GAMBIT - Key Persons
Abe Stein began making goofy noises when he was very young, creating detailed action sequences and death defying car chases on the kitchen floor with his G.I. Joes and Matchbox cars. Having since been enlightened to the capabilities of recording technology, Abe can still be found in front of a microphone trying to replicate the sound of a 1986 IROC-Z engine with his mouth.
Abe graduated from Haverford College with a Bachelor's degree in Religion, and studied audio engineering and sound design at the Center for Digital Imaging Arts of Boston University. A one-time high school English and History teacher, his sound design, music and mix work can be heard on a variety of educational videos, long and short form documentary films, various promotional shorts, and on the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim animated series Assy McGee. Abe comes to the GAMBIT having most recently worked as a sound designer for Blue Fang Games, makers of the Zoo Tycoon franchise. As Audio Director at GAMBIT, Abe is looking forward to exploring new ways to improve the efficacy of sound in games to help create compelling, evocative and meaningful experiences.
His website can be found at www.stein-sound.com.
Adalberto "Nick" Garza writes: "I'm an ex-rancher, now 3rd year CMS undergrad who currently wants to work in educational games. My spare time activities include exploring the internet, video games, plotting out zombie survival scenarios, and cursing at Computer. I occasionally dabble in programming, only to swear after every project 'Never Again'."
Ahmed Wali Aqeel loves tinkering with gadgets. Cameras and handhelds are irresistible in particular. He is an inquisitive learner, passionate about things that are elegant and simplistic. He has an eye for details and ardently studies user behavior and interaction. Emotive objects fascinate him and beware, he clicks his camera randomly. Poor kid still has a thing for LEGOs. He mumbles geekishly about neuromedia, edutainment, robotics, perception, human factors, game design etc. trying to impress you and gets animated when a problem can no longer be solved rationally. Curiosity kills him and doses of lemonade keep him alive. He is graduating from the National University of Singapore with a major in Electrical Engineering, specializing in Interactive & Digital Media. Rest assured, he is an expert at nothing so you will find him on a constant lookout for talented people to join his team at GameVentures.com.
Job Titles:
- Programmer: Rosemary, Dearth
Alec Thomson is a freshman planning to major in Computer Science and Mathematics. He first learned to program long ago by making video games with the good old LOGO writer in Microsoft DOS. For the past two summers, he's been teaching (crazy) kids how to make games at the TIC Computer Camp in Virginia. Alec probably plays too many video games and has a big collection of all shapes and sizes.
Job Titles:
- Instructor, Communications and New Media / Product Owner, Wiip
Alex Mitchell teaches interactive media in the Communications and New Media Programme (Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences) at the National University of Singapore (http://www.fas.nus.edu.sg/cnm). Before joining NUS, he was a lecturer at the School of Design, Nanyang Polytechnic, where he taught and developed projects in interactive media and games. Alex has worked as an interaction designer at IDEO, London, and at Kent Ridge Digital Labs, Singapore. He has an M.Sc. in Computer Science (Human-Computer Interaction) from the University of Toronto. His work has been shown at SIGGRAPH'98, at the Science Museum in London, at Graphite 2004 at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and as part of the Creative Curating Lab at the Singapore Art Show 2005.
Job Titles:
- Coordinator of the International Game Developers Association
- Coordinator, Singapore Chapter of the International Games Developers Association ( IGDA )
Allan Simonsen is Coordinator of The International Game Developers Association (IGDA) is an independent non-profit organisation established by game developers to create a worldwide game development community. The Singapore Chapter was founded in 2002 and works with developers, companies and the Government to promote game development in Singapore. Local game developers can have access to a vast database of information, meet other people with the same interests, to tap on each other's expertise and be part of regular discussions and talks. The Singapore Chapter works with IGDA to connect members in specific geographic areas and help to promote regional game development communities.
Allan has been working in the games industry for 8 years, both in Europe and in Asia. He worked as a technical lead on the first SE Asian MMOG, Fung Wan, and as Technical Director at Singaporean studio ValensCGV, where he worked on Spider-Man 2 for NGage. He is currently serving as co-founder and Technical Director of Boomzap, a casual game developer. Boomzap has been around since 2005, and has released 3 titles, with the most recent, Jewels of Cleopatra, reaching the top-10 in US, Europe and Japan. Allan has extensive lecturing experience, and is currently lecturing part-time at NUS and NYP. He's also involved in different advisory positions, among others the NUS Communication & New Media Advisory Council and Singapore Polytechnic's School of Design Advisory Committee. Allan strongly believes that life is not a zero-sum game.
Andreas Mas'Oen writes: "I am an animator in-training from Temasek Polytechnic. I enjoy watching Japanese animation and reading Japanese comic books. I also enjoy drawing, doing simple animation and playing various video games as my past times. My favorite conversational topic will be about video games. I may be quiet at times, but once you know me you will think otherwise."
Thanks to two wonderfully dedicated game-playing grandmothers, Andrew Grant started playing games before he could hold the cards. From there, he went on to explore board games, strategy games, role-playing games, and computer games. This exploration shows no signs of slowing down.
Andrew graduated from MIT in 1993 with Bachelor's degrees in both Computer Science and Mathematics (6 and 18, darnit) and a minor in Creative Writing. After 6 months in the real world, he discovered that someone would actually pay him to design and program computer games, so he returned to his gamer roots by joining Looking Glass Technologies, and then DreamWorks Interactive. Since then, Andrew has survived 10 years as a programmer-for-hire and independent developer in projects ranging from underwater robotics to yet more games. Now, Andrew is the Technical Director for GAMBIT, applying his rather eclectic skillset to the wide array of technologies used in the lab.
Andrew conducts the communications efforts for CMS (websites, press relations, and project and event publicity) as well as those for MIT's Center for Future Civic Media.
A native of Washington, D.C., he holds degrees in communication from Wake Forest University and in creative writing from Emerson College. His marketing and P.R. skills were honed first at Houghton Mifflin and later at Tufts University. He was also the long-time fiction editor for Identity Theory and is developing a literary aggregation tool at Readsfeed.
Job Titles:
- Artist
- Lead Artist: Snap Escape / Artist: Picopoke
Ang Yi Xin writes: "I am an undergraduate at the School of Art, Design and Media in Nanyang Technological University majoring in Digital Animation. I love to play games on PSP and Xbox but I do not own any of them and I am very bad at gaming too. I know a little bit here and there about art history, 3d animation and myself. GAMBIT will be my first experience with game development and I aspire to design interesting looks for games. I am still exploring different career options but I utimately want to do something related to art and design. During my free time, I like watching movies, swimming, drawing and hanging out with my family and friends. My website is www.pencilandpixel.net."
Ang Yi Xin graduated from Nanyang Technological University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Digital Animation. Her first game development experience at GAMBIT was as an artist for Picopoke in 2008. That sparked her interest in game development and she continued to make games. Her team won the Most Entertaining Game award at NUS Contrast'08 for the game MooPoot. In 2009, she worked on Snap Escape on Facebook and became intensely interested in social media and that explains why she likes to loiter on Facebook. She is also a hardcore casual gamer but occasionally plays some hardcore games casually too. Mixed-media, new media and user experience on an interactive medium intrigues her. Her primary aspiration in the game industry is to create games with interesting mechanics and appealing art styles. During her free time, she enjoys drawing, swimming, traveling, photography and hanging out with her friends and family.
Anna Loparev is a senior studying computer science and mathematics at Wellesley College. She began her video game career in the spring of 2008 as a test lead, but plans to try out her programming skills once she fully develops them. A gamer since the age of nine, she enjoys all genres but has a small place in her heart for puzzle games.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor
- Assistant Professor, Computer Science
Anthony Fang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the National University of Singapore. He received his PhD in Computer Science at Brown University in 2003. His primary research interest is in the synthesis of physically based animation of humanlike characters. His website can be found at http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/ afang.
Benjamin Chee Siew Meng writes: "I believe the hand of the diligent will rule, and that if anyone shall not work, neither shall he eat. It is my principle, because giving life is not an easy job. You see, I sacrifice my life so that the dead shall be revived, that the lifeless may breathe and walk and speak. I set my eyes upon the zenith that is before me, enduring the cold winds and the mighty giants, so that I may stand upon the pinnacle and epitomize life itself. Before that, I will humbly await any corrections and criticisms at http://zhaomeng.deviantart.com And I draw pictures. Then I make them dance. Very fast."
Benjamin Chua writes: "I am an avid gamer, occasional hobbyist writer, and hopeful budding game developer. I love stories and have been engrossed with fantasy and science fiction stories and worlds since I was quite young. I've played many, many RPGs and strategy games and a few less FPSes and hope to one day make a critically acclaimed RPG or space strategy game."
Ben Jones is a current freshman who plans on majoring in Comparative Media Studies. With some previous QA experience at Firaxis, video game production is the only career he can see himself in. This passion for videogames translates into the dream to become the lead designer for a triple A title that is well received. Besides playing far too much DotA in his free time, Ben enjoys black and white photography, film editing, and making people happy.
Jamie Jones is a junior at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, pursuing a major in Comparitive Media Studies. She is currently trying to decide between video game design and video game art as a career path. In her free time she likes reading, throwing things, running, drawing, and pwning n00bs.
Benjamin Tan graduated from Ngee Ann Polytechnic with a diploma in Information Technology. During his free time, he enjoys playing PC game, watching animation and drama.
Broy Lim writes: "Hello! My name is Broy. Nice to meet you. I'm currently pursuing the diploma in Games Design and Development at Singapore Polytechnic. Along with that, I take additional Japanese lessons and completed the Certificate of Theatre Production and Performance under Singapore Polytechnic. I enjoy listening to Japanese pop music and enjoy writing my feelings down in the form of poetry during my free time. I believe that so long as I do things to my own standard and satisfy myself, that's enough. Besides, life's about being happy."
Job Titles:
- Lead Programmer
- Programmer: Showtime, AudiOdyssey
Bruce Chia Bruce Chia is a fourth year undergraduate of Computer Science at the National University of Singapore. He has a strong interest in developing games in all aspects. He specializes in programming but also has a keen eye for colors, a keen ear for music and a keen mind for game design. Working on games allows him to express his creativity in all areas and never fails to be less than an extremely fulfilling experience for him. During his spare time at his university, he ran a Game Developer Interest Group and influenced the student game developing scene by organizing workshops and competitions, including Singapore's very first Contrast Game Design competition. He also achieved the Best Technical game in the 2006 Code-a-thon competition and became the lead programmer for the GAMBIT games AudiOdyssey and CarneyVale: Showtime. He aspires to one day develop games which would inspire the world, just as other great games have inspired his world.
Chang Wei Kang, Thom writes: "I'm an undergraduate at the School of Art, Design and Media (NTU), majoring in Digital Animation. Despite being a casual gamer, I've always been interested in game designing and hope to develop games that thrill the audience. I am glad to have a twin brother who shares the same passion and he is also here with me at the GAMBIT Summer Program. I have a huge passion for conceptualizing and hope to create visual and sensory experiences through my artworks."
