Dave McCool
President and CEO
Dave McCool has been in the software industry for over 20 years. He co-founded Muzzy Lane Software in 2002 and serves as its President and CEO. Dave has played a key role in the design of Muzzy Lane's software and games. He led Muzzy Lane's very successful launch of the Making History Gaming Headquarters, an interactive website that allows Making History players to chat, share game mods, review and rate content, and post After Action Reports. Prior to Muzzy Lane Dave co-founded Aptis Communications, a VC funded developer of carrier- class networking products, in 1997. As Director of Software Dave built and ran a 25 person software group and was the architect of the Aptis software system. The company was sold to Nortel Networks in 1998 and went on to do more than $600 million dollars in revenue from its CVX product line.
Dave began his career at Shiva Corporation, a developer of network-based peripherals, in 1987 as the 3rd employee. During his 10 years at Shiva he rose from Software Engineer to Business Unit Manager, also playing key software design and management roles along the way. Shiva went public in a very successful IPO in 1994. Dave graduated from MIT in 1987 with a BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Ralph Gerth
Art Director
Ralph is a game designer, animator, and art director with almost twenty years experience in the game industry. He has taught animation at Drexel University and is a veteran of Lucas Arts, where he worked as a lead artist and animator on numerous games, several of which are considered among the greatest video games ever made. Here at Muzzy Lane, he was instrumental in redesigning Making History from an educational tool to a commercial grand strategy game. His credits include: Making History Gold and Making History II (Game Designer, Art Director), Making History (Art Director), Star Fighter (Lead Artist), Jedi Knight (Lead 3D Artist), Futurama, The Game (Lead Artist), Grim Fandango (3D Environment Artist), Dark Forces (3D Animator/Modeler), Rebel Assault (3D Animator/Modeler), The Dig (3D Animator/Modeler), Sam and Max (3D Animator/Modeler).
Ralph holds a MFA degree from New York's School of Visual Arts.
Bert Snow
VP of Design and Content
Bert Snow is a designer with broad perspective that includes game design, graphic and interface design, interactive music, and sculpture. In 1993 he founded Virtual Music, a company that helped invent the music-game genre that now includes hits like Guitar Hero. At Virtual Music, Bert designed several groundbreaking music-gaming titles for the PC and Playstation including Quest for Fame (starring Aerosmith) and Stolen Song (published by Sony in Japan), and an Aerosmith arcade game for Namco Ltd. Virtual Music was acquired by Japanese game company Namco in 2000. At Muzzy Lane, Bert has designed the American Dynasties role-playing game working with documentary film-makers Center for New American Media, the ReFresh prototype of a game about modern marketing, and the company's first title, Making History; "The Calm & the Storm". Bert's game designs have won awards including the League for Innovation Best New Product Award (Making History), Invision Awards Silver Medal for Best Overall Game Design (Quest for Fame) and the E3 Leonardo daVinci Award for product design (Quest for Fame and Virtual Guitar)
Bert also recieved a platinum record for his interactive-design work on the Aerosmith album Nine Lives, and helped design the online interactive-music website MusicPlayground for Namco. He has designed interactive exhibits for The New York Hall of Science and the Children's Museum, and has taught as a visiting artist at Harvard University. Bert has a BA with highest honors in art from Williams College.
David Martz
VP of Sales and Marketing
Dave earned his MBA from Boston University and was an undergraduate at University of New Hampshire where he majored in Business Administration. After ten years with State Street Bank & Trust, he entered the world of educational software publishing, as a founding member of Cambridge Digital Media (publishers of Drivin' Route 66 and Making History Interactive) and Endeavor Software (a creator of multimedia programming for the New York Jets Football Club).
Matt Seegmiller
Technical Director
Matt Seegmiller has over 15 years of both general and 3D graphics programming experience. After graduating from MIT with an SB in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 2002, Matt became Muzzy Lane's first full-time employee. Ever since, his contributions have been the backbone of Muzzy Lane's code base.
As an integral part of the engineering team that shipped Making History: The Calm and the Storm in 2007, he was on the front lines learning lessons about the technological challenges facing educational games. Leveraging this experience, he has since led the team that created Locust, a modular game engine that allows for quicker, more iterative game development, and later Sandstone, Muzzy Lane's technology platform for integrating 3D games with other web applications.
