Michael Austin
Founder and Chief Creative Officer
Great games come from many people. Michael coordinates design across the company, enabling Hidden Path’s team of 30+ artists, programmers and designers to create highly personal games that still share a strong common vision. Michael passion is to sweep others into fantasy. He’s been designing games and inventing technology his entire life, and has spent the last 20 years studying every aspect of game development, with a focus on integrating design, engineering, and art. Michael brings a unique perspective to design having done both design and low level engineering architecture for games and game systems.
As part of Xbox’s Advanced Technology Group, Michael worked with dozens of game studios across ten different countries and consulted on numerous top selling games. Michael has worked or been involved with several console titles including Amped: Snowboarding, Prince of Persia, Counterstrike and Spiderman 2. Michael was an instrumental part of the 360 launch team, helping release titles including Call of Duty 2, Need for Speed: Most Wanted, and Project Gotham Racing.
Jeff Pobst
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Jeff has been heavily involved in the gaming industry for twenty years with roles as game programmer, producer, and chief operating officer before co-founding HPE. Jeff was also a group leader at Microsoft for the Xbox and Xbox 360 platforms. Jeff has shipped over 40 different game titles on multiple PC, console, and VR platforms. Prior to working on Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Defense Grid and other HPE franchises, he’s had the privilege of bringing games in the Half-Life, Homeworld and Lord of the Rings franchises to market.
Jeff was Sierra Studio’s first external producer in 1998, granting him atypical involvement in all elements of the publishing business. Jeff joined Microsoft in 2002 to head up a group of developer liaisons working closely with game developers on the Xbox and Xbox 360 platforms to help improve the potential of their titles. At Xbox, Jeff was a primary spokesperson for Microsoft when talking with game developers about Xbox LIVE and Xbox 360 plans. He also was on the third-party portfolio management team for the platform.
Before Jeff entered game development, he earned a doctorate in Aerospace Engineering. At various times, before joining the game industry he was also a film student, a space propulsion researcher, a systems engineer and a project manager.
Jim Garbarini
Founder and Chief Operations and Financial Officer
Jim has been a part of the interactive entertainment industry since 1996 when he was hired as CFO of Virtual World Entertainment Group (VWEG) in Chicago. Like HPE, at VWEG, Jim was responsible for all aspects of finance, legal, risk management, human resources and information technology of this multi-company organization.
Jim was instrumental to the negotiation and consummation of the $30 million cash-for-stock sale of this entity in 1999, which included FASA Interactive. Simultaneously, Jim organized and led the buyout of the location-based entertainment subsidiary of VWEG, Virtual World Entertainment LLC (VWE). Jim was President of VWE from 1999 until its sale in 2005. While at VWE, Jim returned distributions to members of more than forty times their original investment through successful implementation of a harvesting strategy to maximize return from assets purchased.
Jim began his career in Chicago at Arthur Andersen LLP where he spent seven years and specialized in acquisition diligence for financial and strategic buyers in purchase transactions ranging from $5 to $500 million.
The Development Team
Hidden Path Entertainment is an independent video game company established in 2006 to develop and produce interactive entertainment software for current and future generations of PCs, video game consoles and other computing platforms. Our management team includes industry veterans who have over 80 combined years of game development experience. We have contributed to best-in-class titles in multiple genres and on multiple platforms including top game titles at Access Software, Ensemble Studios, FASA Interactive, IBM, Microsoft Game Studios, Sierra Online and Virtual World Entertainment. Members of our management team have also worked as part of the Xbox, Xbox Live and Xbox 360 launch teams. The company currently has 35 experienced game developers (programmers, artists, designers, producers) who average 15 years each of experience in the game industry and over 10 shipped titles per person. This experience in game design, production, technology and art, along with our strong subcontracting partners, allows Hidden Path to manage all aspects of game development from starting concept to final gold master.