Chang Wei Kiang, Jerly writes: "I'm an undergraduate from the School of Art, Design and Media (NTU), specializing in Digital Animation. I enjoy almost every aspect of animation, especially concept art, 3D modeling and character animation. Being new to the gaming industry, GAMBIT will be my first hands-on experience in game development and I am glad to receive this rare opportunity as an artist to design visually stunning games."
Chen Renhao is a graduate from Nanyang Polytechnic in Singapore holding a diploma in Digital Entertainment Technology. He has a great passion for games and thus he took this diploma that equips him with the technical skillset for creating a game. His favorite game genre is Japanese role playing games. Beside games, he also enjoys playing badminton. He hopes that one day he can develop a fun game that everyone can enjoy.
Christopher Weaver received his SM from MIT and was the initial Daltry scholar at Wesleyan University, where he earned dual Masters Degrees in Japanese and Computer Science and a CAS Doctoral Degree in Japanese and Physics. The former Director of Technology Forecasting for ABC and Chief Engineer to the Subcommittee on Communications for the US Congress, he later founded Bethesda Softworks, a leading software entertainment company that is credited with the development of physics-based sports sims and creating the original John Madden Football for Electronic Arts and the well known Elder Scrolls Role Playing series. An adviser to both government and industry, he is a technology columnist for Edge Magazine and holds patents in interactive media and broadband communications dealing with seminal telecommunications engineering.
A former member of the Architecture Machine Group and Fellow of the MIT Communications and Policy Program under Ithiel de Sola Pool, Weaver was previously a Fellow of the Robotics Simulation Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon and currently teaches part time as a Visiting Scholar in the Comparative Media Studies Program and is a Communications Technology Roadmap Member and Visiting Scientist in the Microphotonics Center.
Chong Yunn graduated from NUS School of Computing but he would rather tell people that he graduated from NUS Kent Ridge Hall. Yunn has always wanted to make games ever since young. From pencil and paper and dice to modding and scripting and finally getting his feet wet in the games industry as a full-fledged game programmer. However, he still can't decide whether he loves dancing or games more. Don't ask him to do both (dancing games), because it doesn't work that way.
Job Titles:
- Researcher
- Research Associate at the Singapore - MIT GAMBIT Game Lab
Clara Fernández-Vara is a Research Associate at the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab. Her research concentrates on the development of videogame theory, focusing on adventure games and the design of players' experience with the aid of storytelling. She is particularly interested in cross-media artifacts from the standpoint of textual analysis and performance.
Clara Fernández-Vara is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab. Her work concentrates on adventure games, as well as the integration of stories in simulated environments. She is particularly interested in cross-media artifacts from the standpoint of textual analysis and performance. Clara holds a Ph.D. in Digital Media from the Georgia Institute of Technology. She earned a BA in English Studies by the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (2000), and was awarded a fellowship from the La Caixa Foundation to pursue a Masters in Comparative Media Studies from MIT (2004). Specialties: videogame theory, textual analysis, adventure games, stories in games, spatial design, puzzles, performance, relationships between games and other media, theatre, film, Quality Assurance.
Claxton Everett is pursuing a Bachelors in Comparative Media Studies with a minor in Music. He is also a QA Tester and the Communications Assistant for the MIT-GAMBIT Lab. (Basically, he's in GAMBIT as much as the lights are.) He enjoys gaming, video editing, online social utilities such as Facebook and Twitter (perhaps a bit too much), singing, and learning to play new instruments. His current favorites are clarinet and piano, but then again those are the only two instruments he knows how to play. Claxton is excited to work in GAMBIT and be in the presence of such enthusiastic gamers and game-culturists like himself. He looks forward to all upcoming games in the GAMBIT scope.
For over six years, Clint Hocking has been at Ubisoft, where he has worked as a level designer, game designer, scriptwriter and creative director on the original Splinter Cell, and on Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. Currently he is the creative director on Far Cry 2. Before games Clint worked in the web industry and experimented with independent filmmaking while earning an M.F.A in creative writing from the University of British Columbia.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor of Computer Science at the National University of Singapore
David Hsu is currently an associate professor of computer science at the National University of Singapore and a member of NUS Graduate School for Integrative Sciences & Engineering (NGS). His research spans robotics, computational biology, and geometric computation. Recently he has been working on AI planning techniques for modeling user intention and behavior in interative computer games.
He received his B.Sc. in computer science & mathematics from the University of British Columbia, Canada and his Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University, USA. After leaving Stanford, he worked at Compaq Computer Corp.'s Cambridge Research Laboratory and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. At the National University of Singapore, he held the Sung Kah Kay Assistant Professorship and was a Faculty Fellow of the Singapore-MIT Alliance.
His website can be found at http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/ dyhsu/.
Job Titles:
- Founder and President of Silicon Knights
Denis Dyack is the founder and president of Silicon Knights. In this capacity, he oversees the creation and development of games, and continues to further the growth of the company. Dyack is a noted authority on interactive software development and offers valuable insight into the process of designing next-generation games that appeal to the masses. Under Dyack's direction, Silicon Knights has evolved into one of the top independent interactive software developers in the world.
Desmond Wong is a graduate of Nanyang Polytechnic, majoring in Digital Media Design and specializing in game design and game art and animation. Coming out top in his entire cohort, Desmond is a mentor in leadership position in the Singapore Games Creation Community and has worked on a number of commercial projects, such as an arcade shooter for the Singapore Navy. He is also the lead artist in Wiip and Showtime, games that have been developed by GAMBIT, and showcased at numerous events. He has also won Best Game Concept in a Battle of the Concepts competition held by Nanyang Polytechnic, and numerous other competions as well. Some of which being the Best Overall game in the 2007 Contrast Game making competition, and Best Technical game in the 2007 Code' a thon competition as well. Other than being a game artist, Desmond also has experience in compositing in After Effects and Shake, and High Poly animations in 3D Max as well. His interests are playing video games, digital painting and playing badminton.
Dominic Chai graduated from Computer Engineering at Nanyang Technological University. He has been eager to explore the 'wonders' of the Game Industry. Equipped with 4 years of Game Development experience and a strong passion for games, he has hoped to see his retirement in this industry some day. Dominic participated in the GAMBIT summer internship 2007 as a Scrum-Master to develop a game for two months. Upon his return, he continued his journey and began to work as a Production Assistant at Mikoishi Pte Ltd, a Singapore games development studio. He is currently an Assistant Producer at the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab (Singapore lab), and hopes to learn and work with the professionals and talents the industry has to offer.
Job Titles:
- Producer: Pierre: Insanity Inspired
Don Baey is a third and final-year student from Singapore Management University (SMU), finishing his Bachelor of Science with a double major in Information Systems Management and Advanced Business Technology at the end of 2009. A tech-fanatic, a problem-solver, a musician, a devoted church sound crew, an animal lover and a passionate gamer, Don is inspired by culture-transforming agents such as video games and is fascinated by the design, technology and music of games. He finally has his game development dreams fulfilled in GAMBIT and is looking forward to further his skills, play the latest games and hopefully join the game industry after graduation. His website can be found at http://don.
Doris C. Rusch holds a postdoctoral position with the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab in the Programme at Comparative Media Studies at MIT. Before that she did postdoctoral work at the Institute for Design and Assessment of Technology at Vienna University of Technology. In her habilitation project titled "Once More with Meaning", Rusch investigates the medium specific characteristics of digital games and their potential to produce a wide range of emotionally satisfying and deeply meaningful experiences. Although her work is theory-driven, she aims at applicability of her research to actual game design with the goal of pushing the boundaries of games as media. Rusch has an eclectic background having completed studies in German Literature, Philosophy, English and Comparative Literature at the University of Vienna, where she also received her Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics. Her work in computer game studies is part of a larger interest in "narrative worlds" that expands over books, comics, and films.
Elliot Maximillian Pinkus earned a BA in Information Science from Cornell University where he focused on game design and development. He was a member of Cornell's first Experimental Game Play Project. During two summers as an undergraduate, he worked as a game designer at MIT's Education Arcade contributing puzzles to Lure of the Labyrinth. As a research assistant with GAMBIT, he has worked on a variety of projects including Moki Combat v2.0 and a live-action pervasive game for the Penny Arcade Expo. His thesis is taking shape, examining how video games create physical/sensual immersion through both diegetic and non-diegetic feedback. Ask him about his design work at Silicon Knights this past summer because he enjoys being able to say that he is sworn to secrecy.
Job Titles:
- Director of the MIT Teacher Education Program / Scheller Career
- Product Owner: Backflow, Waker, Woosh
Eric Klopfer is the Director of the MIT Teacher Education Program and the Scheller Career Development Professor of Science Education and Educational Technology at MIT. Klopfer's research focuses on the development and use of computer games and simulations for building understanding of science and complex systems. His research explores simulations and games on desktop computers as well as handhelds. He currently runs the StarLogo, http://education.mit.edu/starlogo, project, a desktop platform that enables students and teachers to create computer simulations of complex systems. He is also the creator of StarLogo TNG, a new platform for helping kids create 3D simulations and games using a graphical programming language. On handhelds, Klopfer's work includes Participatory Simulations, http://education.mit.edu/pda, which embed users inside of complex systems, and Augmented Reality simulations, http://education.mit.edu/ar, which create a hybrid virtual/real space for exploring intricate scenarios in real time. He is the co-director of The Education Arcade, which is advancing the development and use of games in K-12 education.
Eunice Khoo writes: "Hi, I graduated from Lasalle College of the Arts in 2009 doing a bachelor degree in Animation Arts. I love to doodle a lot and watch sitcoms during spare time, and I am also very passionate about the arts. I aspire to live by this quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson: 'Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true.'"
Fabiola Garza has spent the last four years studying illustration at Rhode Island School of Design, where one hopes she has learned a thing or two about art. She is fascinated by visual storytelling and hopes to find a home where she can tell stories too. Fabiola spent her childhood living in Mexico, Colombia, Turkey, and the United States, but has no intention of settling down yet. She plans to go to Ireland so she can meet the fairies and learn to fake the accent. She thinks it is important to have adventures often, and to never skip breakfast. Other than sitting down and doodling for love (and, hopefully, money) she enjoys good company, books and the many blessings God has given her. Her website can be found at www.fabiolagarza.com.
Faizah Bte Lokman is an aspiring designer taking her final year studying Communications and New Media at the National University of Singapore. During her free time, she loves playing mindless online casual games and is reluctant on MMOs but when forced would spend hours poring over help guides just to not make a fool of herself. She yearns for a riveting game without having to wade through lines of tutorial junk. Apart from all that, she enjoys long walks, doodling, taking photographs and going museum hopping.
