Practice: Game Design in Detail An NYU Conference

CONFIRMED SPEAKERS

		Holly Gramazio Holly works at the intersection of game design and other cultural forms, with a particular interest in games for public space, events, and installations. In addition to creating her own games, she curates events for physical games, and in her previous role as Lead Game Designer at Hide&Seek led on projects ranging from the New Year Games to 99 Tiny Games.
		Jonathan Blow Jonathan Blow is a game designer living in San Francisco. Three Questions with Jonathan
		Salvatore Garozzo Salvatore Garozzo graduated from Manhattan College with a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and a minor in mathematics. He is a community level designer known for his work on the maps de_cache, de_nuke_ve, de_crown and de_train_ve. Garozzo is also a world-renowned professional Counter-Strike player with over a decade of competitive gaming experience and has been featured in articles in the NY Times, NY Post, NY Daily News and the Journal News. He has parlayed the unique insight gained from his competitive gaming experience directly over to level design, creating community maps that are suitable for competitive play.
		Shawn Snelling Shawn Snelling is a level designer and environment artist with over 10 years of experience as a level designer on AAA titles and in the modding community, who is currently focused on creating beautiful, competitive levels for Counter-Strike: GO. Shawn's primary focus is on the intersection between art and function, to ensure that the same levels being played for countless hours every day by thousands of gamers are as beautiful and interesting as they are practical and fun.
		David Kanaga David Kanaga is a music theorist, game-formalist, and amateur composer based in Oakland. He has worked professionally on videogames including Proteus, Dyad, and Panoramical (forthcoming), and has translated and edited a new edition of Huvanistagg-Ludistagg's "... New Fractal Playspaces" Three Questions with David
		John Popadiuk Digital author, writer, storyteller, brand creator, interactive producer and game designer John A. Popadiuk, Jr. is best known for his study, research and unbridled selective game development in the world of arcade pinball machines for Bally® while pioneering early digital pinball simulation software for Broderbund. John is also most proud of his foundational work in smart classroom learning environments for the Nanoschool Project, and interactive reality architecture for the Apple Store he finally garnered a nod from Apple Inc. for his unique Space Crayons™ kids app while watching his unassuming Pinball Wizard!™ app reach over 1 million players for the iPhone. Mr. Popadiuk holds numerous design or engineering patents related to pinball game development or unique mechanical device systems, controllers and interface elements and is currently the VP of Product Development for Zidware Studios in Chicago, a small indie startup currently working on digital projects in education, games while exploring new methods and paradigms in pinball game design and building. Three Questions with John
		Kentucky Route Zero Jake Elliot & Tamas Kemenczy Jake & Tamas have been collaborating on software art, installation, experimental music, and videogames for the last ten years. Their current project, Kentucky Route Zero, has won awards including the Visual Art award at the IGF, and the Story & World and Visual Art awards at Indiecade.
		Dierdre Kiai Bio: Deirdra "Squinky" Kiai is a writer, programmer, musician, and visual artist who creates videogame-like artifacts about gender identity, social awkwardness, and miscellaneous silliness. Most recently responsible for "Dominique Pamplemousse in 'It's All Over Once The Fat Lady Sings!'" and "Coffee: A Misunderstanding", they are currently completing an MFA in Digital Arts and New Media at UC Santa Cruz.
		Samantha Kalman Samantha Kalman is an independent Artistic Technologist and founder of Timbre Interactive, LLC. She is a self-taught game designer, programmer, and musician. Her current project is Sentris, a unique puzzle game funded via Kickstarter that’s intended to help everybody create music. Previously, as a Design Technologist at Amazon she developed and co-designed interactive user experience prototypes for the Fire Phone. And as QA Director at Unity Technologies she helped thousands of developers make games by shipping multiple versions of the Unity engine. She is based in Seattle, owns a cat, and always enjoys a nice glass of wine.
		Lukas Litzsinger Lukas is a tabletop game designer who rebooted the classic game of Netrunner into Android: Netrunner. Published as a Living Card Game by Fantasy Flight Games, Android: Netrunner won two Golden Geek awards and continues to release regular expansions. Lukas has also worked on Warhammer: Diskwars, the Lord of the Rings Living Card Game, Civilization: Wisdom and Warfare, and the upcoming XCOM: The Board Game. He lives in the Twin Cities and works for Fantasy Flight Games full-time.
		Zach Gage Zach Gage is a game designer, programmer, educator, and conceptual artist from New York City. His work often explores the power of systems, both those created by social interaction in digital spaces, and those that can be created for others, through the framing of games. An Eyebeam Alumni, Apple Design and Game of The Year Award Winner, and BAFTA Nominee, he has exhibited internationally at venues like the Venice Biennale, the New York MoMA, The Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, XOXO Festival in Portland, FutureEverything in Manchester, The Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, and in Apple stores worldwide. His work has been featured in several online and printed publications, including The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, EDGE Magazine, Rhizome.org, Neural Magazine, New York Magazine, and Das Spiel und seine Grenzen (Springer Press). In games, he is best known for SpellTower, Ridiculous Fishing, and Lose/Lose.
		Drew Murray Drew Murray is the game director of Sunset Overdrive at Insomniac Games in sunny Los Angeles, California. After aborted careers as an artist, chef, and attorney, Drew heard Jay Leno making fun of a new game design program at The Guildhall at SMU in a monologue and immediately enrolled. Drew joined Insomniac Games in July 1995 and worked on Resistance: Fall of Man, Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, Resistance 2, and Resistance 3. Sunset Overdrive is a new IP developed by Drew and creative director Marcus Smith and will be released on October 28, 2014.
		Asher Vollmer Asher Vollmer is an independent game developer best known for designing the minimalist iOS puzzlers Threes and Puzzlejuice. He learned his trade by spending ten months at thatgamecompany and four years at the University of Southern California. He can, to this day, tell you the solution to every puzzle in every LucasArts adventure game that he's played since childhood.
		Colleen Macklin Colleen Macklin is a game designer, an Associate Professor in the school of Art, Media and Technology at Parsons The New School for Design and founder and co-director of PETLab (Prototyping Education and Technology Lab), a lab that develops games for experimental learning and social engagement. PETLab projects include disaster preparedness games and sports with the Red Cross, the urban activist game Re:Activism and the physical/fiscal sport Budgetball. PETLab has also published game design curricula for the Boys and Girls Club and via the website activategames.org. She is a member of the game design collective Local No. 12, best known for their social card game, the Metagame. Her work has been shown at Come Out and Play, UCLA Art\|Sci Center, The Whitney Museum for American Art and Creative Time.