Bio

Jonathan Small is a videogame veteran with over 35 years of experience in developing games and middleware technology.

His first game, developed for the Spectrum, was published when he was just fifteen and still in high school. Jonathan went on to develop the cross platform operating system and tool set called CyberDos for the Amiga and Atari ST home computers while studying Computer Science at the University of Warwick. CyberDos would later be used in the video game The Oath (Amiga) developed by Jonathan and published in 1991.

After gaining an 1-1 honors degree at Warwick, Jonathan was hired by Criterion Software where he was lead engineer and producer on Subculture, a 3D underwater action/adventure title. The game engine, code name Dive he created during development would later be commercialized as Criterion's game middleware product Renderware 3.

RenderWare 3 became the de facto game engine for the Playstation 2 console generation, being used in over 25% of all titles including the popular franchise, Grand Theft Auto. Jonathan would then go on to become Head of Criterion Studios.

In 1999, Jonathan had a vision of the future of games where high quality 3D games could be produced in a shorter amount of time and digitally distributed over the internet. To realize this vision Jonathan started up a new game studio within Criterion Software called Fiendish Games.

Fiendish Games was one of the first developers in world to develop native content specifically for digital distribution. The company not only pioneered digital distributed content, but also developed technology to allow direct selling to consumers as well as through third parties such as Real Networks. Fiendish Games became independent from Criterion in 2000 to continue its work under the new name, Small Rockets.

During Jonathan's time at the helm of both companies, over 20 games were developed and published world-wide, both digitally and through boxed retail across several platforms including PC, Gameboy Advance, and Playstation 2.

Post Small Rockets, Jonathan returned to middleware development at Havok, a industry leader in real-time physics solutions. At Havok, Jonathan developed the core technology that would be released as Havok Destruction. Havok Destruction has been used in AAA titles such as Uncharted 3: Drakes Deception and The Last of Us. He also worked as part of the core physics team responsible for Havok Physics, used in AAA titles such as Halo, Destiny, Bioshock and Call of Duty:Ghosts. Havok Physics is also used in television and film including World War Z, Harry Potter, James Bond, and The Matrix.

More recently, Jonathan served as CTO for gopop.tv, a start up focused on the enhancement of television and streaming services through interactive user-driven social applications. The service is accessible through the web as well as through native iOS and Android apps. It allows viewers to engage and interact with other viewers via time shifted messaging and user-generated content, creating communities of superfans around favorite programming. Current showcased shows include Sherlock, Outlander, and Dr Who.

Currently Jonathan works for a fortune 500 company developing and researching software around games, graphics and physics.