The Game Center at NYU Tisch School of the Arts is please to announced the addition of a new member to its full-time faculty, Matt Parker.
Matt Parker is a game designer and new media artist. His work has been displayed at the American Museum of Natural History, SIGGRAPH Asia, the NY Hall of Science, Museum of the Moving Image, FILE Games Rio, Sony Wonder Technology Lab, and many other venues. His game Lucid was a finalist in Android’s Developer Challenge 2 and his project Lumarca won the “Create the Future” prize at New York Maker Faire 2010. He created the game Recurse for the inaugural No Quarter exhibition at the NYU Game Center. Recurse was a finalist for IndieCade 2010 and won the “Play This Now!” award at Come Out and Play 2012. Matt is also active as a curator and organizer in the independent game development community, he is currently the Chair of IndieCade East and leads the NYU location of the Global Game Jam.
Matt has been teaching Game Center classes as an adjunct professor for several years, and has already made major contributions to the curriculum of the program. According to Game Center Director Frank Lantz: “Matt brings a deep understanding of how to think about the discipline of computer programming within the creative process of game development. He will focus on how we teach code as an integral aspect of game design.”
The Game Center approaches the study of games from a broad perspective, encouraging students to think about videogames alongside board games, card games, sports, and other forms of non-digital play. At the same time, we recognize the deep connection between game design and computation. According to Lantz, “All videogame designers should be comfortable around code, whether or not they are doing the programming on a project. They should know how to talk to programmers, be able to make quick prototypes, and be familiar with the fundamentals of digital development. Moreover, all game designers, regardless of the type of game they are making, should be able to think like a programmer in the sense of being able to visualize complex systems, think algorithmically, and understand how logic and rules interact to produce interesting behavior.”
Matt’s unique qualifications as a computer scientist, artist, game maker, and teacher will augment the Game Center’s capabilities to teach programming skills particularly suited to creative expression through digital games. Students interested in creating the future of games with Professor Parker and the rest of the Game Center faculty can learn more about the program here: http://gamecenter.nyu.edu/academics/
