• Home
• News
• Press Releases
• Products
• Windows -
• PocketPC -
• Classic -
• Wrist PDA -
• PalmOS -
• Development
• Play Games
• About Us
• Our Team
• Employment
• Links
• Contact

Meet the Team

John Swiderski is President of Mean Hamster Software, a company which develops games for a variety of platforms, including the Pocket PC, Smart Phones, PDAs, Sony PSP, Windows PC and retro games for Amiga and Atari. John's start in the gaming industry began over twenty years ago when he produced dozens of titles for the Commodore 64 and Amiga. John continued his interest in development for these legacy game systems with several titles for the Atari 5200 in late 1999. A change in direction led to title development for a new medium, handheld computers and Pocket PCs. In 2005, Mean Hamster developed Pocket PC versions for Cyan Worlds, Inc. games, MYST™ and RIVEN™. John also worked with Fossil, writing the Wrist PDA™ development paper, along with three software programs. Future plans include game development for Sony PSP, Nintendo and PC platforms.

Richard M. Spitalny, who sometimes consults for and represents Mean Hamster Software, remains the president of First Star Software, Inc., as he has been since co-founding the company in 1982. Within 18 months of starting the company Richard had produced Astro Chase, the company's first game (and the first of dozens he would produce); licensed various rights to the company's early titles to the likes of Parker Brothers and Radio Shack; purchased all the intellectual property right to Boulder Dash® and sold half the company to Warner Communications. This lead to the licensing of the rights to Spy vs. Spy® and Superman® from sister Warner companies E.C. Publications and DC Comics. Richard continued to grow the company, expanding internal development capabilities. He also established strong relationships with retailers whilst working with external developers and licensed foreign rights to First Star's titles extensively throughout the world, particularly in Europe and Japan.

Currently, Richard continues to head First Star's endeavors, working with external development partners (such as Mean Hamster Software) and co-publishing partners, exploiting the company's games across mobile platforms, home computers, video game consoles, and hand-held devices, as well as online 'try and buy' portals and subscription-based channels such as GameTap.

Chris Brandkamp, former Vice President of Cyan Worlds, in addition to his extensive legal and financial background, was key to the audio effects of Myst, the Novels, film scripts, production and design of Cyan's work on Cecilia Dart-Thornton's 'Crowthistle Chronicles', and the production of Myst for PPC with Mean Hamster Software. Chris is currently a Financial Representative with Richards, Merrill & Peterson, Spokane, WA.

Ben Amos graduated from Eastern Washington University in 2004 with a bachelors in computer science, focussed on the creation of video games. Formerly an independent video game developer, Ben is currently assisting the Mean Hamster team as a programmer and playtester. When not writing code, his hobbies include listening to music, playing video games (except sports games) and writing fiction. "There's no better feeling in the world than when the code you write comes to life and does just what you intended."

Jeffrey Cassey It was a dark and stormy night ...or that's what he'd leave you to believe. A 2006 graduate from EWU (Bachelors-English certification in Creative and Technical Writing). Always with one writing project or another, he is currently working on a Children's Story when not writing for MHS. Jeffrey has written stories, scripts and comic book style intros for 4 future Mean Hamster Software games!

Sean Harrington Sean Harrington is the co-founder of Harrington Artwerkes art studio. He has illustrated childrens' books, book covers, posters, advertisements, t-shirts and online comics, and his work has appeared in The Readers Digest and Cincinnati Magazine. Sean is currently working on the comic book panels for 2 game projects and has started illustrations for a 3rd.

Carrie Bartlett is one of those rare birds that used her fine art degree directly after graduation by jumping into the bronze art industry. In Loveland, CO, she worked on monumental size art for internationally know artists, as well as creating and selling her own small bronze art. After a few years learning all aspects of the trade short of physically pouring the bronze herself, she looked to the Pacific Northwest to transition to the game industry. In 2006 she added a video game trade school degree to her BFA and went to work for Nintendo for 18 months as an environment artist developing for the Wii. Since then she has been working as a contract artist for Mean Hamster and continuing to paint and sculpt.

Keith Bickley – coming soon.

Somatone Interactive Audio SomaTone Interactive Audio is an audio production team that services the game industry. We provide original music, sound efx and VO (if applicable) to console, PC, Web, downloadable, XLA, handheld and Mobile game developers and publishers. Our clients include: EA, Ubisoft, DreamWorks, SONY, Warner Bros, Leap Frog, Nickelodeon, Wild Tangent, PlayFirst, PopCap, PlayFirst, Disney, Microsoft, Vivendi, Sierra Online, Oberon, Game Trust, SandLot, etc. www.somatone.com

Jim Leiterman is a senior computer engineer who has been developing hardware and software professionally since 1978 and programming video/computer games for 23+ years. He has worked for multiple game companies including Midway, LucasArts, Atari, Wild Goose Games, a casino gaming company, and two Internet online game companies and has shipped ten games. He is also the author of Vector Game Math Processors and Learn Vertex and Pixel Shader Programming with DirectX 9.