Rawson Stovall
Rawson Law Stovall (born 1972) is an American video game designer and producer. He started out as a video game journalist, the first to be nationally syndicated in the United States. In 1982, ten-year-old Stovall's first column appeared in the Abilene Reporter-News, his local newspaper. He got the column in ten publications before Universal Press Syndicate started distributing it in April 1983; by 1984, the column, titled "The Vid Kid", appeared in over twenty-four newspapers. After being reported on by The New York Times, Stovall was featured on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and earned a regular spot on Discovery Channel's The New Tech Times. In 1985, he helped introduce the Nintendo Entertainment System at its North American launch. In 1990, Stovall retired from video game journalism to attend Southern Methodist University. He later worked as a game designer and producer for Sony, Activision, Electronic Arts, MGM Interactive, and most recently Concrete Software. At Electronic Arts, he produced video games in The Sims franchise. Biography Early life Rawson Law Stovall was born in 1972 to Ronald L. Stovall, a regional manager for the Texas State Health Department and former Boy Scouts executive; and Kay Law Stovall. He has a younger sister named Jennifer. During his childhood, Stovall lived in Abilene, Texas, where he attended Alta Vista Elementary School and Cooper High School. As a child, he had severe asthma and once spent three months at the National Jewish Hospital: he first visited an amusement arcade on one of the hospital's field trips. Stovall first became interested in arcade video games in 1978. He rented games from the Abilene Video Library, allowing him to study the elements and patterns used by different genres and developers. However, his father saw games as a waste of time and refused to buy him an Atari 2600. After Stovall failed to get an Atari for Christmas in 1980, he prepared and packaged nuts from the pecan tree in his backyard and sold them door-to-door the next year, earning enough to buy one. In fourth grade, Stovall and two friends hosted mock television skits about video games for class. He also became the youngest person to receive the Texas Governor's Award for Outstanding Volunteer Service after he raised over $5000 for Abilene's mental health association. 1982: Beginnings as a columnist In the summer of 1981, Stovall was confined indoors because his asthma was triggered by the increased pollen levels, and he could not afford more games. He realized that, unlike reviews for movie and television shows, nothing similar existed for games. At the time, a movie ticket cost less than $5, while a game might cost $3040. Video-game packaging did not consistently include screenshots. The expense and the lack of information available to consumers led Stovall to compare buying video games to a "gamble". Stovall's mother suggested he write an article about video games for the Wylie Journal, a local weekly. Stovall thought the weekly was too small and an article would be too short,