Foo Chek Yang lectures game development at Temasek Polytechnic in Singapore, has a M. Business in IT and earned his Ph.D in Information Systems by research into player behavior in large virtual worlds. He once spent upwards of more than a hundred hours a week in MMORPGs ("all in the name of research", as he claims), ran raiding guilds, and is a 'socializer' according to Richard Bartle's player types. His professional interest areas include virtual world player behavior, online game design, software engineering, and game-based learning. In his free time, he is also an amateur photographer, a wannabe pianist and composer, and a terrible cook.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Associate Professor, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Frédo Durand is an associate professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He received his PhD from Grenoble University (France) in 1999. He worked with Claude Puech and George Drettakis on both theoretical and practical aspects of 3D visibility. From 1999 till 2002, he was a post-doctoral researcher in the MIT Computer Graphics Group with Julie Dorsey, where he is now an associate professor.
His research interests span most aspects of picture generation and creation. This includes realistic graphics, real-time rendering, non-photorealistic rendering, as well as computational photography. His recent emphasis is on the use of tools from signal processing and inspiration from perceptual sciences. He received an inaugural Eurographics Young Researcher Award in 2004, an NSF CAREER award in 2005, an inaugural Microsoft Research New Faculty Fellowship in 2005 and a Sloan fellowship in 2006. His website can be found at http://people.csail.mit.edu/fredo/.
Gareth Tan Zi-Gui is a final year student at Republic Polytechnic, majoring in New Media and specializing in Media and Entertainment. He has been passionate about media and the arts since an early age. From comics and design to film and games, he enjoys immersing himself in creative and imaginative works, especially those that contribute to the art of visual storytelling. Gareth believes that through games, the art of visual storytelling can be brought to the next level, where everything is interactive and the audience can become part of the stories themselves. With his background in film and theatre, Gareth hopes to be part of the community that will bring stories alive through games, creating experiences that go beyond the written word. When he's not at work, Gareth can easily be found with his eyes glued to the pages of a wicked graphic novel or with his hands at a game controller, blowing things up and doing what he loves best.
Generoso Fierro is the Outreach Coordinator for GAMBIT, where he creates video the content for our website, assists with the summer program and produces GAMBIT events. Currently, Generoso is at WMBR, where he is the longtime DJ of a program "Generoso's Bovine Ska and Rocksteady." The show concentrates on the music of Jamaica prior to reggae (mento, ska and rocksteady) and has been on the air since 1997. A film maker and avid film fan, "Gene" has directed and produced two feature documentaries, "Lynn Taitt: Rocksteady" about the Trinidadian born guitarist who invented the rocksteady rhythm and "Derrick Morgan: I Am The Ruler", featuring the titled legendary "King of Ska" from Jamaica.
Genevieve Conley is a fourth year student in the Brain and Cognitive Science program at MIT. She began her 'work' at GAMBIT in prototype design and subsequently moved on to help produce a live-action game for GAMBIT's debut at PAX East, 2010. This opportunity has left her thoroughly terrified of large groups of people. Conley is particularly interested in designing games for academic and corporate educational applications. When not in lab, she can be found playing, watching, or writing about videogames and, occasionally, doing classwork.
Job Titles:
- Communications Director for the Singapore - MIT GAMBIT Game Lab and the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT
Geoffrey Long is the Communications Director for the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab and the Comparative Media Studies program at MIT. He is also a writer, designer, musician, artist, filmmaker, and shameless media addict. His professional career includes a decade-long run as the editor-in-chief of the literature, culture and technology magazine Inkblots and co-founding the software collective Untyped, the film troupe Tohubohu Productions, and the creative consulting company Dreamsbay.
Geoffrey earned his BA in English and Philosophy with concentrations in Creative Writing and IPHS from Kenyon College in 2000 and his Masters in Comparative Media Studies from MIT in 2007. He is a frequent lecturer on narratives in different media, including transmedia storytelling, at conferences including the Game Developers' Conference, SIGGRAPH/Sandbox, SCMS, and FuturePlay, and his own storytelling has appeared in Polaris, Gothik, Hika, {fray} and the iTunes store. His personal website/portfolio can be found at www.geoffreylong.com.
Gerald is responsible for strategy, product strategy, business development and outreach at GAMBIT. With a passion for examining how people seek, evaluate and value experiences and an academic background in marketing and corporate finance, Gerald has grown two bootstrapped companies into strong cash generators; A Singapore studio focused on developing and operating the PC and Wii online fighting game Toribash, and an Australian studio focused on work-for-hire mobile development with top tier publishers such as THQ Wireless.
In between the fun times of start-up life, Gerald also established funding programs, funded game companies and worked with game publishers and VCs to grow the games industry ecosystem through his role with the Singapore Government.
Gerald loves retro-games where they kept mechanics simple but still managed to be ridiculously challenging. And he has never saved the princess in Super Mario Bros despite the incessant usage of warp zones.
Job Titles:
- Lecturer, Computer Science / Product Owner: Shadow Shoppe
- Product Owner: Shadow Shoppe
Golam Ashraf's background is in analytical techniques in computer animation and graphical models. In his Ph.D. thesis on semantic correspondence-based motion editing for humanoids, he proposed intuitive kinematics techniques for motion analysis, correspondence and interpolation. He has worked for 2 1/2 years on movie production tools and pipelines for fur and character animation. Over the last 4 years in NUS, he has produced real time models for fur, amorphous phenomena, fluid simulation, crowd AI and rendering, and layered anatomical models. He teaches game development and interactive media, covering practical methods, algorithms and content pipelines. His students explore next generation techniques in interaction, real time rendering, and artificial intelligence, and pedagogical themes focused on children. His course output has been showcased at various public venues like Singapore Science Center and Microsoft Singapore. Outside academia, he has considerable stage theater experience in acting, direction and technical production. His current research is geared towards engaging edutainment applications with interactive character creation/manipulation tools for toddlers, children and young adults. His website can be found at http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/ ashraf/.
This is Guo Yuan, a graduate from Republic Polytechnic's Diploma in New Media. She enjoys dabbling with not only music composition, synthesis and production, but also doodling and animation. She wishes Singapore sells Dr Pepper off the shelves. Her other main interests are cats, video games and electronic dance music. And she loves her fat cat, friends, and family. Visit her site at http://www.gynation.net.
Job Titles:
- Acting Director of Strategic Planning and Deputy Director of Capability Development at the Media Development Authority of Singapore
- Acting Director, Strategic Planning Group, ( MDA )
Heng Li Lang is Acting Director of Strategic Planning and Deputy Director of Capability Development at the Media Development Authority of Singapore, which aims to make Singapore a global media city by creating a vibrant environment for the media industry to flourish. As the Acting Director of Strategic Planning, Ms. Heng is responsible for the strategic thinking and the implementation of Media 21, an industry blueprint which articulated the shared vision of the industry and government for Singapore to become a Global Media City. As the Deputy Director of Capability Development, Ms Heng is responsible for the promotion and development of the media industry which includes TV and radio broadcast, Film, Publishing, Music, Digital Media and Media Services. She oversees the capability development team that plans and implements various programmes to encourage manpower and enterprise development, and media financing activities. In 2006, Ms Heng was instrumental in attracting media funds to set up in Singapore, and drawing private equity and financial institutions (including local and overseas banks) to provide financing for media projects. Ms Heng spent 11 years with the MDA in various assignments including Head of Research. In 2006, she was awarded the National Day Award (Commendation Medal) in recognizing her contributions made to the civil service in Singapore.
Henji Tan began his career as a game artist working on mobile games in Mikoishi after graduating with a Diploma in Digital Media Design (Games Specialization). His passion for designing games soon led him to transit to a Games Designer role and contributed to the award winning "Steam Iron: The Fallen" RTS mobile game (IGF mobile 2008 "Technical Achievement Award" and finalist for "best game"). He has since moved on to expand his skillset working on PC online and consoles in companies such as Ubisoft. Now with more than 6 years of experience in the games industry, he seeks to enter the realm of the casual and social games where he believes gaming has found new life and potential to deliver meaningful fun to the lives of a wide range of audiences, including non-gamers!
Job Titles:
- Co - Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program
- Lead Principal Investigator / Co - Director, MIT Comparative Media Studies
- Lead Principal Investigator / Provost 's Professor of Communications, Journalism, and Cinematic Art, USC
- Provost 's Professor of Communications
Henry Jenkins III is the Co-Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program and the Peter de Florez Professor of Humanities. He is the author and/or editor of twelve books on various aspects of media and popular culture, including Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide; Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture; The Wow Climax: Tracing the Emotional Impact of Popular Culture; Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture; Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture and From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games. Jenkins writes regularly about media and cultural change at his blog, henryjenkins.org.
He is one of the principal investigators for The Education Arcade, a consortium of educators and business leaders working to promote the educational use of computer and video games; The Convergence Culture Consortium (C3), a partnership between thinkers, researchers and companies with a keen interest in deciphering convergence culture and the implications it can have for their business; and the Knight Center for Future Civic Media, a joint effort with the MIT Media Lab to use new media to enhance how people live in local communities. He is also one of the principal investigators for GAMBIT, a lab focused on promoting experimentation through game design, and for Project NML, a MacArthur Foundation funded project that develops curricular materials focused on promoting the social skills and cultural competencies needed to become a full participant in the new media era.
Jenkins has a MA in Communication Studies from the University of Iowa and a PhD in Communication Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Henry Jenkins III is the Provost's Professor of Communications, Journalism, and Cinematic Art at the University of Southern California. He is the author and/or editor of twelve books on various aspects of media and popular culture, including Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide; Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture; The Wow Climax: Tracing the Emotional Impact of Popular Culture; Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture; Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture and From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games. Jenkins writes regularly about media and cultural change at his blog, henryjenkins.org.
Jenkins has a MA in Communication Studies from the University of Iowa and a PhD in Communication Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Ho Choon Sing writes: "My name is Choon Sing, currently a fourth year undergraduate from Nanyang Technological University, School of Computer Engineering. I possess interest in gaming and various 3D modeling and animation techniques. I enjoy playing computer games, watching anime and reading comic books during my spare time."
Jia Ling was a QA Tester at Electronic Arts (SG) after graduating with a Diploma in Digital Media Design, where she specialized in Games Design. After honing her skills in Burnout Revenge, SSX 3 and NBA, she moved on to be a Production Assistant in the online games division, where she learnt the ropes of game production.
Before joining GAMBIT, she served in a local games studio as a Games Designer for a multiplayer online game, and also as an Assistant Producer for a Game Content Management Tool. She joined GAMBIT as a Games Designer and worked on Showtime (PC and Mobile), before moving on to be an Associate Producer.
When she is not killing brain cells @ work, her mind wanders through food and drinks' recipe, countries she wants to visit, photography, basketball, and ways to inject fun into everyday life.
