Team
PROGRAMMER Dave Bennett
Dave is a graduate of Roger Williams University, receiving a degree in Computer Information Systems with a minor in Philosophy. Born and raised in Medway, MA, he has been playing games across a variety of mediums for almost all his life. Playing games, as he found, was fun. However, over time he discovered that creating his own games was far more enjoyable. His background is primarily in programming, but he hopes to also contribute to the design of games rather than just the implementation.
ARTIST / DESIGNER Szu Yuan Scott Chen
Scott was born in Taipei, Taiwan. After graduated from Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in Graphic Design and worked for two years in the multimedia industry, Scott decided to pursue his dream of becoming a game designer. Scott is interested in implementing never-before-seen gameplay in games using modern technology, and also emphasizing the simplicity of the art/game design.
PROGRAMMER Romain Deciron
Romain has always been interested in games, always wondering how they were created and how come some of them had such a strong emotional value. He solved his first issue by becoming a programmer, and has started to solve the second one by learning about interactive storytelling. His goal is to create or help create games that will move players emotionally, and make them dream.
EXPERIENCE DESIGNER Dave Faulkner
Dave has been working in web, mobile, and telecommunication interaction design for the last ten years. He holds a degree in Digital Media from the Art Institute of California and a degree in Psychology from the University of Montana. Dave is interested in educational interaction design and educational experience design. His goal is to educate the world.
DESIGNER / ARTIST Yotam Haimberg
Yotam was born in Haifa, Israel, and earned his B.S. in Psychology with a minor in Chemistry from the University of Florida. After graduation, he worked at Trendy Entertainment as a game tester, an assistant producer, and a level scripter. He has had a voracious appetite for all things games since an early age and began writing campaigns for Dungeons & Dragons in middle school. He pursued a degree in psychology to gain a deeper understanding about what motivates people to play and how to design experiences that resonate with that motivation.
PRODUCER Anthony Hildebrand
Anthony graduated from the University of Kansas with a BA in English and History, focusing especially on Science Fiction literature and Ancient East Asian and Medieval European history. Anthony came to the Entertainment Technology Center with an interest in narrative in new media – especially storytelling through games. While pursuing a lifelong goal to become a game designer, he also found an interest in producing.
DOCUMENTER / SOUND DESIGNER Eugene Kang
Eugene is a sound designer and composer from Carnegie Mellon University. With music and video games being the most influential aspects of his life, Eugene found that his passion resided in designing sound and music for games. His projects include designing sound and music for games, animated shorts, theme park exhibitions, and even writing and performing arrangements of popular video game music in a rock band. Following his graduation from the Entertainment Technology Center in the end of Spring 2012, Eugene will be working as an audio artist at BioWare Mythic.
Advisers
Drew Davidson is a professor, producer and player of interactive media. His background spans academic, industry and professional worlds and he is interested in stories across texts, comics, games and other media. He is the Director of the Entertainment Technology Center – Pittsburgh at Carnegie Mellon University and the Editor of ETC Press. He completed his Ph.D. in Communication Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to that, he received a B.A. and M.A. in Communications Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He chaired Game Art & Design and Interactive Media Design at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and the Art Institute Online and has taught and researched at several universities. He consults for a variety of companies, institutions and organizations and was a Senior Project Manager in the New Media Division of Holt, Rinehart and Winston. He was also a Project Manager in Learning Services at Sapient, and before that he produced interactive media at HumanCode. He helped create the Sandbox Symposium, an ACM SIGGRAPH conference on video games and served on the IGDA Education SIG. He works with SIGGRAPH on games and interactive media and serves on the ACTlab Steering Committee, and many advisory boards, program committees and jury panels. He founded the Applied Media & Simulation Games Center at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He is the lead on several MacArthur Digital Media and Learning Initiative grants and has written and edited books, journals, articles and essays on narratives across media, serious games, analyzing gameplay, and cross-media communication.
Jesse joined the ETC in 2002, where he advises research projects and teaches classes in Game Design and Building Virtual Worlds. Formerly the Chairman of the International Game Developers Association, he is also the author of the award winning book The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses. In 2004, he was named one of the world’s Top 100 Young Innovators by Technology Review, MIT’s magazine of innovation. He is also the CEO of Schell Games, the largest game studio in Pennsylvania. Prior to joining the ETC, Jesse was the Creative Director of the Walt Disney Imagineering Virtual Reality Studio, where he worked and played for seven years as designer, programmer and manager on several projects for Disney theme parks and DisneyQuest, as well as on Toontown Online, the first massively multiplayer game for kids. Before that, he worked as writer, director, performer, juggler, comedian, and circus artist for both Freihofer’s Mime Circus and the Juggler’s Guild.