DiGRA NY
To encourage and facilitate the collaborative efforts between academics and professionals focused on game theory, design and practice.
Operations
Joost van Dreunen will head DiGRA NY and coordinate the chapter’s administrative and logistical needs and activities. An advisory board made up out of both academic and industry professionals will serve as the backbone of the chapter’s knowledge network.
Joost Xander Mattijs van Dreunen, Columbia University
Joost researches video games as an entryway into contemporary media culture. Currently a 5th-year doctoral student at Columbia University in New York City, he is in the final stages of his dissertation titled “Games as Communication: The Practice of Discursive Game Play.” This study involves an extensive analysis of modding communities and content analysis of gamer-created content. He is also a member of the Center of Organizational Innovation and the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information.
Outside academia Joost is involved in a variety of projects, most notably his work for DFC Intelligence and Nielsen Online as a games analyst. He is currently in the midst of a report on the business models of online game portals.
The preliminary advisory board of DiGRA NY consists of the following people (in alphabetical order):
David Cole, DFC Intelligence (confirmed)
David is the founder and president of DFC Intelligence. DFC Intelligence provides market research and strategic planning services and is now recognized as a leading independent information provider for the interactive entertainment industry. Mr. Cole has personally consulted with leading telcos, entertainment studios, software publishers, developers, investment firms and consumer electronics manufacturers. Since 1994, Mr. Cole has been one of the most widely quoted analysts on video games, computer software and the Internet. Mr. Cole has a BA in economics and industrial relations, as well as a JD from the University of North Carolina.
Dennis Crowley, New York University (confirmed)
Dennis Crowley is the founder of dodgeball.com, a friend-finder service for mobile phones which helps people connect with the people and places around them. Dodgeball was acquired by Google in 2005.
He has been named one of the "Top 35 Innovators Under 35" by MIT's Technology Review magazine (2005) and his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, Time Magazine, Newsweek, MTV, Slashdot and NBC. He is currently an Adjunct Professor at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program.
Dennis holds a Master's degree from New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program and a Bachelor's degree from the Newhouse School at Syracuse University.
Mary Flanagan, Hunter College/TiltFactor Lab (confirmed)
Mary investigates everyday technologies through critical writing, artwork, and activist design projects. Flanagan's work has been exhibited internationally at museums, festivals, and galleries, including: the Guggenheim, The Whitney Museum of American Art, SIGGRAPH, The Banff Centre, The Moving Image Centre, New Zealand, Central Fine Arts Gallery NY, Artists Space NY, the University of Arizona, University of Colorado-Boulder, and venues in Brazil, France, UK, Canada, Taiwan, New Zealand, and Australia. Her projects have been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Pacific Cultural Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Lewis Kofsky, Curious Pictures (confirmed)
Lewis is director of computer graphics and visual FX at Curious Pictures. He guides all digital production at Curious, including film, studio services, and gaming. His team produced the mocap and keyframe motion for the hit game Rockband and more recently delivered eight minutes of mixed-media animation for Morgan Spurlock's “Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden.”
Lewis has a long history of marrying technology and artistry to create innovative new looks. He was producer of all the animation segments in the documentary film, "Chicago 10," which opened the Sundance Film Festival in January 2007 and showcases a proprietary animation look he was a principal in devising. Another standout style is the rotomation technique that he developed on the award-winning “Avenue Amy” - five years before the ubiquitous ipod dancers. Lewis went on sabbatical from Curious to work at PDI/Dreamworks on the animated feature films “Shrek2” and “Madagascar” as a visual FX animator specializing in water and fluid effects.
Outside the studio Lewis created a popular class at the NYU film school in title design and digital FX. He can be spotted in his natural habitats tapping his Blackberry on chair lifts, planting trees in the rain forests of South America, or behind the wheel of his mutant vehicle at the Burningman Festival. Lewis is self-taught in the field of computer graphics and holds a BS in design from Stanford University.
