American video game designer
Chris Remo |
|---|
 |
| Born | (1984-09-10) September 10, 1984 (age 39)
|
|---|
| Nationality | American |
|---|
| Occupation(s) | Video game designer, composer, podcaster, writer |
|---|
Chris Remo is an American video game designer, composer, writer, podcaster, and former journalist.
As a journalist, he cofounded the original Idle Thumbs website as well as its flagship podcast, and served as Editor-in-Chief of Shacknews and Editor at Large for Gamasutra.
He composed the music for Thirty Flights of Loving, Gone Home, Spacebase DF-9 and Firewatch. He co-wrote The Cave with Ron Gilbert at Double Fine Productions. In early 2014, he left Double Fine to join his Idle Thumbs co-hosts Jake Rodkin and Sean Vanaman at Campo Santo,[1] where he contributed to the studio's narrative adventure game Firewatch as a game and story designer, composer, and audio director.[2]
Career
Chris Remo began his career as a video game journalist, writing for Adventure Gamers. He co-founded Idle Thumbs, a video game culture website, with colleagues from Adventure Gamers and The International House of Mojo in 2004.[3] As a professional journalist, he was Editor-in-Chief of Shacknews and later Gamasutra, becoming Editor at Large.[3] After Idle Thumbs went dark in 2007, Remo revived it as a podcast in late 2008 with other Thumbs writers Nick Breckon (then of Shacknews) and Jake Rodkin (then of Telltale Games).[4] While podcasting for Idle Thumbs, he composed and performed "Space Asshole", a satirical song about the protagonist of Red Faction: Guerrilla, which went viral.[5]
He left his position at Gamasutra in 2010 to work as a community manager and producer for Boston-based Irrational Games, ending the first run of the Idle Thumbs podcast at the same time. The show's then-final episode was recorded live at the 2010 Penny Arcade Expo.[6]
In early 2012, Remo returned to San Francisco to start a crowdfunded campaign on Kickstarter to revive the Idle Thumbs podcast with then-co-hosts Rodkin and Sean Vanaman.[7] As part of the Kickstarter campaign, Remo composed the soundtrack for Blendo Games' Thirty Flights of Loving, a video game that would be released to backers of the campaign.[8][9][10]
He also took a job in a multi-faceted role at Double Fine Productions, where he contributed to various games, including as a composer and game designer for Spacebase DF-9, an Amnesia Fortnight project, and as co-writer of The Cave alongside Ron Gilbert.[11]
Remo composed the soundtrack to Gone Home, a game written by former Idle Thumbs co-host Steve Gaynor,[12] and co-wrote Rogue One: X-Wing VR Mission for Star Wars Battlefront, developed by Criterion Games.
As a member of independent game studio Campo Santo, Remo was a game and story designer, composer, and audio director of the BAFTA-winning narrative adventure Firewatch, and has spoken about the game’s design at numerous game development conferences around the world.[13][14]
In 2018, Campo Santo was acquired by Seattle-area game developer Valve.[15]
In 2021, Remo started uploading daily vlogs of himself solving The New York Times crossword on his personal YouTube channel, in a series titled The Daily Solve.[16]
