Raptr: What are you playing?

What is Raptr?

Raptr is a social utility for gaming made by people who love games. We allow you to connect with your gaming friends and see what the world is playing. We do this by letting you:

• Instant message with all of your friends in one buddy list
• Show friends what you're playing
• Join your friends in-game with one click
• Share and compare achievements
• See what games are hot right now

Raptr allows you to chat with all of your friends from the top IM services (AIM, Yahoo, MSN, Google Talk, Xfire, ICQ, and Facebook Chat) in one friends list. You can even chat with your friends on Xbox Live! With the Raptr client, you will no longer need to have multiple IM clients running to challenge or invite your friends to play a game with you.

Whether you play PC, Xbox 360, or Flash games, you can use Raptr to automatically share what you're playing and how well you're doing. You can broadcast your playing status to all of your friends on the top IM services as well as friends on Facebook, Twitter, and FriendFeed.

Raptr is currently in Beta and we'd love your help in making Raptr a better service. Please send feedback to feedback@raptr.com.

The Raptr Team

• Dennis Fong Ceo & Founder
  

  Dennis (a.k.a. Thresh) was previously a die-hard PC gamer as the world champion of Doom, Doom 2, Quake, and Quake 2 and was called the "Michael Jordan of Videogames" by the Wall St. Journal. These days, you're more likely to find him playing Guitar Hero (X360), Starcraft (PC), Bejeweled 2 (XBLA), and Desktop Tower Defense (Flash). Dennis founded Raptr out of his frustration of not being able to easily keep track of his friends playing across so many platforms. Prior to Raptr, Dennis co-founded three successful startups: Xfire, Lithium, and Gamers.com.

• Dave Swenson VP of Engineering
  

  Dave was recruited by Raptr because of his most excellent ping pong skills, but was soon made VPE after a shoulder injury sidelined him. Dave has a passion for driving simulators like GTR 2 and Gran Turismo, and demands to be addressed as 'Schuey' when he is behind the wheel. Prior to Raptr, Dave led multiple development teams at eBay, where ping pong skills are not so highly valued.

• Ranah Edelin VP of Business Development & Marketing
  

  Ranah is really glad that working at Raptr doesn’t involve singing karaoke like his last start-up SingShot did. He lived in Japan for 5 years, loves snowboarding and traveling, and is very happy that Flash games have become so popular. Ranah also did stints as a VP at EA and Rhapsody as part of his journey to Raptr.

• Norman Yee Founding Engineer
  

  When not honing his massively unimpressive gaming skills, Norm can be found enjoying photography, the outdoors, power yoga, the gym, and long walks on the beach, but not at the same time. Prior to joining Raptr as its first engineer, Norm enjoyed stints at Adobe Systems, Walmart.com, Gamers.com, NBC Internet, and CNET.

• Patrick Li Founding Engineer
  

  A master at multitasking, Pat manages to simultaneously look carefree and worried as he kills bugs dead while managing to also sneak in new features and defeat coworkers at ping pong. Despite being a former professional video gamer, Pat still managed to make his parents proud having landed gigs at places like Google and E*TRADE before throwing it all away to help found a 20 person startup.

• Thomas Kwan Principal Software Engineer
  

  Thomas enjoys programming. He loves it so much that he joined Raptr for some insanely challenging problems. In his spare time, he is learning to balance on the Wii fit board and finding good eats.

• Ricardo Gomez Senior Manager of IT & Network Operations
  

  Rico has an active interest in systems, security, and network infrastructures. His technical experiences have made an impact at Anheuser-Busch, SUN Microsystems, E*TRADE, and Right90. Besides rocking out on Rock Band, you'll find him outdoors surfing, snowboarding, and riding his Ducati.

• Tom Bazzano Director of QA & Content
  

  Tom (AKA Baz) is a veteran of the video game and tech world having worked at companies like Sega, 3DO, Yahoo! and most recently Xfire. When he's not in his arcade playing vids and pinballs, or gaming on a console or PC, you can probably find him in the garage fixing or fabricating something.

• Kevin Cheng Director of User Experience
  

  Kevin tries to answer the question, "what is the best experience possible for Raptr?" by playing lots of games. Sadly, he excels at few of them and only claims the title of Mario Kart DS champion because nobody at Raptr plays. Kevin was the designer on Yahoo! Pipes, and currently an artist, author, blogger and twitter addict.

• Chad Schwein Content Editor
  

  Chad has been in the gaming industry and doing customer support for years longer than he wants to admit to. When not adding content to our site, he finds himself drowning in World of Warcraft, Sid Meier's Pirates, or any of his many Wii, Xbox, Playstation, or N64 games.

• Tommy Chan Visual Designer
  

  Tommy escaped the claws of Academy of Art University with the power of art direction. He owns most popular game consoles and gadgets that end up sitting around looking pretty. He is a creative who pushes the limits to scare people. Each day, he is solving visual conundrums, which lead to a wonderful tradition of happy hour! Tommy loves tapas, wine, beaches, and traveling.

• Zach Preston Content Editor
  

  Zach does not like talking about himself, but he will tell you that games are fun, and should be played with your friends. Some games he recommends Mario Party, any MMO, Settlers of Catan, Diddy Kong Racing, and Magic the Gathering.

• Andrew Wooldridge Lead Web Developer
  

  Andrew has been a web developer for as long as he can remember, working at such companies as Netscape, AOL, Ebay, 1UP.com, and most recently Yahoo! He's written a few books on javascript as well as worked on several open source game projects. He is a huge RPG fan and hopes to actually finish one someday.