Ian Lane Davis, former Technical Director at Activision's Santa Monica studio, is widely acknowledged as one of the top artificial intelligence experts in games. His direct game credits include Dungeon Siege: Legends of Aranna (2003), Microsoft Game Studios; Empire Earth: The Art of Conquest (2002), Sierra Entertainment; Jane's Attack Squadron (2002), Xicat Interactive; and for Activision Publishing, Inc., Star Trek: Armada II (2001), Call to Power II (2000), Star Trek: Armada (2000), Civilization: Call to Power (1999), Battlezone (1998), Dark Reign: Rise of the Shadowhand (1998), and Dark Reign: The Future of War (1997).
The Mad Doctor's reputation has allowed him to attract the best and brightest in all disciplines, and the company's games have developed a reputation for incorporating the highest quality design, art and programming. He deliberately keeps his studio small to maintain an emphasis on quality, and so he can stay personally involved with each game produced at the company. Dr. Davis is active in the gaming community and serves as a Peer Panel Leader for the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Peer Panel for Gameplay Engineering. Davis is a highly sought speaker who presents in academic and game focused venues and has been interviewed for online, print and television media.
Ian has an incredibly diverse background of experience that he likes to draw on and channel towards any project he is set to complete. Aside from working as a UROP student with GAMBIT, he has taken classes with both Doris and Philip. Any time he can get a spare moment or two, he loves playing games old and new, from a recent run of Diablo II (hey, it's old to me, alright!) up to Modern Warfare. He will also be graduating in the Spring with a Bachelor's Degree in Physics (VIII). His undergraduate thesis is in the field of particle physics, working with a collaboration to build a Dark Matter detector.
Ian is also an avid photographer, primarily focusing on the outdoors, where the rest of his varied experience comes in. He took a year and a half off from school to be a climbing guide for Alpine Ascents International, and spent a season working for Winter Park's Professional Ski Patrol in Colorado, where he developed his leadership skills and ability to work under pressure. He is a student of Hung Gar Kung Fu, and captain of the Alpine Ski Team at MIT (web.mit.edu/skiing/www). So whether you want to climb a frozen waterfall, have a crushing sensation of pain in your chest, or want to discuss how the history of Ancient Greece applies to his current project or the world in general, Ian is the man to talk to.
Job Titles:
- Programmer: Moki Combat, Moki Combat ( V2.0 )
Igor Kopylov is a senior at MIT, majoring in Computer Science. He loves to program and finds that people like his programs a whole lot better when they're games. In fact, he's quite fond of gaming himself. He's always excited to see the newest titles and spends a good time wondering how they do all those cool effects. He hopes his time at GAMBIT will give him insight into what makes those effects so cool. When he's not in front of a computer, Igor is a member of MIT's varsity fencing team.
Job Titles:
- Co - Chair, GAMBIT Steering Committee / Dean of School of Arts, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University
Isaac Kerlow is a computer animation pioneer and the author of the third edition of The Art of 3D Computer Animation and Effects published by Wiley. Between 1997 and 2004 Isaac was Director of Digital Production at The Walt Disney Company, where he lead multiple initiatives related to producing entertainment with new media, including 3D computer animation and 24P High Definition digital cinematography. In this role Isaac participated in creative and production decisions that impacted dozens of live action and animated projects company-wide. Prior to that Isaac led for two years the group of digital artists and animators at Disney Interactive, where he oversaw creative and production aspects of over 20 computer games.
Before joining Disney in 1995 Isaac spent a decade at Pratt Institute in New York where he was a tenured professor and the founding chairman of the Department of Computer Graphics and Interactive Media. Isaac has presented workshops at many creative, production and research institutions throughout the world, and has participated in multiple international festivals including the International Electronic Film Festival in Japan, the New York Art Director's Club, the 3D Festival and FMX in Europe, Res Fest, and the Webby Awards. He is also a longtime active member of SIGGRAPH and the Visual Effects Society, and the technology committee of the American Society of Cinematographers.
In addition to being ADM's Dean, Isaac is currently directing a computer-animated feature movie in Europe, where he resides for half of the year.
Jacquelin Frank is an undergraduate at the Rhode Island School of Design and will graduate this spring of 2010 with a BFA in Illustration. She will go on to hopefully do concept art as a career, cover illustrations, or children's book illustrations. Her art is creating single illustrations based on creatures, animals, and fantasy environments. Her passions include music, soccer, paintball, collecting Beast-wars transformers and stuffed animals.
Jasmine Phong is a graduate from Republic Polytechnic with Diploma in New Media. She specializes in art and design. After graduating she became an artist. She produces artwork and animation for games. From there, her interest in making artwork for game grew. She then joined Gambit, which gave her a great learning experience about the games industry.
Her experience includes making artwork for mobile games, flash games, iphone games, animated flash stories, posters and many more. In her free time, she likes to watch animation and play games. She hopes that one day she will be able to draw characters that will be memorable to everyone.
Jason Beene is GAMBIT's Art Director, helping our team breathe life into the zeros and ones. Previously, Jason served as Studio Art Director of an internal THQ development group. During those 7 years, Jason was instrumental in the production of numerous Nintendo handheld titles and had the opportunity to work with the likes of Pixar and Nickelodeon. His time at THQ was proudly spent doing everything from pixel pushing to managing/mentoring a talented art staff. Additionally, as an alumni of the Rhode Island School of Design illustration department, Jason aims to offer both industry insight and his own creative talents to help further the efforts of GAMBIT. His artblog can be found at http://jasonbeene.blogspot.com.
Job Titles:
- Product Owner: TenXion, Improviso
Jeff Orkin is a PhD candidate in the Cognitive Machines Group at the MIT Media Lab. Previously, Jeff spent nine years developing A.I. systems in the game industry. At Monolith Productions, Jeff developed A.I. systems for the award winning titles F.E.A.R. and No One Lives Forever 2. More information available at http://jorkin.com.
Jeffrey Gan writes: "I am a game programmer from Nanyang Polytechnic who is interested in various graphical aspects in the creation of games. I am highly interested in the game industry and hope to garner more experience from this event. I can be rather careless at times so I ask for your patience, as well as being sometimes blunt. I look forward to working with you all. My favourite games are Team Fortress 2 and World of Warcraft, as well as the Final Fantasy series."
Jennifer Fu is a current MIT freshman majoring in Management and Comparative Media Studies. Her interests lie a bit more heavily in anime and manga than in video games, but it's all good; she loves being active of this kind of intense and energetic creative experience. In her spare time, she enjoys reading/writing/drawing manga, karaoke, and daydreaming - about everything.
Jennifer Swann is an MIT undergraduate in Computer Science, slated to graduate in 2011. She is currently enrolled in a rigorous course of programming classes, a gauntlet formed of two parts Python and one part Java. In her free time, which is shrinking daily, she enjoys Salsa, and Casino Rueda. Jennifer has tried out for the MIT Bhangra team twice now, and will probably never be asked to join. She practiced Shotokan Karate for 8 years and hopes to pick it up again once out of school. Her ultimate career goal is game programmer; however, she doesn't mind the odd detour into other fields on the road to her life's calling. Having aspired to be a programmer since middle school, she is somewhat disappointed that programmers are disappearing, replaced by the more nebulous "Software Engineers."
Jeremy Rossmann is a freshman at MIT, currently wondering which combination of 'Major in', 'Minor in', 'Chinese', 'Computer Science', and 'Comparative Media Studies' will end up on his degree. He is loving his time in the prototyping group, taking a closer look at what makes games fun and innovative. He's passionate about film and video games. When he's playing/watching one, he can't help but analyze the use of this technique, the pacing of that scene, the emotional impact of the soundtrack, etc... He's also into learning lots of languages, in part because it widens the pool of video game companies he could apply for a job at. His dream du jour is to work for Bioware, because he feels that Bioware makes videogames that are the most like interactive novels and films. And because Baldur's Gate 2 is the best game of all time. He could go on for hours about games, film, and the like. Don't even get him started.
Jesper Juul is a video game researcher at GAMBIT. He has worked with video game theory since the field's early days in the late 1990s. Though originally trained in literature, he tries to consider video games in a broader perspective, also spanning psychology, computer science, and player studies. He is currently examining the emergence of casual games: video games that reach outside the traditional video game audience.
Prior to his appointment at GAMBIT, Jesper was an assistant professor at the Centre for Computer Game Research Copenhagen where he also earned his Ph.D. While Jesper works with and thoroughly appreciates pure theory, he is also interested in the intersection of video game theory and development practice. He has worked as a designer and programmer of multiplayer web-based games and, more recently, casual games.
Jesper's book on video game theory Half-Real was published by MIT Press in 2005. His blog on video game theory, The Ludologist, can be found at http://www.jesperjuul.net/ludologist and a collection of his writings can be found at http://www.jesperjuul.net/text.
Joel Zhang is a 3rd year undergraduate from NUS who enjoys playing most genres of games, but leans towards strategy and RPGs, especially those that do not require massive amounts of twitch skills. He also enjoys programming and hopes to be able to make a career in the game development industry when he graduates.
Jon Georgievski is a dedicated musician, audio engineer and sound designer. He's been a serious gamer since his father brought home a NES some 15 years ago. Jon's favorite games are known for their excellent music (Final Fantasy, Metal Gear, Zelda, etc.). His other hobbies include fixing electronics, understanding concepts of theoretical astrophysics, and ice hockey. Jon is planning on pursuing a career in interactive sound design and hopes to own his own home studio.
Job Titles:
- Designer / Programmer: Sc - Rum'Pet
Joshua Campoverde is an undergraduate in the joint study of Computer Science and Comparative Media Studies at MIT. His personal interests lie in how software design affects how people interact with technology, specifically internet enabled technologies. Memorable acheivements in his gaming life include beating Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game for NES without a Game Genie, beating Mario Tennis for N64 with every character in both singles and doubles, and beating Bark at the Moon on expert in the original Guitar Hero. He can currently be found playing the most recent installment of the FIFA Soccer franchise or harassing people to play Rock Band with him. Chronicles of his adventures are maintained at www.joshcampoverde.com.
Joshua Diaz went from a BA in Liberal Arts from St. John's College (2004) to working within the computer games industry. His game industry experiences include working in QA at Electronic Arts' Los Angeles Studio, serving as systems designer for the PlayStation 2 title The Sopranos: Road to Respect and working as a game designer for DS platform games at Seven Studios. Diaz reports that "the rigorous and interdisciplinary approach [he was taught in the St. John's 'Great Books' program] would later be of great benefit, as I found game design almost always involves negotiating between aesthetic and technological requirements and in translating principles from one field into others." His academic interests focus on exploring the relationship between video games and cognition, in studying the relations between amateur and professional practitioners, and in developing new ways to talk, think and teach learning.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor
- Associate Professor, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Jovan Popović is an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a member of the Computer Graphics Group in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. His goal is to enrich human communication with intuitive computer design tools that could help teachers to develop compelling examples of hard-to-describe concepts, storytellers to animate their tales, and artists to discover new forms of expression. This research employs computer science, mathematics and physics to explore the applications of geometric modeling (the design of shapes) and computer animation (the design of motion) to the fields of computer graphics, human-computer interaction, biomechanics, robotics, and design.
