BROOKS BROWN — THE COMPLETE LEDGER

Every project, credit, award, role, system, and impact. Point by point.

Flags: [V] independently verifiable online · [C] corroborated in part (the event/credit is public; the specific role rests on Brown’s account) · [SR] self-reported, fact-checkable via primary documents. Per Brown’s correction: he holds no patents — the HERO audio patents belong to DTS/Xperi, who developed them on the platform the project provided.

I. FOUNDATIONS (1990s)

• Colorado State Champion, Lincoln–Douglas debate; placed roughly 10th at Nationals. Also competed in Congress and Extemporaneous Speaking. [SR]
• Built early debate practice on Rand/Aristotle before a one-time-only Columbine philosophy course (Plato, Kant, the Daodejing, I Ching, Confucianism) rewired his thinking — the seed of everything that came after. [SR]
• Early self-taught web development, mid-1990s onward (Metacrawler-era internet native). [SR]

II. COLUMBINE, AUTHORSHIP & ADVOCACY (1999–2005)

• Survivor of the Columbine High School shooting (April 20, 1999); friend of the shooters; told to leave minutes before the attack. [V/C]
• His family had reported Eric Harris to police repeatedly before the shooting — warnings that were ignored and later became a matter of public record in the accountability fight. [V]
• Publicly and falsely named a possible suspect by the Jefferson County Sheriff on national television; fully cleared. Dan Abrams contacted the family for rebuttal before airing. [V accusation & clearing / SR Abrams detail]
• Co-author, No Easy Answers: The Truth Behind Death at Columbine with Rob Merritt (Lantern Books, 2002; 20th-anniversary edition, 2022) — the insider account that reframed Columbine around bullying and institutional failure. [V]
• Wrote to Michael Moore proposing a Columbine documentary; became a featured subject of Bowling for Columbine (2002; Academy Award, Best Documentary), appearing for roughly 9–12 minutes plus additional footage he filmed himself. [V credit / SR instigation & self-shot footage]
• Reconciliation and joint accountability work with victims’ families after the police cover-up unraveled. [SR]
• National anti-bullying speaking career, including youth-work conferences (e.g., Reclaiming Youth International, 2004). [V]
• Lobbied Congress to close the gun-show loophole — walked the halls with established lobbying groups during the McCain “maverick” era; the effort narrowly failed. [SR]
• Book reviews for NPR. [SR]
• Approached (2026) to participate in a Netflix series and documentary on bullying. [SR]

III. THE WAY IN — EARLY WEB & PRODUCTION (2000s)

• Final Cut Pro certified instructor, Colorado — professional editing credentials that still power his video work today. [SR]
• Drupal developer for What They Play, John Davison’s video-game review site for parents. [SR]
• Befriended Tim Schafer (via publicist Ann Sullivan’s introduction) — the connection that opened the door to Lucas. [SR]

IV. LUCASFILM / LUCAS ONLINE / LUCASARTS (2006–2012)

• Hired into Lucas Online as a coder for StarWars.com; rose over six years to Director of Digital Marketing, Lucasfilm. [V trajectory per industry bios]
• HoloNet News — A Galaxy Divided (StarWars.com podcast series): writer, and voice of a Republic admiral and of Perlon Dias. [V — Wookieepedia]
• Registered the first official Star Wars social-media accounts — Twitter roughly three weeks after the platform launched, then Facebook — alongside Bonnie Burton; nearly fired for it. [SR]
• The Secret of Monkey Island reboot era (LucasArts): digital and social marketing lead for the game that inspired his career; voice of pirates in the Scumm Bar; worked in the same building as his brother, a LucasArts sound designer — the two of them on the very franchise that made them want to make games. [SR]
• “Star Wars Cantina Hero” — the Harmonix April Fools collaboration he built and pitched (approved by the president of LucasArts, killed by PR with the immortal question “Is there ROI on fun?”). The origin of his ROI-on-fun thesis. [SR]
• Lego Star Wars III “Online Beta” (2011) — conceived, pitched, and produced a fully instanced Flash multiplayer game (10–12 players per instance, thousands of interactive items) disguised as a marketing site.
  • Webby Award, Best Online Game, plus multiple marketing honors. [V]
  • Reportedly ~2.8 million players in the first week — a record for Star Wars web/online games at the time. [SR]
  • Built cloud-ready over internal objections; when forced onto internal servers, launch traffic took down the shared infrastructure of Lucasfilm, LucasArts, and Industrial Light & Magic — email, licensing servers, network storage — mid-production on major features. Restored within the day; the campaign went on to sweep its award season. [SR]
• Rescued the LucasArts trophy archive — found the company’s entire award history dumped in a basement box, spent two years restoring and re-casing it, and on his final day personally delivered the Day of the Tentacle, Grim Fandango, and Full Throttle awards to Tim Schafer rather than let Disney landfill them. [SR]
• One of roughly 15 employees pre-briefed on the Disney acquisition; his final day at Lucasfilm was the day of the public announcement. [SR]