• Charles Bank Senior Software Engineer
  

  Charles started out his engineering career working at GameSpot, so he's no stranger to the online gaming community. He is a hopeless Starcraft addict, a fan of good old fashioned RPGs and turn-based strategy games, and plays DDR until he falls over.

• Michael Burkett User Experience Designer
  

  Michael's enthusiasm for games began at an internet cafe where he engaged customers in games of Quake and Half-Life. Realizing he had no future in first person shooters, he embraced the design life and founded a multi-disciplinary 5 person design studio with partner Kirstin Nienhuis in Charleston SC, before both moving out to San Francisco and joining Raptr.

• Walter Punsapy Senior Web Engineer
  

  Wally is one of original engineers for Yahoo! Answers from inception to beta and then its GA launch, growing the global product to 20 million users over 6 months in a dozen languages. He vehemently hankers for more Joss Whedon, Stephen Colbert and world peace. On the weekends, Wally enjoys reading, swimming, hacking the open web and pondering life's complexities.

• Aaron Robinson QA Tester
  

  Aaron is the definitive rhythm gamer at Raptr. When he's not making sure that our users are having fun with the site, he's playing Beatmania IIDX and Guitar Hero/Rock Band. He also enjoys trolling various web forums and offending as many people as possible.

• Patrick Sarmiento Associate Software Engineer
  

  Patrick, a recent Cal graduate, goes by his gaming handle 'Hacky' around the office, reflecting his love of technology and gaming. You might find him slaying monsters in World of Warcraft or capturing intelligence in Team Fortress 2. Or you might find him playing a strategy, action or role-playing game on the computer, console, handheld or tabletop.

• Matt Stipicevich Content Editor
  

  A gamer since the days of 1st Edition D&D. These days he plays games like Lost Odyssey, Crysis and Burnout. Matt grows some of the hottest peppers found on earth, fixes pinball machines, loves movies, BBQing, board/card games and Futurama. Matt has worked at Sega, 3DO, Activision and other small game studios and even has a few pen-and-paper games published. This is his first non-IT job in over 15 years and he's still in shock that he now only has 1 person to babysit, his daughter.

• Marcel Munro QA Manager
  

  A South African native, Marcel gets many strange looks on a daily basis, whether it's from an inappropriate moment, a powerkite story, or sucking at CoD4 after 400+ hours of gameplay. Marcel is also responsible for the Raptr videos floating around the net… for which he apologizes for, profusely.

• Matt Hackett Senior Frontend Engineer
  

  Matt was born and raised in Illinois but always felt like he belonged in California. Apparently Yahoo! agreed when they shipped him out here a few years back. He soon after moved to Raptr, an obvious choice because all he can think about is how much he loves video games and how terrifying sharks are. If you can't find him, check the foos table; he's probably practicing his brush pass.

• Renee Keithley Content Editor
  

  Anything but your typical female, Renee is an avid gamer, computer artist and cage dancer. She got her degree in 3D modeling on Maya and has had various jobs including game testing at Sony, which led to Raptr. Her favorite games are World of Warcraft and Rock Band.

• Lucie Ling Office Manager
  

  Lucie doesn’t own a television nor any video game consoles but is fascinated when topics of conversation that circle the office are around potions, gold, and armies. When she’s not terrorizing her fellow co-workers, she can be found holed up with a book, sleeping, writing a blog, globe trotting, catching some waves, or shreddin’ some gnar. She was born and raised in LA, wiggles when she’s happy, and vows that the best taco truck in the western hemisphere is in Pasadena, CA.

• Kailei Ritcheson QA Tester
  

  As a perpetually accident prone human being, Kailei quickly discovered that pulling apart and breaking things was her special talent. Despite the handicap of having a liberal arts education, Kailei has been systematically breaking software for a living since 2001. Before coming to Raptr she worked at shops like Ingenuus, the Learning Company, and Xfire.

• Lawrence Koh Senior Manager of Marketing
  

  Larry joins Raptr from EA, where he analyzed macro trends in the gaming industry and mastered the fine art of trash talking on Madden. When he's not playing games on Xbox Live, he loves watching Michigan football games, playing basketball, and snowboarding. Larry also worked at Deloitte Consulting and E*TRADE before joining the gaming industry.

• Yao Ko Senior Software Engineer
  

  Yao has never stayed in one country for more than ten years, living in Taiwan, growing up in Argentina (home of the best asado in the world), and earning his CS degree in Canada. One day, Canada suddenly got toocold, so he moved to sunny California. Before joining Raptr, Yao worked as Site Reliability Engineer at Google. At Raptr, Yao is now writing code to help connect gamers around the world.

• Keith Thornhill Senior Software Engineer
  

  Obsessed with video games ever since his parents bought that Atari 5200, Keith is glad to have finally combined that passion with his other one: building software for normal people. Originally from Louisiana, he moved out west for a job at Yahoo! in the Brickhouse innovation group. Now he can be found designing backend systems, beating up coworkers in Street Fighter IV, and reminiscing about when he played Starsiege: Tribes and Tribes 2 competitively. Shazbot!

• Allen Wang Community Manager
  

  Allen has been a gamer since before he could remember. He is currently plays World of Warcraft, Call of Duty 4, and assorted Xbox 360 games, but enjoys any genre and platform. Besides gaming, he likes to stay athletic and keep up with sports. Fun fact: Allen has been classified as “the buff Asian guy” as exemplified by his habit of breaking things due to over exertion of strength.