He had his first exposure to computers at Rogers Elementary School in 1970, learning Fortran that was input on punch cards.

At first they were text-only teletype games, and then he created a much larger senior product in APL: Koronis Strike: A Simulation of Mining and Combat in the Asteroid Belt, which featured realistic orbital mechanics and ran on the school's first video terminal.

[5][6] He received a Bachelor's Degree from Hampshire College in 1980, and then one week after graduation he began work at the Milton Bradley Company's Advanced Research division.

In 1996, Falstein formed The Inspiracy,[8] a consulting firm specializing in game design and production for clients on five continents, ranging from corporate training (Cisco, Microsoft) to medical education (Hopelab, Health Media Lab, Medical Cyberworlds) to entertainment (LucasArts, Disney, DreamCatcher, Micro Forte).

In 1997 he became the first elected chairperson of the International Game Developers Association, a position he held for one year.

This project continued for several years as they collated lists of rules on their respective websites, and gave followup talks at places such as the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California.

[11] Falstein has spoken at hundreds of venues around the world, from game conferences to universities to the Goddard Spaceflight Center.