Rawson Stovall
He later worked as a game designer and producer for Sony, Activision, Electronic Arts, MGM Interactive, and most recently Concrete Software.After Stovall failed to get an Atari for Christmas in 1980, he prepared and packaged nuts from the pecan tree in his backyard and sold them door-to-door the next year, earning enough to buy one.[3][9] He also became the youngest person to receive the Texas Governor's Award for Outstanding Volunteer Service after he raised over $5000 for Abilene's mental health association.[11] Stovall contacted the Reporter-News' editor Dick Tarpley, to whom he presented several sample columns and three letters of recommendation from his teachers and a local video-game repairman.[3] By January 1983, Rawson Stovall's column appeared in five newspapers,[5] including El Paso Times and Young Person Magazine.[7] Stovall was invited to video game publisher Imagic's headquarters in Silicon Valley and went on a promotional nationwide tour with their vice president Dennis Koble.Stovall's column ran in ten papers before Universal Press Syndicate began distributing it in April 1983 at the suggestion of Mercury News' editor.[4] Stovall was given special permission to attend the 1983 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Chicago as a minor, where he interviewed Nolan Bushnell and David Crane.[3][9] That year, Stovall spoke at Bits & Bytes, the first computer trade show for children, and Doubleday published The Vid Kid's Book of Home Video Games, a compilation of his reviews.After college, Stovall moved to Los Angeles, and worked at Sony, Activision, Electronic Arts (EA), and MGM Interactive.