V. LIGHTSTORM ENTERTAINMENT — JAMES CAMERON (2012–2016)

• Vice President of Digital / digital franchise development, nearly four years; by his account roughly the 15th or 16th person Cameron ever hired. [V role / SR hire number]
• Avatar franchise digital and game strategy — planning the connected-universe game slate for the expanded five-film plan (projects ultimately shelved when the slate shifted). [SR]
• “Mapped Pandora” with JPL — recruited the lunar-cartography scientists to build a real map of the moon of Pandora for franchise consistency. The signature Cameron lesson: who mapped our Moon? Find them. Call them. [SR]
• Magic Leap due diligence — flown to the Florida facility with producer Jon Landau to evaluate the headset. (Their skepticism aged well.) [SR]
• Crisis operations for Cameron and Landau — from 3 a.m. impersonator takedowns to whatever the day required. [SR]
• Adjacent R&D exposure: virtual-production and early VR experimentation; bioluminescent-plant genetics collaborators pursuing real glowing flora for the franchise. [SR]

VI. STARBREEZE STUDIOS (2016–2018)

• Head of U.S. operations / Global Director of VR / head of content. [V]
• StarVR — led hardware/software content development for the Starbreeze–Acer headset: 210° horizontal field of view (double the Rift/Vive of its day), dual 5.5” Quad HD panels; presented on the Next@Acer stage in New York. [V]
• IMAX VR — ran content strategy for the Starbreeze–IMAX VR-arcade joint venture, from the first Los Angeles center onward. [V]
• Delivered on time and on budget across the slate — the “closer producer.” [SR]
• The Mummy: Prodigium Strike (Universal) — after Universal declined the six-month plan, they returned with eight weeks to release; his team shipped the multiplayer helicopter-assault VR experience on schedule. Installed at 30 Rockefeller Plaza and IMAX VR centers; built alongside the filmmakers, including a famously hands-on Tom Cruise. [V project & timeline / SR role]
• Payday 2 licensing & crossover program:
  • H3H3 pack — Ethan & Hila Klein characters, with 100% of proceeds funding their landmark fair-use lawsuit defense. [V]
  • Nintendo Switch launch character — the hacker girl with red-and-blue Joy-Con gloves. [C]
  • Studio-lot dealmaking across Sony, Universal, and others for film tie-ins (including a Baby Driver pack that didn’t close). [SR]
• Dead by Daylight — U.S. publishing operations during Starbreeze’s ownership, before the rights sold back to Behaviour. [C]
• Psychonauts 2 — helped broker Starbreeze’s $8M publishing investment that closed Double Fine’s funding gap after Fig; thanked in the game’s credits. Repayment, years later, of Tim Schafer’s original kindness. [V deal / SR brokering & credit]
• HERO — co-director/project creator, with iNK Stories (Navid & Vassiliki Khonsari):
  • The answer to his own brief — VR that refuses “carnival emotions” and instead ruins your day: a single participant inside a Syrian courtyard, one-to-one physical set (stucco cracks matching the headset, real barrels, real tire), scent design, floor transducers and hydraulics, debris cannons, as a barrel bomb falls.
  • Sundance New Frontier official selection (2018) — initially shut down by the festival director as too much, reinstated hours later after the previous year’s Syrian-documentary winner called it the most important thing she’d experienced. [V selection / SR the shutdown story]
  • Tribeca Film Festival Storyscapes Award (2018) — the juried immersive prize; Robert De Niro connection to the invitation. [V award / SR De Niro detail]
  • Advanced Imaging Society Lumiere Award, Best Immersive VR Experience (2019). [V]
  • Open-air, large-format VR audio — a 32/37-speaker positional system with 320 immersive channels, no headphones, developed with DTS/Xperi, whose engineers built and patented the resulting audio innovations on the platform HERO provided (Brown holds no patents; the platform was his contribution). [V tech / corrected per Brown]
  • Personally put $23,000 in shipping on a credit card to get the installation to Tribeca when Starbreeze wouldn’t pay; later defrayed. [SR]
  • Its format and technical approach became the standard template for festival location-based VR in the years after. [SR/C]
• The Dubai deal — accepted a project-rescue assignment abroad in exchange for a blank check and full creative control, which became HERO. [SR]
• Called Overkill’s The Walking Dead at a 42 Metacritic before launch, told the CEO at GDC, and resigned on principle. The game landed within a point of his number, was pulled from Steam, and helped collapse the company. [V failure / SR prediction & resignation]
• Conference stages: CES keynote on VR; Digital Entertainment World speaker (2017); SIGGRAPH bio; Voices of VR interviews (the “carnival emotions” and “life tapestry” thesis on record). [V several]

