Greg Johnson (game designer)

Johnson was born in Passaic, New Jersey to an African-American father and a Jewish mother whose family had escaped Russia during World War II.

Johnson then continued to work for Electronic Arts, at the time a small company with about 30 employees, contributing graphics to titles such as Adventure Construction Set and F/A 18 Interceptor.

In 1989, Johnson was introduced to programmer Mark Voorsanger, and they began working on two games, Starflight 2, and an even quirkier title than Caveman, ToeJam & Earl.

ToeJam borrowed the randomization ideas of Rogue and followed the adventures of two aliens who crashlanded on a zany planet, where they were chased by quirky adversaries such as a "nerd herd" and "killer ice cream truck".

None of their products were ever released, though some got fairly far along in the design process, such as ePlanet's Freeblenux, a game where a virtual alien character could interact with the player through a camera on top of the monitor.

It went back to the original perspective format, added a third character Latisha, and was published as a 3D game on Xbox, receiving generally favorable reviews, though sales did not meet expectations, and Voorsanger and Johnson then parted ways.

Johnson continued as a solo designer, initially as a consultant for multiple game companies, such as working with Will Wright on The Sims 2, giving advice on how to make the characters more believable, and how to link the different sections of Spore into something coherent.

He also wrote a series of white papers for the Leapfrog company, and worked briefly with Jonathan Sari at a startup called Multiversal Entertainment in 2005, trying to design interactive movie-like stories.

Then, based on the design for the earlier unreleased Konami game, Johnson released two Facebook apps in 2012, Deko-Deko Mail and Deko Deko-Quiz, followed by Doki-Doki Universe in 2013, a first-party title with Sony for the PlayStation console.