Noah Wardrip-Fruin is a Professor of Computational Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
With Michael Mateas he directs the Expressive Intelligence Studio, a technical and cultural research group that creates experimental games such as Prom Week (2012), The Ice-Bound Concordance (2016), and Bad News (2016).
With Pat Harrigan, he edited a series of books that contributed to the development of game studies — First Person (2004), Second Person (2007), and Third Person (2009). Other books include The New Media Reader (2003), edited with Nick Montfort, and Expressive Processing (2009).
He led the design of three interdisciplinary graduate programs, including the PhD in Computational Media at UC Santa Cruz, which welcomed its first students in Fall 2017.
He holds a B.A. from the Johnston Center for Integrative Studies at the University of Redlands, an M.A. from the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University, an M.F.A. from the Literary Arts program of Brown University, and a Ph.D. in Special Graduate Study, also from Brown.
Annika Waern, Professor 2011, Docent 2007, PhD 1996, Ph. Lic. 1992, MSc 1986. Employed as professor at dept. of Informatics and Media, Uppsala University.
Kurt Squire’s research focuses on the design of game-based learning environments. He is the author or editor of 3 books, over 100 scholarly publications, and directed several award-winning game-based learning projects. Squire’s research has been funded by private and public partners ranging from Microsoft Games to the National Science Foundation. Squire’s students have gone on to create ARIS, Filament Games, and dozens of projects and companies.
Katie Salen Tekinbas is a game designer, co-founder and Chief Designer of Connected Camps, an online learning platform powered by youth Minecraft experts. She is founding Executive Director of Institute of Play, an education nonprofit organization focused on games and learning, and has held tenured faculty positions at Parsons the New School for Design, University of Texas at Austin, and most recently, DePaul University where she taught game design and development. Katie led the team that founded Quest to Learn in 2009, a 6-12th grade public school in New York City. She has published widely and is co-author of Rules of Play, The Game Design Reader, Quest to Learn: Growing a School for Digital Kids, and editor of The Ecology of Games, all from MIT Press. She has worked as a game designer for over 12 years and is a former co-editor of The International Journal of Learning and Media. Katie was an early advocate of the then-hidden world of machinima and continues to be interested in connections between game design, learning, and the transformational power of play.
T.L. Taylor is Professor of Comparative Media Studies at MIT. She is a qualitative sociologist (Brandeis University, 2000) who has focused on internet and game studies for over two decades. Her research explores the interrelations between culture, social practice, and technology in online leisure environments.
Miguel Sicart is an Associate Professor at the IT University of Copenhagen. He is the author of The Ethics of Computer Games, Beyond Choices: The Design of Ethical Gameplay, and Play Matters (The MIT Press, 2009, 2013, 2014). Miguel teaches game and play design, and researches on the philosophy and design of digital playthings.
Adrienne Shaw is an Associate Professor in Temple University’s Department of Media Studies and Production and School of Media and Communication graduate faculty. Her book Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture (University of Minnesota, 2014) won the 2016 Outstanding Book Award from the Popular Communication Division of the International Communication Association. She also co-edited Queer Game Studies (University of Minnesota Press, 2017) with Bonne Ruberg, Queer Technologies (Routledge, 2017) with Katherine Sender, and Interventions: Communication Research and Practice (Peter Lang, 2018) with D. Travers Scott. In addition, she is a founder of the LGBTQ Game Archive (www.lgbtqgamearchive.com).
John Sharp is a designer, art historian, curator and educator with over twenty five years of involvement in the creation and study of art and design. John’s current design work focuses on cultural games, artgames and non-digital games. His current research addresses game aesthetics, the history of play, and the processes of creativity. He is the Associate Professor of Games and Learning at Parsons The New School for Design. Along with Colleen Macklin, John co-directs PETLab (Prototyping, Education and Technology Lab), a research group focused on games and their design as a form of social discourse. John is also a member of the game design collective Local No. 12 along with Colleen Macklin (Associate Professor, Design & Technology, Parsons School of Design at The New School) and Eric Zimmerman (Arts Professor, New York University Game Center), a company focused on finding play in cultural practices.
Interactive virtual environments, games and social media, are emerging as platforms used for entertainment, education, training, crowdsourcing, as well as environments to measure and understand human behavior. Dr. Seif El-Nasr’s work is focused on two goals (a) developing automated tools and techniques for authoring, adapting, and personalizing virtual environments, and (b) developing data science approaches to measure human behavior to evaluate the effectiveness of game environments in making an impact in health and learning. She recently published the first book on the subject of ‘game analytics’, called Game Analytics: Maximizing the Value of Player Data. Her work is internationally known. Notably, she received several best paper awards, including two Best Paper Awards at Foundations of Digital Games 2015. Dr. Seif El-Nasr has chaired and co-chaired several conferences, including Foundations of Digital Games (FDG) 2012 (Chair), International Conference on Entertainment Computing (ICEC) 2011 (Co-Chair), Advances in Computer Entertainment (ACE) 2009 (Program Co-Chair). She is also on several editorial boards, including IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing. She served in several NSF panels. She also served on several SIGs, including as an ACM Representative for TC14 IFIP on Entertainment Computing.
Jesse Schell is the CEO of Schell Games, a team of one hundred people who strive to make the world’s greatest educational and transformational games, including Yale Medical’s PlayForward: Elm City Stories, Water Bears VR, SuperChem VR, the Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood games, and Happy Atoms. Schell Games also creates pure entertainment content, such as the award-winning VR game, I Expect You To Die, and the comedy space game Orion Trail. Jesse also serves as Distinguished Professor of the Practice of Entertainment Technology at Carnegie Mellon University. Jesse has worked on a wide variety of innovative game and simulation projects for both entertainment and education, but he is best known for his award-winning book The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses and his predictions about the future of gaming technology. He is a previous chair of the International Game Developers Association, and former Creative Director of the Disney Virtual Reality Studio.