VII. INDEPENDENT YEARS (2018–2021)

• Outsourced — TV pilot (filmed 2019), co-created with Josh Deu (founding member, Arcade Fire): a meta-comedy in which every production element was genuinely commissioned on Fiverr. Cast and collaborators including Chris Kattan, Doug Stanhope, and Cracked.com alumni including Michael Swaim (script punch-up and performance). COVID ended its sale run. [SR / partly corroborated]
• The Doug Stanhope Podcast — multiple appearances, including Ep. 270, recorded at the Comedy Store. [V]
• “Dave” — the fully-committed failed-musician character in Brendan Walsh’s Afternoon Delight live show (Portland): sold to a real audience, encored, signed posters in character for half an hour. Ongoing collaborations and appearances in the Stanhope/Walsh comedy orbit. [SR]
• ViRvii (“Vervy”) — Chief Creative Officer & Partner of the music-VR startup that acquired Rhizome Productions and signed an Oculus content deal (~$1M committed):
  • Invented the “meta object” / vervy system: the ~2,300–4,000 fields of streaming metadata per song used as a procedural seed generating a unique deterministic 3D object per track — and full explorable worlds per song.
  • Reverse-engineered recommendation: average two song-objects’ geometry, derive the seed that shape implies, and surface the track that splits the difference — discovery through form instead of collaborative filtering.
  • Communal listening mechanics — forests grown by aggregate listener activity (inspired by Brenda Romero’s Moss).
  • Presented to Kendrick Lamar’s team (they loved it); Live Nation slated as a major backer. COVID erased the live-music economy and the first Oculus check the week it was due. [V company, acquisition & Oculus deal / SR the rest]
• The meta-object concept itself — a decade-long R&D thread, previously funded by Meta/Oculus, transforming media artifacts into procedurally generated 3D forms via the Gielis superformula; v1 build specification complete and living. [SR]
• “No More” (originally The Eternal Return) — founder of the ticketed perma-death server venture: cryptographic admission tickets destroyed on player death; when the last player dies, the server becomes unreachable forever. Prototyped in Minecraft; transformed play into genuine mutual care.
  • First backer: Ralph Reichert, founder of ESL (the esports league).
  • Raised ~$5M for 8% of the company (implied valuation placing his majority stake north of $50M on paper).
  • Refused to issue a token on principle; when the crypto crash made token-and-exit the only fundable model, he built the tech out and wound the company down rather than run the grift. Four years. [SR]
• Personal bankruptcy (COVID era) — ate the company’s costs personally, cleared the board, and rebuilt from zero in the Pacific Northwest. Now speaks openly about bankruptcy as a legitimate tool. [SR]

