| Presenter(s) |  Tracy Fullerton, M.F.A., is a game designer, educator and author with twenty-five years of professional experience. She is currently Director of the joint USC Games Program, which is a collaboration between the School of Cinematic Arts and the Viterbi School of Engineering. She is also a Professor and Chair of the Interactive Media & Games Division of the USC School of Cinematic Arts. In December 2008, she was installed as the holder of the Electronic Arts Endowed Chair of Interactive Entertainment. Tracy is the author of Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Designing Innovative Games. This design textbook is in use at game programs worldwide. Her research lab, the Game Innovation Lab, is a leading center for game design research. Recent credits include faculty adviser for the award-winning student games Cloud, and flOw; and game designer for The Night Journey, a unique game/art project with media artist Bill Viola. She is currently designing a game based on Henry David Thoreau's experiment in living at Walden Pond. Also, she is leading a team of designers to create a suite of college knowledge games collectively known as FutureBound Games. Tracy's work has received numerous industry honors including an Emmy nomination for interactive television, best Family/Board Game from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, most "sublime experience," the "Impact" and "Trailblazer" awards from the Indiecade Festival, ID Magazine's Interactive Design Review, Communication Arts Interactive Design Annual, several New Media Invision awards, iMix Best of Show, the Digital Coast Innovation Award, IBC's Nombre D'Or, Time Magazine's Best of the Web and the Hollywood Reporter's Women in Entertainment Power 100.
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| Description | The much maligned concept of a "walking simulator" holds within it a clue to a kind of game design that we tend to ignore in our rush to design more and more choices into our systems of play. As writer Rebecca Solnit posits, "The rhythm of walking generates a kind of rhythm of thinking, and the passage through a landscape echoes or stimulates the passage through a series of thoughts." In this talk, Tracy considers the possibilities for uncommon mechanics such as walking, musing, waiting and reflecting for the design of games that go beyond "interesting" choices to offer deeply meaningful ones. |
