Alumni Profile: Tucker Bane, Class of 2011

Tucker and his cat, 2019

We’re proud to announce that Tucker Bane (Class of 2011) is launching his first independently produced video game! Together with a friend from college, Tucker co-created Byte Lynx, a sci-fi real-time strategy game about battling for territory by constructing and disrupting power lines and buildings.

“From the time I was around 14, I pretty much knew what I wanted to do. I wasn’t completely sure, but I kept leaning harder and harder towards programming computer games. When I was still at Fairhaven I started taking computer science classes at community college.”

After graduating from Fairhaven School in 2011, Tucker joined two of his Fairhaven friends (Austin and Eric, Class of 2007) and studied Game Design and Devlopment at Digipen Institute of Technology in Redmond, Washington.

“I knew that I wanted to work in video games, but that likely wasn’t going to make a lot of money right away, so I worked for Microsoft for several years and saved up a ton of money so I could afford to make video games independently.”

Starting at Fairhaven School at just 5 years old in 1998, Tucker is what we would call a “lifer”. During Tucker’s time at Fairhaven, he participated in a broad range of activities including playing video games, watching movies and TV shows, playing Dungeons & Dragons, and acting in school plays. One way or another, he spent most of his time at school playing.

Tucker rehearses for a play with Aryeh and Brennan, 2010

“It was really helpful to have grown up around artists at Fairhaven. As a game developer, you have to be able to work with people of all sorts of different disciplines. I need to work with streamers and artists, all these kinds of people with different skillsets and ways of looking at the world. I think my experiences at Fairhaven were really helpful with being able to communicate with all these people in their ‘native language’. What do I know about art? What do I not know? Having a broad knowledge of that way of thought has been very helpful.”

You can purchase Byte Lynx by following the link on the YouTube page below.

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