Obituary: Game designer Dr. Christopher Erhardt

The games industry has lost a talented developer and educator with the death of Dr. Christopher Erhardt. He was in his 50s.

As reported by Gamasutra, the industry veteran of over 19 years helped ship over 22 titles including SSI’s Pool of Radiance and Westwood’s Battletech: The Crescent Hawk’s Inception.

In 1998 Erhardt took a teaching position at DigiPen, where he passed on the hard lessons he learned from both sides of the production pipeline to his students.

While working as the school’s professor of game design and production, he worked with Valve to develop a level design program and helped Microsoft Game Studios integrate XNA into the classroom.

The industry veteran, who also studied psychology at Harvard, taught game design and production in Beirut, served as head of US operations for The Academy of Interactive Entertainment, and helped found IGDA’s Seattle chapter.

Erhardt is survived by his wife Madeline and children Emilio, Estelle and Emma.