VIII. THE QUARANTINE COLLECTIVE & THE PHILOSOPHY WORK (2020–present)

• Founded the Deleuze & Guattari Quarantine Collective on day one of lockdown (March 2020) from a Reddit thread — 300 members in a week, 4,500+ members since: weekly close readings (released as a podcast), French lessons, film nights, a journal. Sole steward after the co-founder’s early exit; first YouTube upload May 10, 2021. [V]
• Anti-Oedipus — complete original retranslation, hosted at antioedip.us, with published vocabulary rationale (flux/flow, desiring-machines, registration/recording) and a computational comparison against the Hurley/Seem/Lane translation; all 341 paragraphs revised through a custom API-assisted alignment and terminology system he built. [V site / SR method]
• Video essay corpus — writer, editor, designer, and voice of a growing library including:
  • The Wishful Mnemonic (Essay 15) — the critique of AI’s anthropomorphic vocabulary via Hjelmslev, Deleuze, and Klossowski, produced in Remotion under his dual-track design system (Track A: vaporwave/Win 3.1; Track B: phosphor CRT/EB Garamond — the identity of this package).
  • Registration Without a Master — the sortition/AI polemic, integrating Nick Land’s “capitalism is AI” thesis, with a structured bibliography spanning accelerationism and sortition literature.
  • The sortition & voter-registration essay built on Rancière’s Disagreement and Manin’s Principles of Representative Government.
  • Pig Farmer — the multi-draft Animal Farm essay (capitalist axiomatic, the 2026 Serkis adaptation, a Klossowskian reading of its distributor’s framing).
  • Essays and long-form critiques on the Stoics and time-language, Žižek (including an open letter), Negarestani’s Cyclonopedia, Jameson’s Postmodernism, a Harari Oxford lecture, the “Professor Cien” transcripts (point-by-point debunking), the DOJ Religious Liberty Commission draft report (fact-check), and Anthropic’s interpretability work read through the Wishful Mnemonic lens.
  • A Lacan video essay co-production in progress — seventeen insertion points drafted, the Purloined Letter seminar as structural spine. [SR corpus / V channel]
• The QC books — transformed 42 video-essay transcripts into four print-ready volumes, with The Wishful Mnemonic as a fifth manuscript, all under the Track B identity. [SR]
• Research & commentary practice — sustained analyses of SpaceX’s Nasdaq-100 inclusion and passive-investor exposure; the compliance economics of digital age-verification law; the political economy of AI data centers and water; Minnesota HF 1606 and X.AI v. Ellison. [SR]
• Streaming systems he designed and built: AION, a self-contained HTML artifact staging nine historical dead-end interface paradigms (rooted in the Chronos/Aion distinction); a Streamer.bot + OBS + YouTube fill-bar system triggering VLC playlists; an OBS Lua channel-surfing transition. [SR]
• Second-brain infrastructure — an always-on personal librarian: FastAPI + Qdrant + Karakeep + Tailscale with a push-based intake API on a home RTX 4090. [SR]

IX. RHIZOME PRODUCTIONS (present)

• Founder, Rhizome Productions — VFX and motion-graphics studio (Camas, WA / Portland metro), serving documentary and feature clients; twenty years of VR/XR production experience behind it. [V company]

X. OPERATION INFLATION (2025–present)

• Co-founder, with Jordy Liebeck — the absurdist protest project distributing giant inflatable costumes at demonstrations: de-escalation by ridicule, explicitly designed to break the “violent mob” frame and lower the temperature at flashpoints. Portland origin, national spread. [V movement & role]
• National press: USA Today, AP, NBC News, CBC, NewsNation, Spectrum. [V]
• Built the movement’s infrastructure himself: a Discord bot for geographic role assignment across 19 city chapters, the Next.js/Vercel website, the theoretical grounding essay (Bakhtin, dilemma-action strategy, Ellul), and a full organizational study of the Tea Party as an insurgent-structure template. [SR]

XI. CIVIC, FAMILY & ONGOING R&D

• Planning commission application — Camas, WA civic service. [SR]
• Homeschools his son Dexter, including a self-built educational workbook generator: a five-tier nested puzzle chain producing 22 printable pages weekly from a markdown dossier. [SR]
• BLOOM — a complete tabletop living-card-game design built with Dexter: PvE competitive radial organism-building, heat/signature mechanics, full production plan. [SR]
• QCOS Live — full specification suite for a streaming platform (parametric avatar with PCA-based rig, sortition-based patronage on a Walzerian framework, ~60 commission edge cases documented). [SR]
• Personal iOS RSVP reading app — shuttle-transport gesture model, hold-to-read interaction, complete SwiftUI build plan. [SR]
• Game design documents in the drawer: Provenance (social-deduction geography, four iterations); Mr. Forgetful (indirect-control design for Godot); The Works / The Walk (dual haunted-house project); Now and Then (sci-fi treatment structured on the Stoic Chronos/Aion distinction via Goldschmidt); and the co-op haunted-house concept developed with Elijah Wood over a very good evening. [SR]
• ARG and immersive-event background across major entertainment franchises. [SR]
• Traveled widely enough to require a State Department passport extension pamphlet — a detail that says the rest. [SR]

Compiled August 2026. Corrections applied per Brown: no patent claims; Operation Inflation co-founder Jordy Liebeck named; one unannounced client project omitted.