The career achievements of Arti Haroutunian, Vice-President of Technology at Spark XR, were recognized at the 2021 Game Developers Choice Awards, held on December 4th in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. The awards are organized annually by the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), and voted upon by members of the Utah Chapter.

*Arti Haroutunian - VP Technology, Spark XR, with his Lifetime Achievement Award*

Arti designed and built “Kid Grid”, the patent pending controller utilized by the Spark XR ‘Pod’, which coordinates the sensory effects that contribute to the unique impact of Pod. Arti also programmed much of the AlUla Adventures experience that Spark XR were showcasing at the award ceremony, a collaboration with Manga Productions. Among the other achievements recognized by IGDA Chapter Chair Josh Jones, was that Arti reverse-engineered the NES, SNES and GENESIS and created a stand alone hardware development platform for 3rd-party developers, which was was sold by Sculptured Software and used industry-wide as the dominant development system for those consoles. They were heralded for helping to make it easier for developers to create video games on those platforms, which also included tools to support the dev kits, including custom debugger, compiler and assembler, among others, also written by Arti. Sculptured also used these hardware development platforms and tools internally, which helped them to become one of the top 5 game developers in the world (consistently turning out top 5 games), eventually selling to Acclaim Entertainment in the 1990's. Arti also developed and/or contributed to many games from SSI. At Disney Interactive, Arti contributed to many hit games including the Rampage series, Bolt, and Toy Story. He was also responsible for the innovation and development of the hardware architecture for the toys-to-life segment that drove the Disney Infinity series, becoming a $4 Billion world-wide business encompassing all of Disney's major brands including Marvel and Star Wars properties.

Arti also runs a successful YouTube channel Artifact Electronics, walking others through difficult hardware repairs, including video game related equipment and circuit boards -

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCK5y1jaqmysO9WPszfr3BMQ/featured

Arti Haroutunian Wins Lifetime Achievement Award