The NYU Game Center is pleased to welcome two new full-time faculty members, Naomi Clark and Mitu Khandaker-Kokoris, who will both be joining the department this fall as Assistant Arts Professors.
Naomi Clark is a game designer, teacher, and scholar who has been making games since 1999. She has contributed to over three dozen titles in various roles, including designer, producer, artist, writer, and programmer. Naomi’s experience spans from developing games for well-known companies such as LEGO to smaller-scale independent and experimental work.
In addition to her industry experience, Naomi is also a games scholar. She has co-authored two recent books about games. Microcultures: Gaming is an exploration of the history and culture of gaming written for middle schoolers and A Game Design Vocabulary is a textbook that provides a conceptual framework for game analysis and creation. She has given numerous talks at major conferences, such as the Queerness in Games Conference, PRACTICE, Indiecade, Indiecade East, Games for Change and DiGRA.
Although she’s just now joining the full-time faculty of the Game Center, Naomi has been an active member of our community for some time. Over the past few years, she has served as an adjunct professor, Incubator advisor, and a contributor to the development of our brand new undergraduate curriculum. For our 2014 No Quarter exhibition, she created Consentacle, a cooperative card game that has generated a lot of interest for the innovative way it uses gameplay to explore complex themes of sexuality and consent.
Prior to this appointment, Naomi has honed her skill as an educator on an undergraduate and graduate level here at NYU, as well as the New York Film Academy, Parsons: the New School for Design, and the School of Visual Arts. She is enthusiastic about helping students develop their unique creative vision through the arts education model utilized at the NYU Game Center.
Mitu Khandaker-Kokoris is a game designer, scholar, and entrepreneur. She holds a PhD on the aesthetics of interactivity in videogames, completed at the University of Portsmouth in 2015. Prior to that, she was a 2008 Kauffman Global Scholar and received a Masters in Computer Engineering from the University of Portsmouth. A rising star in the games industry, she won the Breakthrough Brit BAFTA in 2013 and the Creative English Trailblazer Award in 2014.
In 2011 Mitu founded The Tiniest Shark Ltd. – an indie micro-studio for which she provides creative, technical, and operational leadership. The Tiniest Shark released Redshirt in 2013, a satirical simulation game that uses science fiction tropes to explore social dynamics. The game received excellent reviews from sources such as Polygon, PC Gamer, and Paste Magazine.
Mitu has been invited to speak at several major conferences and industry events, such as the Game Developers’ Conference, TEDxEastEnd, GamesWest, NineWorlds Conference, and the Royal Academy of Engineering in London. She was a keynote speaker at the 2014 BAFTA Cymru Awards and gave one of the keynotes for the 2015 Global Game Jam. Since 2013, Mitu has served as the STEM/Video Games Ambassador in the UK, where she promotes STEM subjects and game development at schools with a particular interest in advocacy for gender equality in games.
Mitu’s creative, technical, and entrepreneurial skill, and her advocacy for women and minorities in the game industry make her a great addition to the Game Center community.
Both women bring with them exceptional skill, insight, and experience as well as tremendous enthusiasm for the challenge of helping our students create the future of games. Please join us in welcoming them to the NYU Game Center.