Before joining MIT in the Fall of 2001, Jovan Popović received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University and his B.S. degrees with highest distinction in Mathematics and Computer Science from Oregon State University. He was born in Belgrade and was one of the top junior table-tennis players in Yugoslavia. Occasionally, he still relies on his (now rusty) skills in his half-hearted attempts to swindle unsuspecting friends. More frequently, he spends his free time engaged in a sports activity or in a social dance. His website can be found at http://people.csail.mit.edu/jovan/.
Justin Kang lives videogames, and gave up his pursuit of a degree in psychology to major in computing instead. While he does game design now, he still dabbles in programming and digital art every now and then, and has worked as a gameplay programmer at Double Helix Games in California.
He believes the videogame as an interactive medium can be so much more than it already is, and hopes to one day be involved in the development of a game that substantiates that claim.
Justin also buys games far faster than he can complete them, but he still holds hope of one day clearing his ridiculous backlog, which is well over a hundred and goes back as far as his beloved Sega Saturn. In whatever other free time he can eke out, he runs, cycles, plays the guitar, and poisons the Internet with his thoughts on game design and uh... stuff, at www.modernsolitude.net.
Say hi to Justin Kang! He'll probably reply, unless he's busy stuffing his face with candy and sweetened drinks.
Karan Rajendra Shetti writes: "I am currently a 3rd year student at NTU pursuing Computer Engineering. I am a very fun loving and enthusiastic person who likes to balance work and play. I been passionate about computer games especially strategy and RPG games since my childhood. Some of my other passions include reading books, volleyball and swimming."
Kenji Low describes himself as an "easy-going and fun-loving person that can be unpredictable at times, in a good way of course. :) I can be lazy at times (I do sleep a lot), but when there's work to be done or when I'm doing something I'm passionate about I can crunch like a power drill. Other than that, I don't really know what else to say. However, I do look forward to new experiences and working hard as well as playing hard with a team of like-minded individuals."
Kenneth Christopher Yong says, "I am a friendly and outgoing person with a bizarre imagination of many things in the world. I love music and everything that has to do with it. It is my passion, my first love, my life and hopefully my future."
Kevin Driscoll earned his BA in Visual Art from Assumption College in 2002. He joined CMS after three years teaching Computer Science at Prospect Hill Academy Charter School in Cambridge, MA. There he explored issues of identity management, media production, literacy, hacking, and hip-hop with the consistently brilliant students in grades 6-12. Inspired by a challenging first year in the classroom, Kevin co-founded a non-profit organization called TeachForward (later re-named Developing Curriculum, Inc.) to encourage the sharing and development of high-quality, free learning materials on the web. In addition to his work in education. Kevin is a frequent collaborator with internet-based artist Claire Chanel and a hip-hop dj responsible for Gold Chain and Todo Mundo events. His website can be found at http://kevindriscoll.info.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor / Head of Partner Technologies Research Group
- Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore
Kevin McGee is currently an Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore where he leads the Partner Technologies Research Group. He does research to develop adaptive computational partners that facilitate and increase participation in life's interesting and important challenges. This involves theoretical and applied work at the intersection of end-user programming, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, design methods, media studies, and the arts. Current projects involve the study and development of artificial team-mates/partners for real-time computer games, interactive storytelling, and music ensembles. He has a Masters degree from Harvard University and a PhD from the MIT Media Laboratory. See the Partner Technologies Research Group site at http://www.enactive.com.
Music and games started off in her life as," just for fun and leisure". With a mother that nurtured her in both arts and music, she was involved in art and piano classes at the age of 8 years old. In school she was involved in choir and graffiti painting.
Sharon graduated from Temasek Polytechnic School in 2006 with a diploma in Apparel (Fashion) & Merchandising. She worked in the fashion industry as a graphic fashion designer for 2 years. Though she enjoyed what she did, she wanted to be more involved not just in visuals but also in sound as well. She wanted to combine both aspects and thus, went to pursue a diploma in Audio engineering in SAE.
Upon graduation she managed to get into SINGAPORE-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab and ventured into the game industry from there. Though the learning curve might be challenging at times, she felt great satisfaction when the challenged was achieved. All she can say is that it has never been this good and there is so much more to learn and grow.
Sharon's aspiration is to always challenge herself to make music and sounds that intrigue people's senses to a greater measure.
In her free time she enjoys composing, singing, drawing, jamming, traveling, watching Hong Kong drama series, jogging, badminton and playing frisbee.
Job Titles:
- Postdoctoral Researcher / Product
- Researcher at the Education Arcade
Konstantin Mitgutsch is a Max Kade visiting researcher at the Education Arcade. He worked in the fields of learning, media studies, computer games and age rating systems at the University of Vienna for several years. His research focuses on learning processes in computer games and in particular on the role of passion, disappointment, failure and confrontation in gameplay experiences. In his project titled "Re-Learning Patterns in Computer Games" supported by the Max Kade Foundation New York, Mitgutsch investigates central learning patterns that foster recursive and deep forms of learning in games.
He studied Media Education and Philosophy of Education at the University of Vienna and the Humboldt University Berlin and earned a MA in Education Science, Sociology, Media Studies and Philosophy (2003) and a Ph.D. in 2009. He is participating as an expert member for the Austrian Federal Office for the Positive Assessment of Computer and Console Games and is on the expert council of the Pan European Game Information (PEGI). Since 2007 he organizes the annual Vienna Games Conference FROG.
Kris Lee Kian Teck writes: "Hi, I'm Kris Lee and I am inspired to become a game designer. My motto is to 'Work hard, Play harder'."
Kyle Hormann has been a guitarist, singer and songwriter for over 10 years and has a certificate in audio production from the Center for Digital Imaging Arts at Boston University. While studying at CDIA, Kyle became introduced to the wonderful world of audio technology where he has made animations come to life with realistic sound effects and composed music that turned the mundane into ear candy. Along with his love for video games (from the retro Sonic the Hedgehog to super-polished modern games) Kyle comes to GAMBIT ready to contribute towards bringing game audio to its highest possible level.
Lan Xuan Le, who has BAs in both Biology and Asian Studies from Swarthmore College (2004) and a Masters in Public Health from Boston University (2007), has been part of the "games for health movement," conducting a qualitative study and co-authoring a white paper for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation on the use of games to combat childhood obesity. She also has a strong interest in the globalization of media and the construction of alternative understandings of what it means to be Asian and Asian-American through popular culture, an interest which led her to design, research and execute a library exhibition of anime and manga for Swarthmore's McCabe Library. She wrote an undergraduate thesis on problematic gender and sexual representations in Japanese popular culture with a particular focus on Card Captor Sakura, a paper which won the Swarthmore College Asian Studies Program's top writing prize.
Leau Tat Sin is a 25 year old Singaporean male who loves games, programming, anime and all things geeky.
Lee Fang Liang is a passionate games developer based in the city state of Singapore who likes to tinker with codes in his spare time. He graduated from Nanyang Polytechnic with a diploma in Digital Entertainment Technology. His first experience with game development started when he was making maps for the game Counter-Strike at the age of 14. Since then, he has moved on to bigger and better things. His current experiences include making Flash, XNA, DirectX and OpenGL games. When not writing code, he would be listening to his wide collection of music or playing games along with his friends.
Leow Yin Qing graduated from Nanyang Polytechnic with a Diploma in Digital Media Design. Since his graduation, he levelled up working in various gaming companies like Mikoishi to Lucasarts as a game tester. He has a passion for video games and is rumoured to roam in various gaming networks like Steam and Xbox live.
Job Titles:
- Product Owner: Dearth
- Professor of Computer Science and Engineering / Research Director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory ( CSAIL )
Leslie Pack Kaelbling is Professor of Computer Science and Engineering and Research Director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has previously held positions at Brown University, the Artificial Intelligence Center of SRI International, and at Teleos Research. She received an A. B. in Philosophy in 1983 and a Ph. D. in Computer Science in 1990, both from Stanford University. Prof. Kaelbling has done substantial research on designing situated agents, mobile robotics, reinforcement learning, and decision-theoretic planning. In 2000, she founded the Journal of Machine Learning Research, a high-quality journal that is both freely available electronically as well as published in archival form; she currently serves as editor-in-chief. Prof. Kaelbling is an NSF Presidential Faculty Fellow, a former member of the AAAI Executive Council, the 1997 recipient of the IJCAI Computers and Thought Award, a trustee of IJCAII and a fellow of the AAAI. Her web site can be found at http://people.csail.mit.edu/lpk/.
Lidya Willy is a student from Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, graduating in August 2009. Currently studying for her Diploma on Media and Design. During her free time, she likes to express her feelings through drawings and experimenting with new ways to do art. To get her inspiration, she likes to do interactive activities like ping pong, shopping with friends, watching movies and videos on Youtube, reading comics, and playing Facebook applications. In the future she hopes to inspire people through her art.
Chin Hong started learning how to program by making a simple game of tic-tac-toe on an Apple II when he was 8, and has never stopped making games since then. He has since graduated from NUS School of Computing (University Scholars Programme) with a Honours Degree in Computer Science, specializing in Artificial Intelligence and Algorithms. Chin Hong loves First/Third Person Shooters and is proficient in a wide arsenal of weaponry - from melee weapons, to heavy gatling guns, to sniper rifles - whatever it takes to get the job done efficiently. He takes this approach into his work and sees himself as a member of a SWAT team - to tackle coding in the quickest and most efficient way possible. He is armed with 10 programming languages across three different platforms and has particular strengths in rapid prototyping and development. In his free time, Chin Hong likes to dabble in the magical arts of digital music and art. If he is not a game programmer, he most probably would have become a singer-songwriter.
Lynette Lim is pursuing a Diploma in Info-Communications at Temasek Polytechnic, Singapore. Her main focus is on programming and networking. Her interests are playing musical instruments, playing computer games and programming. She likes to take on any challenge.
Marc LeBlanc has been creating games professionally since 1992. He began his career at LookingGlass Studios, where he was a core contributor to the now-classic Thief and System Shock series. Since then, he has helped create console staples such as NFL 2K2 and Field Commander as well as award-winning indie games like the 2004 IGF Game of the Year, Oasis. Marc attended MIT, where he was awarded a Master's in Computer Science, and the rank of Master Assassin. Marc is a frequent lecturer on game design and game development, and teaches an annual game design workshop at the Game Developers Conference.
Job Titles:
- Programmer: Moki Combat, NeuroTrance, GunPLAY, Moki Combat ( V2.0 ), Abandon
Mark Sullivan III is an undergraduate at MIT, class of 2010. An obsession with videogames drove him to learn programming, so now he's returning the favor. When not gaming, he can often be found sleeping or eating. He's probably gaming, though. He's been a bit of a Nintendo fanboy his whole life, drawn to games such as Zelda and Metroid, but he'll play anything.
