Rikk Carey

Born in Baltimore and grew up in classic American Boomer middle-class suburb. Attended University of Maryland, received a BS in Structural Engineering and nearly an MS, when I was accepted into Cornell's Program of Computer Graphics.

Worked hard for 3 glorious years in Ithaca--learning computer science, computer graphics, and completing my Master's thesis: "Ray Tracing Textures".

Took my first real job w/ Vertigo Computer Animation in Vancouver, Canada. Fell in love with Vancouver and worked too hard for 6 yrs, creating the Vertigo 3D Animation System.

Joined SGI, a historic company, and learned something new every day. Worked at SGI for 9 years on a varierty of fun, sometimes controversial projects: GLdebug, Inventor, VRML, 3D Annotator, 3D Whiteboard, Ricochet Ray Tracer, Cosmo *, etc. Somehow was convinced to come back to SGI and went down with the Cosmo Ship (sold).

I jumped on the internet bandwagon in 1998, whiffed at a couple startups, and joined eGroups as CTO. Yahoo! acquired us and I worked at Y! as GM of Music for a short stint. I worked at Napster for a long summer as a favor to a friend.

Co-founded Plaxo and enjoyed a wild ride for six years. Plaxo was sold to Comcast.

Returned to my roots in computer graphics and started a small online game studio, CloudPlay. Created a turn-based strategy game (early MOBA), ThreshWars.com, built Cafe for Tagged.com, and created a FB game.

While developing ideas for our next game, I met the folks at Tophatter and joined. I worked there for one year, and designed and helped launch their first iPhone app and we were featured in the App Store.

I decided that I wanted to refresh my coding skills and built a game 100% solo: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/xo-football/id843535613?mt=8

I am currently advising companies on product, engineering, and strategy, as well as continuing to develop games in my spare time.