Nick Montfort is professor of digital media at MIT and and director of The Trope Tank, a lab/studio dealing with creative computing. He has developed numerous digital projects, including games, atypical demoscene productions, and several print books of computer-generated poetry. His academic books include one on interactive fiction, one that is a 10-author project about a one-line Commodore 64 program, a co-authored book on the Atari VCS, and a book to teach exploratory programming to artists and humanists. He lives in New York and Boston.
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Frans Mäyrä is the Professor of Information Studies and Interactive Media, with specialization in digital culture and game studies in the University of Tampere, Finland. He is the founder and head of University of Tampere Game Research Lab. Frans Mäyrä has studied the relationship of culture and technology from the early nineties and he has specialised in the cultural analysis of technology, particularly on the ambiguous, conflicting and heterogeneous elements in this relationship. He has also served as the founding President of Digital Games Research Association, DiGRA, and published widely on topics that range from games and play to information technologies, science fiction and fantasy. He is recipient of multiple grants and has acted as leader in 45 externally funded games research project and an author of over 160 scientific publications (as of February 2017).’
Michael Mateas is recognized internationally as a leader in AI-based interactive entertainment. He is the founding chair of the new Department of Computational Media at UC Santa Cruz, a department which grew out of Computer Science and combines CS, art and design to invent new forms of interactive experiences. He founded and co-directs the Expressive Intelligence Studio, one of the largest technical game research groups in the world and is also the founding director of the Center for Games and Playable Media at UC Santa Cruz. Credits include ‘Prom Week’, a social simulation-based interactive story and puzzle game, and ‘Façade’, the world’s first AI-based interactive drama. Michael has given numerous keynote addresses and paper presentations at conferences worldwide. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.
Colleen Macklin is a game designer, an Associate Professor in the school of Art, Media and Technology at Parsons The New School for Design and founder and co-director of PETLab (Prototyping Education and Technology Lab), a lab that develops games for experimental learning and social engagement. PETLab projects include disaster preparedness games and sports with the Red Cross, the urban activist game Re:Activism and the physical/fiscal sport Budgetball. PETLab has also published game design curricula for the Boys and Girls Club. She is a member of the game design collective Local No. 12, best known for their social card game, the Metagame. Her work has been shown at Come Out and Play, UCLA Art|Sci Center, The Whitney Museum for American Art and Creative Time.
Henry Lowood is curator for history of science & technology collections and film & media collections at Stanford Libraries. After being trained in the history of science and technology and receiving his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, over a period of more than thirty-five years he has combined interests in history, technological innovation and the history of digital games and simulations to head several long-term projects at Stanford, including How They Got Game: The History and Culture of Interactive Simulations and Videogames in the Stanford Humanities Lab and Stanford Libraries, the Silicon Valley Archives in the Stanford Libraries and the Machinima Archives and Archiving Virtual Worlds collections hosted by the Internet Archive. He led Stanford’s work on game and virtual world preservation in the Preserving Virtual Worlds project funded by the U.S. Library of Congress and the Institute for Museum and Library services and the Game Citation Project also funded by IMLS.
Brenda Laurel has worked in interactive media since 1976—in the computer game industry from Atari to Activision, and in research labs at Atari, Interval Research, and as a Distinguished Engineer at Sun Labs. At the Banff Centre, she co-designed and produced the ground-breaking VR piece, Placeholder. She researched gender and technology at Interval and she co-founded Purple Moon—interactive media for girls—in 1996. She designed and chaired the Graduate Media Design Program at Art Center College of Design (2001-2006) and the Graduate Design Program at California College of the Arts (2006-2012). She also served as an adjunct Professor in the Games and Palayble Media Program at UC Santa Cruz (2013-2015). In 2015 she received the Trailblazer Award from Indiecade. She was awarded the Nextant Prize from the Virtual World Society in 2016. She serves on the boards of the Interaction Design Association, the Virtual World Society, and the Communication Research Institute (Australia). Her books include The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design (1990), Utopian Entrepreneur (2001), Design Research: Methods and Perspectives (2004), and Computers as Theatre, Second Edition (2014). Her recent papers include “What Is Virtual Reality?” (Medium) and “AR and VR: Cultivating the Garden” (MIT Press Journal Presence). She earned her MFA in acting and directing and her PhD in drama theory and criticism from The Ohio State University. Her thesis was the first to propose and examine the dramatic structure of what would come to be known as virtual reality. She currently works as an independent scholar and consultant.
Frank Lantz is the Director of the NYU Game Center. He has taught game design for over 15 years at NYU, SVA, and Parsons and his writings on games, technology and culture have appeared in a variety of publications.
Eric Klopfer is Professor and Director of The Education Arcade and Scheller Teacher Education Program at MIT. Klopfer’s research focuses on the development and use of computer games and simulations for building understanding of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The games that he works on are designed to build understanding of scientific practices and concepts as well as critical knowledge, using both mobile and web-delivered game platforms. In the realm of simulations, Klopfer’s work focuses on students understanding complex systems through, and connecting computer programming with scientific practice, critical thinking, and real-world issues.
Jesper Juul is an influential video game theorist and occasional video game developer. He has been working with video game research since the late 1990’s. He is an Associate Professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts – School of Design and a Visiting Associate Professor at MIT.
Henry Jenkins is the Provost’s Professor of Communication, Journalism, Cinematic Arts and Education at the University of Southern California and the founder and former director of the Comparative Media Studies graduate Program at MIT. He is the author and editor of more than 17 books, including From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, Spreadable Media: Creating Meaning and Value in a Networked Culture, and By Any Media Necessary: The New Youth Activism. He was a founder of the Education Arcade and the GAMBIT Singapore-MIT Games Lab. He blogs twice a week at henryjenkins.org.