sawyer for his work in serious games with a Dewey Winburne Community Service Award.
In 2002, he co-founded the Serious Games Initiative, a project of the U.S. Government's Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The Serious Games Initiative continues to serve as one of the leading organizations in the field of serious games.
In 2004, Sawyer co-founded the Games for Health Project, an effort which built the primary social and professional networks of the health games industry. Games for Health connected health professionals, researchers, and game developers in order to advance the development of health games and game technologies and received major funding from the Pioneer Portfolio, an initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
As a game developer, Sawyer has worked on over two dozen major serious game projects. In 2000, Sawyer began producing the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's university simulation game, "Virtual U," which was an award finalist at that year’s Independent Games Festival. Sawyer has also served as a designer, producer, advisor, and/or manager on projects for Cisco, The Yale School of Medicine, The Wilson Center, SportzSafe, Hilton Hotels, DARPA, Kaiser-Permanente, Georgia Tech University, Intel Research, ONR, Leimandt Foundation, Cadbury, USAID, Lockheed Martin, and several other Fortune 500 organizations.
Prior to founding Digitalmill, Sawyer was a technical book author, writing about emerging consumer technologies and game development. His written work has been recognized by both Game Developer Magazine and the Independent Publishing Award.
Aside from his Digitalmill work, Sawyer serves on the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention, and is advising several game startups.
He can often be found during winter weekends playing 'vanilla' Minecraft with his sons and friends on http://pickaxe.club.