Philadelphia born and raised…

Well that is where the Fresh Prince and I diverge. Certainly I’ve had my run-ins playing basketball, but I grew up in North Philly instead of West.

For the past 10-or-so years my professional career has been with the video game industry. My first professional job was as the technical reviewer on a book called Linux Game Programming for PrimaTech.

GNU/Linux and free software in general has always been close to my heart. Since 2001 or so I’ve been working on free software projects with icculus.org. One of my favorite games there is Black Shades, a psychic-FPS game.

With LinuxGames I wrote reviews and did the news routine. Then a friend and I spun-off to do a niche site Linux gaming editorial site called TimeDoctor.org. I was hoping it would be the Shacknews to LinuxGames’ more straight-laced Bluesnews, but it never seemed to work out that way. In 2008 Time Doctor.org became a more general blog with reviews and interviews.

With all of this Linux and open-source It was kind of surprising that I followed that up by working with Microsoft on Xbox QA in the Redmond area. However, it turned out be a great fit, and I learned a lot working on platform certification there. So much that I continued in Quality Assurance for a number of years at TV Head/TAG Television (streaming casual games for Cable networks).

While working in QA I couldn’t find much writing on the subject, and so I started Game QA Blog to help new folks get their feet wet. Gamasutra’s Game Career Guide, and PC Zone magazine (republished online here) in the UK, have both interviewed me about Quality Assurance.

Since 2005 my number one hobby has been ioquake3. This is a free software project to continue support for id software’s Quake 3: Arena. I’m very proud of what the ioquake3 community have combined to accomplish. New features, bugfixes, and a community of players and creators who have made their own original games based on the ioquake3 engine.

In 2008 I took my talent for community leadership to Joymax for their hit Free2Play MMO, Silkroad Online and took the opportunity to work on the English localization of the game at their HQ in Seoul, South Korea.

At hi5 Networks in 2009 I started out as a Games Community Moderator, was promoted to Community Organizer in 2010, and worked with some great third party developers as Developer Relations Manager in 2011.

I love to read and take pictures.
The photo you see in the header of this site is one I took.

So far, I have:

• Brought two games to Linux with the help of some friends. They’re called Orbital Eunuchs Sniper and Black Shades
• Worked with Ryan “icculus” Gordon to promote his awesome open-source project hosting site at LinuxWorld 2003 in NYC.
• Created the ioquake3 project.
• Created a niche Linux comedy site called timedoctor.org Then in 2008 I changed it into a modern, wordpress site that’s about nothing. It sometimes features reviews of products.
• Created the Game QA Blog.
• Reviewed games, edited news, and created the podcast for LinuxGames.com.
• Written game reviews for AtomicGamer.com
• Been professionally involved with the game industry since 2001. See my (extremely incomplete) mobygames profile for reference.
• Inadvertently had my likeness immortalized in an Ubuntu GNU/Linux package.

I am not:

• the 12th president of the United States.
• a character from All My Children.
• a talented musician, though another Zachary Slater is.
• a financial advisor.
• the Last Action Hero.

You can contact me by emailing zjs AT zacharyjackslater.com.
On twitter I am TimeDoctor, ditto for tent.is.