Mark Zhang cannot find a good photograph of himself. His favorite games are rhythm games: Dance Dance Revolution and Rock Band (especially Beatles Rock Band!). He has only ever owned Nintendo consoles, and his favorite non-rhythm video games are Super Mario Galaxy and Pikmin, due to their peerless design, followed closely by the Super Monkey Ball and Super Smash Brothers series.
He is a freshman at MIT and plans to pursue Course 6, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He has a loving family in Sugar Land, TX, including his parents, Peng and Sharon, his little brother, Kevin, and a dog and a cat, Buddy and Brandy.He loves all of game programming and video games, math, reading anything, writing fantasy stories, learning, sketching, tennis, piano, Tae Kwon Do, and dreaming. He loves nature and animals, and is passionate about the environment and sustainability. He is a vegetarian by choice and will never voluntarily drink, smoke, or take non-prescription drugs.His life's ultimate ambition is three-pronged. One, to make the world a better place. Two, to compose a great multi-media saga spanning games, film/animation, and literature, which will carry his vision of the universe and utopia. Three, to be happy. He will be delighted to fulfill one of these. He always likes meeting new people. He will not think it strange if you e-mail him to say hi. His e-mail is mazhang@mit.edu.
Job Titles:
- Manager for the Singapore - MIT GAMBIT Game Lab
Marleigh Norton is the prototyping manager for the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab and a research manager for the Teacher Education Program's Outdoor Augmented Reality project at the Columbus Zoo. A recent addition to TEP, Marleigh brings years of design experience from both the commercial and academic sectors. Her recent work as an interaction designer for the Waterford Research Institute aimed to teach reading, math, and science to young children through the use of educational games. She holds a master's degree in human-computer interaction from Georgia Tech, where she created an augmented reality 3-D puzzle game. New interaction paradigms are a major interest of hers, and past projects have included collaborative touch-screens for the NASA Ames Research Center and voice user interfaces for major telephone companies.
Matthew Weise is split right down the middle into equal parts gamer and cinephile, having attended film school before seguing into game studies and then game development. Matt is the lead game designer for the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab and a full-time gamer, which means he not only plays games on a variety of systems but he also completes (most of) them. When he's not playing games or getting obscure DVDs off eBay he's babbling on at length about games and movies to anyone who will listen. With a scholarly (aka nerdy) background in both film and games, his primary research interest lies in their transmedia relationship: in how they each can represent meaningful fictional universes differently. Matthew did his undergrad at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, where he studied film production before going rogue to design his own degree. He graduated in 2001 with a degree in Digital Arts, which included videogames (this was before Game Studies was a field). He continued his videogame research at MIT's Comparative Media Studies program where he examined how videogame theory and criticism differs between communities. As a CMS grad student he also worked at The Education Arcade, most notably collaborating on Revolution, a small-scale simulation of colonial America. After leaving MIT in 2004 Matt worked in mobile game development for a few years, occassionally doing some consultancy work, before returning to CMS and MIT in 2007 to work at the newly created Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab.
Job Titles:
- Administrator and Outreach Coordinator for the Singapore
- Administrator, Outreach Co - Ordinator
Maureen is the administrator and outreach coordinator for the Singapore GAMBIT lab, where she is also the coordinator for the summer program.
A friendly and fun small-size human, who tends to be loud and crazy sometimes. Passionate about work and play, she gives her best in everything she does.
In the rare case that she is not zoning-out, she enjoys doing random things like taking photos of everyday objects and exploring new places. Playing casual games, browsing through fashion magazines, reading, hiking, whipping up dishes, and playing the piano are just some of the other boring non-stoning stuff she does.
She says: "I don't bite, and I'm definitely nice."
Michael Lin is an MIT 2011 majoring in Comparative Media Studies and Materials Science & Engineering. He loves talking movies, television, and games with people who really know what they're talking about, and consequently was naturally attracted to CMS and GAMBIT. He's especially interested in designing games, but doesn't mind playing them when instructed to do so. He'll play just about anything he can get his hands on, but confesses a soft spot for RPGs and action-adventure games.
Job Titles:
- Technology Support Specialist
As Technology Support Specialist, Michael Rapa is the first point of contact for CMS and GAMBIT technical support. A graduate of The Art Institute of Boston, Rapa received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2007 with focus on Graphic Design and Digital Illustration. He is an avid member of the global video gaming community, regularly sacrificing several hours of his day to owning n00bs. His previous professional experience was as a Desktop, Lab Systems, and A/V Technician for Lesley University in Cambridge, MA.
As Technology Support Specialist Michael Rapa is the first point of contact for CMS and GAMBIT technical support. He received his BFA from The Art Institute of Boston in 2007 with a focus on Graphic Design and Digital Illustration and continues to draw whenever he can. He also makes games sometimes... Check out his work at his website: http://michaelrapa.com
Job Titles:
- Deputy CE, IDM R & D Program Office
- Deputy CEO at the Media Development Authority
Michael Yap is Deputy CEO at the Media Development Authority (MDA) of Singapore. He is concurrently Executive Director of the Interactive Digital Media (IDM) Programme Office responsible for driving the national IDM R&D agenda. Michael is on the board of directors of various public listed companies in Singapore and Malaysia. He chaired the national Community Advisory Committee and is a member of the East Asia Business Council. He had served as a board member of several public organisations, including the Singapore Broadcasting Authority, the National Library Board and the Singapore Science Centre. He also chaired the National Information Infrastructure Standards Committee, the Singapore Computer Emergency Response Team (SingCERT), and the Board of Institute of Systems Science, National University of Singapore.
Job Titles:
- Lead Programmer: Snap Escape / Programmer: Picopoke
Munir Hussin is a computing student from National University of Singapore, majoring in Communications and Media. Little is known about him, except that he likes to play classic games, daidee, and do close-up magic. He enjoys making games on various platforms, programming, designing, and do digital art. He dreams of starting a games studio and until then, you shall fall into his hypnotic suggestions and support his dreams 1000%. You shall also get him a Wacom Cintiq. His website can be found at http://www.moonaire.com.
Naftali Beder is a senior at the Rhode Island School of Design. He loves illustration and video game design, as well as cats and bassoons.
Naomi Hinchen is a junior majoring in Computer Science with a minor in Theater Arts; making video games is one of the few areas that allows her to combine both. When not programming she enjoys writing thirty-day novels, cooking, acting, playing the harmonica, and making elaborate period costumes that she hardly ever gets to wear. However, she is often sidetracked from the above activities by the sweet, sweet siren call of the Internet. Oh, TV Tropes Wiki, why must you fascinate me so?
Neeraj Pattani writes: "I'm an animation student who is extremely interested in visual effects. I want to be a good lighting artist when I enter the industry. I enjoy watching movies, particularly the ones which are action-packed."
Ng Wei Sheng, aka 'Snake', is an nonconformist with a weird nickname who is just so in love with creating visuals and looking at them. Currently studying Animation in LASALLE College of the arts to pursue his aim of "Creating Life", his passion forges ambition. A friendly person who is open to new ideas and concepts of this tiny little world.
Xihui started his work life as a web/flash developer. He finds pressing keys for repeating similar structured projects boring. Left, he started making games and never looked back.
Together with a friend, he started an indie game studio, Nob(pronounce as Noob) Studio. Collectively built 20+ flash games over the span of 3 years. Did programing, some game design, can't really do art, won a couple of competitions.
Today, he works at GAMBIT. He still presses keys for a living.. but he loves it.
Nicholas Kole is a U.S. citizen who has spent most of his life living overseas, most recently in Vienna, Austria. He repatriated to the United States in recent years for important root-beer purposes as well as to attend the Rhode Island School of Design, from which he will be graduating with a bachelor's in Illustration. Nicholas is an aspiring comic-book/conceptual artist with a passion for comics, videogames, movies and any kind of storytelling he can get his hands on.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor of Digital Media, Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies
Nick Montfort's digital media projects include the blog Grand Text Auto, where he and five others write about computer narrative, poetry, games, and art; Ream, a 500-page poem written on one day; Mystery House Taken Over, a collaborative "occupation" of a classic game; Implementation, a novel on stickers written with Scott Rettberg; The Ed Report, a serialized novel written with William Gillespie; and the interactive fiction pieces Book and Volume, Ad Verbum, and Winchester's Nightmare.
Montfort edited The Electronic Literature Collection Volume 1 (with N. Katherine Hayles, Stephanie Strickland, and Scott Rettberg, ELO, 2006) and The New Media Reader (with Noah Wardrip-Fruin, The MIT Press, 2003). He wrote Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction (The MIT Press, 2003), and, with William Gillespie, 2002: A Palindrome Story (Spineless Books, 2002), which was acknowledged by the Oulipo as the world's longest literary palindrome. He is now investigating narrative variation in interactive fiction, the human meanings and machine functions of code, and the role of platforms in creative computing. Montfort and Ian Bogost are now writing Video Computer System: The Atari 2600 Platform.
Montfort's Ph.D. is in computer and information science from the University of Pennsylvania. He earned masters degrees at MIT (at the Media Lab) and Boston University (in creative writing - poetry). His personal site can be found at http://www.nickm.com.
Job Titles:
- Artist: Sc - Rum'Pet / Designer: GumBeat, Dearth
Nick Ristuccia writes: "I'm a junior CMS major at MIT. Now you're probably going to laugh about it, but I could play classic style Mega Man, I could throw a frisbee, and I can make an avatar's head pop. I also enjoy posting disgusting videos on YouTube about professional wrestling. I'm grateful for the opportunity to work in the GAMBIT lab."
Job Titles:
- Designer / Programmer: Sc - Rum'Pet / Lead Software Engineer: the Bridge
Nina Guo is a student at MIT (class of 2010) studying Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. If she's not in the student center doing work, she is probably sleeping or eating. She also enjoys anime and video games and is a big fan of the Super Smash Bros series.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor, Nanyang Technological University
- Director of the Centre for Computational Intelligence
Ong Yew Soon is currently Director of the Centre for Computational Intelligence and an Associate Professor with the School of Computer Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He received his Bachelors and Masters degrees in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Nanyang Technological University and subsequently his PhD from University of Southampton, UK.
He is editor-in-chief of Memetic Computing Journal, chair of the Task Force on Memetic Computing in the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society Emergent Technology Technical Committee, chief editor of book series on Studies in adaptation, Learning and optimization by Springer-Verlag, associate editor of IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, Cybernetics-Part B and International Journal of Systems Science.
His current research interests include computational intelligence spanning memetic computing, evolutionary optimization using approximation, complex design optimization, cloud computing, and soft computing.
His website can be found at: http://www3.ntu.edu.sg/home/asysong/.
