page_title: Running with Scissors (company)
section_title: Origins
hierarchical_section_title: Running with Scissors (company) / History / Origins
caption_attribution_description: English: Mike Jaret of Running With Scissors
context_page_description: Running with Scissors is an American video game developer based in Tucson, Arizona. It was founded in 1996 by Vince Desi through a business decision of Riedel Software Productions, a maker of child-friendly games. RWS created and maintains the Postal franchise, which has often caused controversy for its use of violence. RWS' first game was Postal in 1997, which caused much controversy and a trademark lawsuit from the United States Postal Service, which was dismissed in 2003. A potential second game, Flesh and Wire, was canceled in 1999. The company followed up Postal with Postal 2 in 2003. The third game in the series, Postal III, was co-developed by RWS and an internal team of publisher Akella to poor results, and RWS has distanced itself from the game. RWS' most recent game is Postal 4: No Regerts, which is in early access on Steam.
context_section_description: Running with Scissors (RWS) was founded by Vincent James Desiderio Jr., a native of Brooklyn with Italian roots. 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. Eventually, while seeking to hire workers in the computer industry, Desi became involved with and later a consultant for the video game company Atari. He befriended one of his hires, recent Rochester Institute of Technology dropout Mike Jaret 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 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. 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. 
  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, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and Seattle—before they settled on Tucson, Arizona. Desi, Riedel and RSP moved to Tucson in 1991. 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. 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 developed games targeted at adults. 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.
caption: Mike Jaret of Running with Scissors (pictured in 2016)
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