Robin Hunicke is the Co-Founder & CEO of the independent game studio Funomena, which creates experimental games for Console, PC, VR & AR platforms in the heart of downtown San Francisco. A game designer and producer by training, she has a background in Computer Science, Art and applied Game Studies. She has been designing, making and teaching about games for over 12 years (Journey, Boom Blox, MySims, TheSims2).
Robin is an outspoken evangelist for diversity, and has dedicated the second half of her career to broadening the participation of women and under-represented minorities within the Arts, Entertainment & Technology communities. To that end, she joined UCSC’s Arts Division as Associate Professor as Director of the Art, Games & Playable Media BA in 2014. In 2015 she joined the Digital Arts and New Media MFA program faculty, and founded the Ludo Lab Center for Games, Play & SocialPractice. Along with her colleagues throughout the UC system, Robin works to provide students with opportunities to explore how they can impact society via creative, technological, social & entrepreneurial practices.
In addition to her commercial and educational work, Robin curates the annual Experimental Gameplay Workshop, sits on the PlaySFMOMA, FDG & VRDC advisory boards, and volunteers in support of initiatives such as: the Lexus Design Award, Girls Make Games, Anita Borg Foundation, Google Made with Code, as well as the Higher Education Video Game Alliance and the CS For All initiative.
Ian Horswill is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Northwestern University, where he was the co-founder of Northwestern’s Animate Arts Program. His research interests include interactive entertainment technologies and cognitive modeling for virtual characters, particularly modeling of emotion and personality. He received his PhD in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1993.
“I design and study cybermeditation and teach foundations of serious games and human-centered experience design courses.
James Paul Gee is a member of the National Academy of Education. His book Sociolinguistics and Literacies (1990, Fifth Edition 2015) was one of the founding documents in the formation of the “New Literacy Studies”, an interdisciplinary field devoted to studying language, learning, and literacy in an integrated way in the full range of their cognitive, social, and cultural contexts. His book An Introduction to Discourse Analysis (1999, Fourth Edition 2014) brings together his work on a methodology for studying communication in its cultural settings, an approach that has been widely influential over the last two decades. Professor Gee’s most recent books deal with video games, language, and learning. What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy (2003, Second Edition 2007) argues that good video games are designed to enhance learning through effective learning principles supported by research in the Learning Sciences. Situated Language and Learning (2004) places video games within an overall theory of learning and literacy and shows how they can help us in thinking about the reform of schools. Women as Gamers: The Sims and 21st-Century Learning (2010) and Language and Learning in the Digital Age (2011), both written with Elisabeth Hayes, have continued his earlier work on games and learning. His most recent books are: The Anti-Education Era: Creating Smarter Students through Digital Learning (2013); Unified Discourse Analysis: Language, Reality, Virtual Worlds, and Video Games (2014); Literacy and Education (2014); The Essential James Gee: An Introduction to Discourse Analysis (2015); and Teaching, Learning, Literacy in Our High-Risk High-Tech World: A Framework for Becoming Human (2017). Professor Gee has published widely in journals in linguistics, psychology, the social sciences, and education.
Mary Flanagan is a leading innovator, artist, educator and designer, whose works have included everything from game-inspired art, to commercial games that shift people’s thinking about biases and stereotypes. Known for her theories on playculture, responsible design, and critical play, Flanagan has achieved international acclaim for her novel interdisciplinary work that includes a studio art practice and entrepreneurship alongside humanities scholarship and scientific inquiry. In 2015 Flanagan was awarded the Higher Education Video Games Alliance award for “advancing theory & research” in the field of game studies. In 2016 she was awarded the Vanguard award from Games for Change. Flanagan holds an honorary doctorate in design from the Illinois Institute of Technology and is the Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Professor in Digital Humanities at Dartmouth College.
Clara Fernández-Vara is Associate Arts Professor at the NYU Game Center and a game scholar, designer and writer. Both her research and practice focus on narrative design; her work is grounded in the humanities, informed by her background in literature, film and theatre, which she brings to digital technologies. The second edition of her book, Introduction to Game Analysis, has been published by Routledge.
Mia Consalvo is Professor of Communication Studies and Canada Research Chair in Game Studies and Design at Concordia University. She has most recently published the book Atari to Zelda: Japan’s Videogames in Global Context, about Japan’s influence on the videogame industry and game culture. She is also the co-author of Players and their Pets, co-editor of Sports Videogames and author of Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames.
Ian Bogost is an author and an award-winning game designer. He is Ivan Allen College Distinguished Chair in Media Studies and Professor of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he also holds an appointment in the Scheller College of Business. Bogost is also Founding Partner at Persuasive Games LLC, an independent game studio, and a Contributing Editor at The Atlantic.
Staffan Björk is a full professor at the department of Computer Science and Engineering at Chalmers and Gothenburg University. He conducts research within the areas of gameplay design, pervasive games, and interaction design. A primary result of this work is the gameplay design patterns concept and the book “Patterns in Game Design” co-written with Jussi Holopainen and published by Charles River Media. Together with Petri Lankoski he was editors for the book “Game Research Methods: An Overview”. He has been active in promoting game research as a research discipline, being one of the founders of the Digital Games Research Association. He has taught gameplay design courses for more than a decade and is currently program responsible for two international master educations: Interaction Design & Technologies and Game Design & Technology.
Roger Altizer, Jr. is the co-founder of the Entertainment Arts and Engineering, the Director of Digital Medicine for the Center for Medical Innovation, the founding Director of The GApp lab (Therapeutic Games and Apps) and former director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Art and Technology at the University of Utah. Roger earned his Ph.D. in Communication at Utah and specializes in serious and medical games as well as game design and development. His heart and his research focuses on the importance of play and how good design encourages it. Creator of The Design Box, a participatory/inductive design methodology, Roger strives to include users as designers in his work. A former games journalist, he is an internationally recognized speaker who has presented at industry conferences ranging from the Games Developer Conference to the Penny Arcade Expo, and academic conferences including the Digital Games Research Association and Foundations of Digital Games.