Liel Liebovitz, Columbia University (confirmed)
Liel received his doctorate from Columbia University in 2007. His dissertation, titled "Thinking Inside the Box: Towards an Ontology of Video Games," examines the personal and social processes of play. Liel also served as associate professor of communications at Barnard College, and taught at Marymount Manhattan College. He is the author of two books of non-fiction: "Aliya," published in 2006 by St. Martin's Press, and "Lili Marlene," scheduled for publication by W.W. Norton in 2008.
Katie Salen, Parsons The New School for Design/Gamelab (confirmed)
Interested in games as both aesthetic and cultural forms, Katie Salen has developed a critical practice that includes designing games of many different types, from big games, to downloadable games, to conference games and game-hybrids that take gaming as a point of departure. She writes extensively on game design, design education, and game culture, including authoring some of the first dispatches from the previously hidden world of machinima. Katie has worked on a range of projects for Microsoft, Gamelab, the Hewlett Foundation, the Design Institute, mememe Productions, Salty Features, the Buckminster Fuller Institute, and others. She is a former member of Playground, a design team focused on large-scale, experimental, urban games.
Katie is currently working as Lead Designer on a digital game designed to teach game design to middle school and high school youth. It is supported through a 1.2 million dollar MacArthur Foundation grant, produced in conjunction with Gamelab and GAAPS, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is concurrently editing a book on the Ecology of Games for the MacArthur Foundation series on Digital Media and Learning, set for publication in 2007.
Aram Sinnreich, New York University/Radar Research (confirmed)
Aram is a writer, educator, musician, and business analyst, covering the media and entertainment industries, with a special focus on music and games. Named one of the fifteen "Innovators and Influencers of 2001" by InformationWeek, Sinnreich is often quoted in media outlets such as The New York Times, Forbes, Billboard, The Wall Street Journal and NPR.
He currently serves as Visiting Professor at New York University's department of Media, Communication and Culture, where he teaches a course entitled "Video Games: Culture and Commerce," and is also Managing Partner of Radar Research, a media and technology consultancy.
He has written about media, culture and technology for publications including The New York Times, Billboard, Wired News, Truthdig and American Quarterly. As a Senior Analyst at Jupiter Research in New York for over five years (1997-2002), he produced research covering the online music and media industries and provided hands-on strategic consulting to companies ranging from Time Warner to Microsoft to Heineken.
Martin Zagorsek, Parsons School for Design/Games & Software at NPD (confirmed)
Martin is Vice President for Games & Software at NPD, a market research company that provides syndicated sales tracking and consumer research to a wide variety of industries (>700 employees)
Previously: VP, Strategy, YaYa LLC, a VC-backed start-up focused on deploying games-based marketing and training solutions for Fortune 500 clients such as IBM, Safeway, Intel and Kmart; Director of Business Consulting, Sapient Corporation; Associate, Deutsche Morgan Grenfell, NY and Singapore; Software Designer, Douglas Power, Inc.; Engineer for Genesis Microchip.
MBA The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; BS University of Waterloo, Canada
Eric Zimmerman, Gamelab (confirmed)
Eric is a game designer and academic exploring the theory and practice of game design. Eric's diverse activities has made him one of the New York Observers's "Power Punks," one of Interview Magazine's "30 To Watch" and also one of International Design Magazine's ID 40 (40 influential designers). He has been working in the game industry since 1994.
Eric is the co-founder and CEO of Gamelab (http://www.gamelab.com), a game development company based in New York City that was recently named one of 5 "Rising Star" design firms by HOW Magazine. gameLab's games, which include Diner Dash, Subway Scramble, BLiX, LOOP, LEGO Junkbot, FLUID, and Arcadia, have won awards from the Independent Games Festival, ID Magazine, Art Directors Club, ARS Electronica, and others, as well as finalist nominations in the Webby Awards and the IGDA Developers Choice Awards.