Will Harvey

Will Harvey (born c. 1967) is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who achieved early fame as a Apple II game programmer at the age of 15. Dr Harvey is notably the Founder of IMVU, an instant messaging company, and of There, Inc., an MMOG company.

The first game Harvey developed was 1982's "Lancaster". The need for music in this game led to his development of 1984's heralded "Music Construction Set" ("MCS") for the Apple II. "MCS" was published by Electronic Arts (EA) and quickly ported to various platforms of the era.

After high school, Harvey studied computer science at Stanford University, where he earned his Bachelors, Masters, and Ph.D.. While earning these degrees, he started two game development companies.

In 1995, Harvey founded Sandcastle, an Internet technology company that addressed the network latency problems underlying virtual worlds and massively multiplayer games. Sandcastle was acquired by Adobe Systems.

In 1998, Harvey went on to found There, Inc., which produced a virtual 3D world designed for online socializing.

In 2003, Harvey founded IMVU, which combined the idea of avatars with instant messaging.

Harvey is a frequent lecturer at Stanford and Berkeley in entrepreneurship.

Games

Other than IMVU and There, all but his first game were published by Electronic Arts. Games he was involved with include:
*"The Immortal" (1990)
*"Will Harvey's Zany Golf" (1988)
*"Marble Madness" (1986)
*"Music Construction Set" (1984)
*"Lancaster" (1982)

External links

*
* [http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/there/news_6099558.html Interview with Harvey about There] from "GameSpot"
* [http://www.acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=112 Interview with Harvey] from ACM Queue
* [http://www.archive.org/details/Computer1984 1984 episode of The Computer Chronicles] , includes a segment of Harvey demonstrating the Music Construction Set, alongside John Chowning.