These days, Patrick Kelly speaks mostly in numbers, providing fiscal support to Gambit's U.S. Director and Studio Manager. Before coming to MIT, he worked for two small businesses as office jack-knife, managing projects in staff development, communications design, and cost analysis. In 2008, Patrick earned a Certificate in Graphic Design from Boston's School of the Museum of Fine Arts, but that's really neither here nor there. Patrick's interests include: playing violin, mechanical puzzles, cartography, and too. much. coffee.
Job Titles:
- Associate Provost
- Co - Chair, GAMBIT Steering Committee / Associate Provost, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Fellow of the American Academy of Arts
Philip S. Khoury is Associate Provost and Ford International Professor of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He was appointed Dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences in 1991, Kenan Sahin Dean in 2002, and Associate Provost in 2006. As Associate Provost, he is responsible for overseeing MIT's non-curricular arts programs and initiatives, including the MIT Museum and the List Visual Arts Center; MIT's strategic planning for international education and research; MIT's efforts to promote the public understanding of science and technology; and enhancing existing activities and new opportunities at the intersections of MIT's five schools: Architecture and Planning, Engineering, Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, Management, and Science.
Professor Khoury is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been awarded fellowships from the Fulbright-Hays Foundation, Social Science Research Council, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, and Thomas J. Watson Foundation. At MIT, he has twice received its Navas Award and held the Class of 1922 Career Development Professorship.
Job Titles:
- Executive Director for the US Operations of the Singapore - MIT GAMBIT Game Lab
Philip Tan is the executive director for the US operations of the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab, a game research initiative hosted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is concurrently a project manager for the Media Development Authority (MDA) of Singapore.
He has served as a member of the steering committee of the Singapore chapter of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) and worked closely with Singapore game developers to launch industry-wide initiatives and administer content development grants as an assistant manager in the Animation & Games Industry Development section of MDA. He has produced and designed PC online games at The Education Arcade, a research group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that studied and created educational games. He complements a Master's degree in Comparative Media Studies with work in Boston's School of Museum of Fine Arts, the MIT Media Lab, WMBR 88.1FM and the MIT Assassins' Guild, the latter awarding him the title of "Master Assassin" for his live-action roleplaying game designs. He also founded a DJ crew at MIT.
Poh Li Ting writes: "I am currently a student at SAE Institute Singapore, completing my Bachelor of Recording Arts degree. My passions are music, games and animation. I started out as a bass player, moving on to Electronic Dance Music productions (Drum 'n' Bass, House, Trip Hop, Ambient Techno). In addition, I have been a live sound engineer and been involved in orchestral recordings. For the past 2 years, I've been working in a commercial studio environment doing postproduction for films and animations. And now, I am given this great opportunity to explore my interests in sound production in games."
Job Titles:
- Artist: Moki Combat ( 2.0 )
Randy O'Connor is an animation graduate of Northeastern University making as much art for games as he can. He works on 3d environments, level design, concept painting, and he enjoys the sensual act of lo-poly 3d modeling. He loves to cycle all around Boston saving the air and his bank account. In spare moments he cycles more, plays games (like everyone!), listens to all kinds of music, resists the impending zombie apocalypse, goes bouldering, and attempts to make Flash games.
Rich Vreeland creates audio - audio for video games, film, television, radio, and most importantly, for fun. He got his start producing for media in 2006 when he was hired to write music and design sounds for a line of mobile platform titles. He recently graduated with a degree in Music Synthesis at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts.
As Systems Administrator for Comparative Media Studies, GAMBIT, and Project NML, Rik Eberhardt's current duties include maintaining the ever growing array of servers, lab computers, websites, and databases generated by our research projects, procuring and distributing equipment, and providing hands-on support for CMS faculty, students, researchers, and staff. A 2002 graduate from the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, VA, he received his Bachelor of Arts with a Literary & Cultural Studies concentration in Postmodern Literature, 'Cyberpunk' Science Fiction, and Contemporary Japanese Literature in Translation. His previous professional experience was as a Desktop and Lab Systems Technician for Lesley University in Cambridge, MA. The ending to Shadow of the Colossus made him cry.
As Studio Manager for the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab, Rik Eberhardt spends his days playing Tetris: with people, boxes, tasklists, equipment, and time. When not staring at a spreadsheet trying to fit in another computer purchase, a last minute event budget, or placing undergraduate researchers on a GAMBIT project, he's chipping away at spreadsheets on his DS, reproducing pixel-art in Picross and Picross 3D. His favorite moments on the job are working on projects with student workers and having fun social interactions forced on him despite his busy schedule.
Roland Kie has been a Hardcore gamer for a full 30 Years and counting. Starting from the day his father woke him up in the middle of the night to present him with Atari + Defender, he hasn't stopped playing games, and probably never will.
Roland's explorations into the gaming industry initially brought him to the QA side of development, where he caught bugs and ate them for lunch. His further adventures have brought him to Level Design Land, where he ponders over UIs, HUDs and GDDs and sneaking in Street Fighter elements into every project that comes his way. "Angry Birds should have had a Revenge Meter!"
Roland loves writing stories and imagining designs for future games, and dreams one day to influence the direction of the Legend of Zelda franchise.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor
- Assistant Professor, EECS and CSAIL
Russ Tedrake is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab. He received his B.S.E. in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1999, and his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 2004, working with Sebastian Seung. After graduation, he spent a year with the MIT Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department as a Postdoctoral Associate. During his education, he has spent time at Microsoft, Microsoft Research, and the Santa Fe Institute.
Professor Tedrake's research group is interested in underactuated motor control systems in animals and machines that are capable of executing dynamically dexterous tasks and interacting with uncertain environments. They believe that the design of these control systems is intimately related to the mechanical designs of their machines, and that tools from machine learning and optimal control can be used to exploit this coupling when classical control techniques fail. Current projects include robust and efficient bipedal locomotion on flat terrain, multi-legged locomotion over extreme terrain, flapping-winged flight, and feedback control for fluid dynamics. His website can be found at http://people.csail.mit.edu/russt.
Sara Verrilli has spent her professional career in the videogame industry, starting with the day she walked out of MIT's Course V graduate studies and into a position as QA Lead at Looking Glass Technologies for System Shock. However, her game organizing endeavors started much earlier; she helped found a role-playing club at her high school by disguising it as a bridge group.
Since then, she's been a game designer, a product manager, a producer, and a QA manager, in no particular order. A veteran of both Looking Glass Technologies and Irrational Games, she's worked on eight major published games, and several more that never made it out the door. As Lead Producer at GAMBIT, she looks forward to corralling, encouraging, and exploring the creative chaos that goes into making great games, and figuring out just the right amount of order to inject into the process. And, while she still doesn't understand bridge, she does enjoy whist.
Clara Fernández-Vara is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab. Her work concentrates on adventure games, as well as the integration of stories in simulated environments. She is particularly interested in cross-media artifacts from the standpoint of textual analysis and performance. Clara holds a Ph.D. in Digital Media from the Georgia Institute of Technology. She earned a BA in English Studies by the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (2000), and was awarded a fellowship from the La Caixa Foundation to pursue a Masters in Comparative Media Studies from MIT (2004). Specialties: videogame theory, textual analysis, adventure games, stories in games, spatial design, puzzles, performance, relationships between games and other media, theatre, film, Quality Assurance.
Sarah Sperry is a senior with a joint major in Computer Science and Comparative Media Studies. She's pretty boring overall, but looooooooves video games and wants to eventually have a huge collection (she welcomes suggestions!). Unfortunately, due to the amount of work over the past three years, her gaming skillz are pretty much nil. She hopes to rectify this with her new addiction to Halo.
She hopes to eventually be a producer who-knows-where, but also likes design. She worked as a design intern for Helixe (division of THQ) during the summer of 2007 and as a scripter/design intern for Shabba Games (division of Activision) during the summer of 2008.
She also loves smilie faces. :)
Job Titles:
- Product Owner: Woosh, Waker, Oozerts
- Project Manager for the Education Arcade
- Project Manager, the Education Arcade / Product Owner: the Illogical Journey of Orez, Woosh, Waker
Scot Osterweil is the project manager for the Education Arcade and is currently running "Learning Games to Go," a federally funded project designed to develop mobile games that teach math and literacy to underserved youth. Formerly the Senior Designer at TERC, a nationally known research & development center devoted to math and science education, Osterweil designed Zoombinis Island Odyssey, winner of the 2003 Bologna New Media Prize. This is the latest game in the Zoombinis line of products (Riverdeep/TLC). Scot is the creator of the Zoombinis, and with Chris Hancock he co-designed the multi-award winning Logical Journey of the Zoombinis, and its first sequel, Zoombinis Mountain Rescue. Scot is the also the designer of the TERCworks games Switchback and Yoiks!, the latter also with Chris Hancock.
Scot's other software designs include work on the educational products Tabletop II, Tabletop and Tabletop Jr., and IBM's The Nature of Science. At TERC he participated in research projects on the role of computer games in learning, and on the use of video in data collection and representation. Previously, he worked in television, on the production of Public Television's Frontline, Evening at Pops, and American Playhouse, and as an animator on a wide range of programs. He is a graduate of Yale College with a degree in Theater Studies.
Shota Nakama has been actively composing, arranging, and sequencing for many films and video games after earning a Bachelor's degree in Film Scoring from Berklee College of Music. Shota is also known as a versatile classical/electric guitarist and has performed internationally for over 10 years, and recently he was chosen to perform the world premiere of Vuk Kulenovic's Electric Symphony at the Berklee Performance Center. Shota has recently founded an orchestra called V.G.O. (Video Game Orchestra) which exclusively performs orchestral arrangements of video game music. His website is www.shotanakama.com.
Simon Strauss has always dreamed of pursuing career in the creative industry. With the background of Architecture Engineering, he journeyed through various industries from the exhibition design to architectural visualization, while picking up necessary skill sets and experiences along the way, before finally stepped into the industry where his true passion lies in. He is currently working passionately as Game Artist in GAMBIT Game Lab.
Soh Jing Chang writes: "I have a passion for gaming hence I game a lot everyday. I am happy to learn and try out new kinds of game play, play different genre of games and my favorite game changes every now and then. I like playing Pokémon as I want to be a Pokémon master, and I also enjoy winning in Team Fortress 2 too. Through this internship, I hope to experience developing games in a professional way."
Steven Setiawan, Jap writes: "I am currently pursuing a BFA in Interactive Media in NTU School of Art, Design and Media, Singapore. Being an aspiring illustrator, game artist and game designer, I always strive to try out new stuff and stretch my own comfort zone. Just like many others in GAMBIT, I have played quite a number of games, enough to motivate me to want to be involved in their development. What excites me about games is the well-crafted co-existence between imagination and logic. My interests lie more in creating concept art, illustration, character designs and gameplay design (just started to have an interest in it). In my very-hard-to-find free time, I like to listen to music, practice playing the guitar, draw comics, read manga and play games."
