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New York, NY – July 16, 2020 – The Higher Education Video Game Alliance (HEVGA) today announced its 2020 Fellows at the Games for Change (G4C) Festival. Six new members were inducted.

Established in 2017, HEVGA’s Fellows Program recognizes senior scholars in the games domain who have made significant contributions to the field in design, theory, or research. HEVGA Fellows are elected by their peers for outstanding contributions to games-based research and design in higher education. Fellows serve as integral ambassadors for the organization and are inducted as lifetime members.

Because fellowship is achieved by election, there is no fellowship application process and nominations may only be submitted and confirmed by current Fellows. Consideration of a candidate begins with their nomination, followed by an extensive and careful vetting process that results in a final ballot of current Fellows.

Typically announced at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), HEVGA elected to announce its Fellows at the Games for Change Festival following GDC’s postponement. We are grateful to Games for Change for the opportunity to announce our new Fellows on the mainstage.

In 2020, HEVGA’s Fellows inducted six new members:

NAOMI CLARK
ASSISTANT ARTS PROFESSOR – NYU
Naomi Clark has been designing, producing and writing games for all sorts of platforms and audiences for over two decades. The roughly three dozen games she’s contributed to include early text-based virtual worlds, downloadable and mobile games for mass audiences, online games for LEGO, educational games on subjects ranging from upcycling to electrical circuits, game development tools for kids, and digital brick-building software. She’s been a game reviewer and pop culture critic for the pioneering feminist site Feministe and has contributed to several critical collections on games (Videogames for Humans, Queer Game Studies) in addition to co-authoring a textbook, A Game Design Vocabulary. Her recent games includes card games like Consentacle, a two-player game of trust, communication and intimacy, and Lacerunner, a unauthorized narrative re-invention of Android: Netrunner.

D. FOX HARRELL
PROFESSOR OF DIGITAL MEDIA AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE – MIT
D. Fox Harrell, Ph.D., is Professor of Digital Media & Artificial Intelligence in the Comparative Media Studies Program and Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT. He is the director of the MIT Center for Advanced Virtuality. His research explores the relationship between imagination and computation. His research involves developing new forms of computational narrative, videogaming, extended reality (VR, AR, etc.), and related digital media forms based in computer science, cognitive science, and digital media arts. He has worked as an interactive television producer and as a game designer. His book Phantasmal Media: An Approach to Imagination, Computation, and Expression was published by the MIT Press (2013).

TANYA KRZYWINSKA
PROFESSOR – FALMOUTH UNIVERSITY
Tanya Krzywinska is chair for Digital Economy at Falmouth University. She taught film and games at Brunel University, Uxbridge for 25 years before moving to Cornwall to set up the Games Academy and games research at Falmouth University. Tanya is the author of many books and papers on games and related media, as well as the Editor of the academic peer-reviewed journal Games and Culture (Sage). She is also an exhibiting artist, working mainly in Oil paint. Over the past four years, she has led a team of researchers to provide immersive experiences for museums in the region, using Augmented, Mixed and Virtual Reality and has recently become a Trustee at Royal Cornwall Museum.

TORILL ELVIRA MORTENSEN
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR – IT UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN
Torill Elvira Mortensen is associate professor at the IT University of Copenhagen. She has a Cand. philol in Mass Communication and Culture, and a Dr. art. on the use of text-based computer games, both from the University of Bergen. She was a co-founder of the journal Game Studies, on the board of the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) 2006-2010, and on the board of Norsk Tipping, the Norwegian lottery authority, 2011-2015. In 2019 she was awarded DiGRA distinguished scholar. Her most recent book is the co-authored work The Paradox of Transgression in Games (2020), and her research is on the use of digital games, the practice of play, and the integration of digital media practices in the everyday life.

JANE PINCKARD
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF THE PRACTICE OF CINEMATIC ARTS – UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
Jane Pinckard is Associate Professor of the Practice of Cinematic Arts in the Interactive Media & Games division of the School of Cinematic Arts at USC. She is a writer, critic, and educator who has studied the culture of video games for twenty years. She has written about games for publications such as Gamepro, EGM, 1UP and Salon, as well as on her games culture blog, GameGirlAdvance. She led the East Coast business development operations for Foundation 9 Entertainment, and served as Vice Chair of the International Game Developers Organization. She is on the editorial board of the Well-Played Journal from ETC Press, Carnegie Mellon University. From 2011 to 2014, she was Associate Director of the Center for Games and Playable Media at UC Santa Cruz. A graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy writing workshop, she writes fiction about robots and palaces under the sea. Her favorite game is Final Fantasy Tactics.

JOSÉ ZAGAL
PROFESSOR, LECTURING – UNIVERSITY OF UTAH
Dr. José P. Zagal is a game designer and scholar. He is also a Professor with the University of Utah’s nationally ranked Entertainment Arts & Engineering program where, among other things, he teaches courses on game design, ethics in videogames, and experimental games. He taught his first university-level class in 2000 and has since supervised multiple award-winning student projects, and many of his former students work at leading game studios worldwide.

José’s research explores the development of frameworks for describing, analyzing, and understanding games from a critical perspective. He is also interested in supporting games literacy and game education. His book on this topic, “Ludoliteracy: Defining, Understanding, and Supporting Games Education” was published in 2010. In 2012 he edited “The Videogame Ethics Reader”, a collection of writings that provide an entry point for thinking, deliberating, and discussing ethical topics surrounding videogames. “Role-Playing Game Studies”, edited in collaboration with Dr. Sebastian Deterding, was published in 2018 and provides an in-depth examination of role-playing games across different media and disciplinary contexts. His most recent book, “Game Design Snacks” (ETC Press, 2019) is an edited collection of nuggets of game design wisdom covering various areas in game design with examples from commercially released videogames.

José received his PhD in computer science from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2008, his M.Sc. in engineering sciences and a B.S. in industrial engineering from Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile in 1999 and 1997.