Frank Lantz (born December 17, 1963) is an American video game designer. He is the Founding Chair, now Chair Emeritus of the New York University Game Center.NYU Game Center, "NYU Game Center - People", 2013 For over 12 years, Lantz taught game design at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program. He has also taught at the School of Visual Arts and Parsons School of Design. His writings on games, technology, and culture have appeared in a variety of publications. In 2012, The New York Times referred to Lantz as a "reigning genius of the mysteries of games" following his design of iPhone puzzle game Drop7.Anderson, Sam, "Just One More Game: Angry Birds, Farmville and Other Hyperaddictive 'Stupid Games'", The New York Times, April 4, 2012
In 2005 he co-founded area/code, a New York-based developer that created cross-media, location-based, and social network games.Creativity Online, , Creativity Magazine Online, February 19, 2008 In 2011 area/code was acquired by Zynga and became Zynga New York.Rao, Leena, "Zynga Acquires Social Game Developer Area/Code; Launches New York Office", Tech Crunch, January 21, 2011 Lantz has worked in the field of game development for the past 20 years. Before starting area/code, he worked on a wide variety of games as the Director of Game Design at Gamelab, Lead Game Designer at Pop & Co, and Creative Director at R/GA Interactive.Ruberg, Bonnie, "Big Reality: A Chat with 'Big Game' Designer Frank Lantz", Gamasutra, August 10, 2006 In 2012, Lantz contributed an interview to the Critical Path Project.Grabias, David, "Most Games Are Junk", Critical Path Project, July 23, 2012
Lantz also had a cameo in the 1987 film Redneck Zombies, as "the crazy hitchhiker".
In 2017, Lantz created Universal Paperclips, an incremental game in which players manage an artificial intelligence focused on maximizing paperclip production. The game went viral and was praised for its exploration of the unintended consequences of optimization.
Credits
Video games Gearheads (1996), Philips Interactive Junkbot (2001), Lego Group Spybot: The Nightfall Incident (2002), Lego Group Diner Dash (2004), PlayFirst Pac-Manhattan (2004), New York University Drop7 (2009), Zynga CSI: Crime City (2010), Ubisoft Universal Paperclips (2017) Hey Robot (2020), Everybody House Games Babble Royale (2021), Everybody House Games Q-UP (2025), Everybody House Games
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