Editing Running with Scissors (company) (section)

=== Origins ===
[[File:Vince Desi.jpg|thumb|right|150px|Vince Desi (pictured in 2006) has led Running with Scissors as its [[chief executive officer]] since its founding.<ref name="Tucson Weekly" /><ref name="Retro Gamer 195" />]]
[[File:Mike Jaret (RWS).jpg|thumb|right|150px|Mike Jaret of Running with Scissors (pictured in 2016)]]
Running with Scissors (RWS) was founded by Vincent James Desiderio Jr., a native of [[Brooklyn]] with Italian roots.<ref name="Tucson Weekly" /><ref name="Retro Gamer 195" /> Early in his life, he picked up a high-school teaching career before quitting a semester later and working several different jobs, including taxi driver and manager of a [[recording studio]]. While a recruiter on [[Wall Street]], he adopted the short name "Vince Desi" upon request from his boss.<ref name="Tucson Weekly" /> Eventually, while seeking to hire workers in the computer industry, Desi became involved with and later a consultant for the video game company [[Atari, Inc.|Atari]]. He befriended one of his hires, recent [[Rochester Institute of Technology]] dropout Mike Riedel, with whom he founded Riedel Software Productions (RSP) after Atari faced financial instability. RSP specialized in developing [[edutainment]] games for children and games based on licensed properties on a [[work-for-hire]] basis, with its early games including ''Spy vs. Spy'' (its first game, developed for the magazine ''[[Mad (magazine)|Mad]]'' in 1985), ''Tom & Jerry'', and ''Bobby's World'', as well as other games developed for ''[[Sesame Street]]'', [[Hanna-Barbera]], [[The Walt Disney Company]], [[Warner Bros.]], and the [[World Wrestling Federation]], among others.<ref name="Tucson Weekly" /><ref name="Retro Gamer 195" /> Because Desi had no knowledge of programming and little interest in video games, he handled business affairs for the company, while Riedel was in charge of creative operations.<ref name="Tucson Weekly" />

By the early 1990s, when Desi was 39, several factors led him to wish to relocate; Desi and Riedel discussed several potential cities—including [[Phoenix, Arizona|Phoenix]], [[Santa Fe, New Mexico|Santa Fe]], [[Albuquerque]], and [[Seattle]]—before they settled on [[Tucson, Arizona]].<ref name="Tucson Weekly" /> Desi, Riedel and RSP moved to Tucson in 1991.<ref name="Tucson Weekly" /><ref name="Retro Gamer 195" /> At the time, RSP consisted of the two founders and two further employees, however, one of the employees did not turn up at [[John F. Kennedy International Airport]], where the team was supposed to meet for the relocation, while the other employee quit two weeks following the relocation and moved back to New York. RSP was welcomed to the city by officials and the Greater Tucson Economic Council. The company was among the list of companies (others including [[Hughes Electronics]]) honored for moving to the city in 1992.<ref name="Tucson Weekly" /> In Tucson, RSP continued its prior business of developing child-friendly games and licensed games, though by 1996–1997, Desi and much of RSP's team were bored of developing them, wherefore RSP set up RWS as a separate company to develop games targeted at adults.<ref name="Tucson Weekly" /><ref name="Retro Gamer 195" /> This formation was announced on March 13, 1997.<ref name="RWS: New Game Development Group" /> Initially, RWS was to be run alongside RSP, drawing funding from RSP's sales and acting as RSP's edgier label. Shared between the two companies were three development teams: One, consisting of seven people, developed the first RWS game, one creating an edutainment game based on the film ''[[Free Willy]]'', and another making an edutainment game for an academic publisher.<ref name="Retro Gamer 195" />