George Fan | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Fan in 2018 | |
| Born | 1978 (age 45–46) |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | University of California, Berkeley |
| Occupations |
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| Years active | 2000–present |
| Notable work | |
George Fan (born 1978) is an American video game designer who currently works as the creative director of All Yes Good. He designed Insaniquarium (2001), Plants vs. Zombies (2009; which started the video game franchise of the same name), Octogeddon (2018), and Hardhat Wombat (2023). Before going into game design, Fan graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2000 with a degree in computer science. After graduating, he worked under Arcade Planet to develop games for their website, Prizegames.com. He eventually formed Flying Bear Entertainment and created Insaniquarium, which became a finalist for the 2002 Independent Games Festival. He then joined Blizzard Entertainment and worked there while simultaneously developing Insaniquarium further for PopCap Games, releasing the "Deluxe" edition in 2004.
Fan left Blizzard and started developing Plants vs. Zombies. He became a full-time employee for PopCap, who supplied Fan with a team. Upon release in 2009, it became the best-selling game developed by PopCap. EA bought PopCap Games in 2011 and Fan was laid off after he insisted EA to not make "Plants vs. Zombies 2" pay-to-win in 2012. Fan started developing Octogeddon and submitted it to the 2012 Ludum Dare contest. Fan formed a developing company named All Yes Good with Rich Werner and Kurt Pfeffer and developed Octogeddon further before releasing it in 2018. Fan then developed Hardhat Wombat, which was released on October 26, 2023.