Tan Pin Xun is a third and final-year student from Temasek Polytechnic (TP), currently undertaking a diploma in Game and Entertainment Technology. He has a strong interest in developing games and is passionate about programming. Pin Xun manages GarenaSG and is an administrator of Garena Singapore Forum and Garena client. Besides video games he also enjoys sports, especially basketball.
Job Titles:
- Singapore Executive Director
Teo Chor Guan has more than 14 years of experience in systems engineering for computer graphics and games. Her wide range of experience spans from 3-D graphics research at the Institute of Systems Science in Singapore to building air traffic control systems for MacDonald Dettwiler & Associates in Canada. She has also worked as a software developer at Electronic Arts (EA) Canada for over six years. She holds a Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical and Electronics) from the National University of Singapore and a Masters in Computer Science from Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada. In Singapore, she had worked in the Games Development Group at the School of Design at Nanyang Polytechnic. She was also the Software Engineering Manager in Lucasfilm Animation Singapore before joining Media Development Authority (MDA) as the Program Director for GAMBIT.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor in Communications
- Assistant Professor, Communications and New Media and Mixed Reality Lab ( MXR ) Product Owner, Woosh, Waker
Tim Marsh is currently Assistant Professor in Communications and New Media, and member of the Mixed Reality Lab (MXR) at the National University of Singapore (NUS). His Ph.D is in Computer Science specializing in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) from the HCI Group, University of York, UK, and Masters degree is in Computer Graphics & Visualization. He teaches graduate modules in serious games and human-computer interaction, covering design, evaluation and prototyping of virtual and gaming environments for purpose, and machinima for learning. Past students of Tim's modules have presented and published their work at ACM SIGGRAPH Video Games Symposium 2008, Los Angeles (recipients of the 2nd best paper award) and ISAGA2009, Singapore. Tim's interdisciplinary research interests are in design and development for experiential use of technological products and digital media. His research in gaming, learning and virtual environments focuses on film informing design for experiential and contemplative gameplay, development of continuous and unobtrusive approach to analyze player's behavior and experience, and using an activity theory-based approach to support design of narrative, story and gameplay. He's previously held positions in the Integrated Media Systems Center (IMSC) at the University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles and at Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands. His website can be found at http://ap3.fas.nus.edu.sg/fass/cnmmt/.
Tina Nirmal writes: "I love to read and write. I enjoy listening to music and playing games on my consoles and PC. I love cars and everything associated with them! I enjoy playing soccer occasionally. I love meeting people from all over the world as I enjoy enriching cultural exchanges with them (that includes learning new languages). I am a huge foodie. I'm up for trying anything that is new, interesting and exciting. I love the thrills from spontaneous fun. I fear heights but I think I will still be up for a ride on a rollercoaster if it means having the time of my life!"
Job Titles:
- Programmer
- Product Owner, Design, Documentation
- Production, Design, Documentation
Had you asked Todd Harper at age 17 -- a music education major at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, 11 year euphonium and choir veteran -- if someday he would be a researcher at MIT studying games, there's a good chance he'd have laughed at such an absurd claim. Yet 15 years and one doctorate later, here he is, a postdoctoral researcher at GAMBIT.
After getting his bachelor's degree in Radio/TV/Film at Madison in 2001, he worked in distance learning and web editing at Indiana State University before moving to his hometown of Syracuse for a masters in Media Studies at Syracuse University, and then to Ohio University for a recently-completed doctorate in Mass Communications. His research combines a focus on digital games with an interest in feminist and queer theory and popular culture.
When he is not doing actual research on games, Todd spends a good deal of time playing them; his favorites tend to be over the top fighting games and RPGs that appeal to his campy sense of aesthetics. Inspired by the fighting game players he spoke to while working on his dissertation, his next goal is to travel to the EVO tournament in 2011, learn to use an arcade stick, and still get thoroughly destroyed in the first round of the tourney.
Toh Fu Er just finished her freshman year at Digipen Institute of Technology Singapore, pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Real-Time Interactive Simulation. She is a programming geek at heart but has occasional artistic impulses. Her hobbies are playing games and reading, but all her spare time disappeared when she started working on her game projects. However, she is happy to make that sacrifice, and is proud of all the games she makes. She still has much to learn, and hopes to improve her skills as much as possible before she graduates.
Job Titles:
- Product Owner: Dearth
- Professor of Computer Science and Engineering / Product Owner: Dearth
- Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at MIT
Tomas Lozano-Perez is Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at MIT and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He has all his degrees (SB '73, SM '76, PhD '80) from MIT in Computer Science. He has been the Associate Director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and Associate Head for Computer Science of MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
His research has been in robotics (configuration-space approach to motion planning), computer vision (interpretation-tree approach to objection), machine learning (multiple-instance learning), medimaging (computer-assisted surgery) and computational chemistry (drug activity prediction and protein structure determination from NMR & X-ray data). His current research focuses on decision-theoretic approaches to robot motion planning in the presence of uncertainty. His web site can be found at http://people.csail.mit.edu/tlp/.
Job Titles:
- Producer / Scrummaster: Ochos Locos, NeuroTrance
Trey Reyher is an undergraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, majoring in Brain and Cognitive Science. Although a lifelong gaming enthusiast, this is the first video game project in which he has participated as a developer. His love of Japanese games, art, and culture stem from his childhood days on the island of Okinawa. Since then, he has traveled to Europe, Australia, and Africa, but still considers Japanese to be his second language. Trey's other interests include writing short stories, playing the banjo, and hiking in the great outdoors.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor of Computer Science and Vice Dean at the School of Computing
Tze-Yun Leong is an Associate Professor of Computer Science and Vice Dean at the School of Computing, National University of Singapore. She directs the Medical Computing Laboratory at the School and leads the multi-disciplinary Biomedical Decision Engineering Group at the University. She received her S.B., S.M., and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA.
Tze-Yun's research interests are in decision-theoretic artificial intelligence, cognitive modeling, machine learning, adaptive computing, and biomedical informatics. She teaches a graduate course in Uncertainty Modeling in Artificial Intelligence. She has also led the development of diagnostic, planning and execution, prognostic, and information integration technologies and systems, both proprietary and open source, in different domains - including the health care, defense, and pharmaceutical industries. Her current work focuses on integrating cognitive and probabilistic modeling techniques to support dynamic decision making in game environments with intelligent and illusive opponents. The explorations enabled in the controlled game situations and the experiences gained from the real-life domains complement each other to support development of new technologies that address the common computational challenges in changing environments.
Her website can be found at http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/ leongty.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor
- Associate Professor of Computer Science / Product Owner: Dearth
Wee Sun Lee is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at the National University of Singapore. He obtained his PhD from the Australian National University in 1996 and was a research fellow at the Australian Defence Force Academy from 1996 to 1998 prior to joining the National University of Singapore.
He is interested in machines that learn, perform inference, make decisions and plan. He works on obtaining theoretical understanding of when learning, inference and planning can be done effectively, on developing effective algorithms for these problems, and also on applying the algorithms to applications such as information extraction, natural language understanding, robotics and games.
His website can be found at http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/ leews/.
Job Titles:
- Lead Principal Investigator / Co - Director, MIT Comparative Media Studies
- Lead Principal Investigator / Director, MIT Comparative Media Studies
- Professor and Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program
William Uricchio is Professor and Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program and professor of Comparative Media History at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. He has held visiting professorships at Stockholm University, the Freie Universit�t Berlin, and Philips Universit�t Marburg; and Guggenheim, Fulbright and Humboldt fellowships have supported his research.
Wong Chang You has finished his freshman year in Digipen Institute of Technology Singapore. He is currently pursuing a degree in Bachelor of Science in Real-Time Interactive Simulation. As he is very enthusiastic about becoming a professional game programmer, he has already completed many student game projects. Other than that, Chang You has worked in the Lucasfilm Animation Singapore video games department as a QA tester for 2 major games. His favorite game genre is RPGs. His ambition is to be able to create one of the greatest RPGs of all time. Chang You's website can be found at http://changyouwong.wordpress.com.
Wong Yi first got introduced to gaming when his parents bought him one of the second generation video game consoles. His first real experience with programming was when he, inspired by gamebooks, started using DOS batch commands to write one of his own. The seed was sowed and his passion inevitably led him to pursue a career in the gaming industry.
Wong Yi graduated from Nanyang Technological University in 2006 with a Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering. He spent his industrial attachment segment of his degree course at Mikoishi Pte Ltd, a local game studio, and was hired as a game developer after graduation.
He completed his first published title, DropcastTM, with Mikoishi before joining GAMBIT in 2009. Wong Yi has a strong interest in game development and constantly finds himself enthralled by the almost magical nature of well developed games. He hopes to one day be able to develop games with unique game mechanics that can inspire brand new genres.
Yee Kar Kin is an avid designer who thrives in flexible, entrepreneurial environments. He revels in the exploration of a broad spectrum of media, though he is most enthusiastic about animation, photography and video production. Kar Kin is currently pursuing his Diploma in Moving Images at Temasek Design School, Singapore. He also enjoys having long walks and talks as it tends to stimulate the inquisitive mind.
Yeo Jing Ying graduated from National University of Singapore under the Arts and Social Sciences faculty, where she became interested in game design and development process during her course of study. Upon graduation, she participated in an internship with GAMBIT to develop a game prototype as a Game Designer within 2 months at Boston. When she returned to Singapore, her first job was at Mikoishi Pte Ltd, a game development studio, as a Production Assistant for around a year. Currently, she has moved on to work at the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab as an Assistant Producer. She hopes to acquire as much experience and knowledge in the games industry as she can by learning from and working with the experts and professionals in this industry.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor of Psychology at the National University of Singapore
- Assistant Professor, Psychology
Yong Peng Why is an assistant professor of psychology at the National University of Singapore. He completed his doctoral education in 2001 at the University of St Andrews. His current research interests include the physiological sequala of emotions and their implications for health/illness; cynical hostility and cardiovascular regulation during psychological stress and recovery; the relationship between cynical hostility and social support provision; perceived control, objective control conditions and their relationship to hemodynamic processes regulating blood pressure during psychological stress; and psychophysiological processes during Human-Computer Interactions. His website can be found at http://ap3.fas.nus.edu.sg/fass/psywyp/.
Yue Li was born in Beijing, China in 1988. He moved to the United States in 1995 and has lived on the East Coast ever since, but a calling to the west has been strong as of late. He currently resides in Providence, RI and attends the Rhode Island School of Design pursuing a BFA in Illustration and a liberal arts concentration in creative writing.
Zander's interest for gaming graphics sparked during his growing up days when he first chanced upon "Soul Caliber" in the arcade, which eventually lead him to graduate from Nanyang Polytechnic with a diploma in Digital Media Design.
Though not so much of a competitive gamer, he feel it is worthwhile and enjoys playing hardcore multiplayer games with friends.
Occasionally, he still plays Street Fighter 2 Super Turbo on his old "barely surviving" Sega Megadrive!