Greg Johnson (game designer)

Greg Johnson
Greg Johnson, 2012
Born	1960 (age 56–57) Passaic, New Jersey
Nationality	American
Occupation	Game designer
Notable work	Starflight, Starflight 2, ToeJam & Earl series
Spouse(s)	Eriko Johnson
Children	Tomo, Thi-Lan
Website	http://humanaturestudios.com

Greg Johnson (born 1960) is an American video game designer who has worked for Binary Systems and Electronic Arts, was co-founder with Mark Voorsanger of ToeJam & Earl Productions Inc., and in 2006 founded his own company, HumaNature Studios. His design credits include Starflight (1986), Game of the Year Starflight 2: Trade Routes of the Cloud Nebula (1989), the multi-award-winning Orly's Draw-A-Story (1998), Kung Fu Panda World (2010), Doki-Doki Universe (2013), and mostly known for the iconic ToeJam & Earl series (1991–present).

Johnson was born in Passaic, New Jersey, one of five children, three of whom were step-siblings. His mother was an administrator for a special education school, and his father was a philosophy and music professor. When Johnson was three, his parents separated and his mother moved the family to Los Angeles, where, when Johnson was 12, his mother married a child psychologist who became Johnson's stepfather. Johnson attended Alexander Hamilton High School, and then Colorado College, where he learned his first programming language, Fortran. There, he designed a simple sword fight simulator (which he later called "boring as hell"). After Colorado College, he went on to the University of California, San Diego, studying biolinguistics. It was while at university that he first played the influential dungeon crawler video game Rogue, which influenced many of his later works.