About the Contributors
Keyvan Acosta is continually developing his talents and passions as game designer, musician, writer, and teacher, sharing it all as a course director in the Game Design department at Full Sail University. In recent years, he’s also participated in various industry conferences as a contributor, speaker, and judge, including Art History of Games, Game Developers Conference, Project Horseshoe, Siggraph Bogotá, and SXSW Interactive. Keyvan’s credits include game designer at ZeeGee Games, programmer, and creative consultant for various companies like CyberMedia (PR), IGDA Global Game Jam, Mekensleep, and MuninuM.
Liz Canacari-Rose was born and raised in Denver, Colorado. She has studied and worked in the IT industry since 1997, from hardware support to web development to software and game development. In 2000, she had the rare privilege of working with a company to create interactive, 3D training solutions for the medical industry. This, along with a lifetime passion for video games, piqued her interest in the game industry. She went on to receive two degrees from Full Sail University—a BS in Game Design and Development in 2006, and an MS in Entertainment Business in 2009. She continues to develop her own games through her small business, in addition to teaching Game History at Full Sail University.
Michael Deneen has been a professional game designer for over seven years. He most recently designed and implemented levels for PlaysStation All Stars: Battle Royale, God of War: Ghost of Sparta, and God of War: Chains of Olympus. Previously, Michael worked in various roles on the Fantastic Four, Sopranos, Medal of Honor, and James Bond franchises.
Zack Hiwiller is a game designer, educator, and writer who lives in Orlando, Florida. He is the department chair for the Game Design degree program at Full Sail University and the lead designer at Sky Parlor Studios. Previously, in addition to his independent projects, he was a designer at Gameloft and Electronic Arts (EA). His writing, at hiwiller.com, has been reposted by Kotaku, GameSetWatch, and others and has reached over a million readers.
Dr. Jeff Howard is an assistant professor of Game Development and Design at Dakota State University, where he plays a key role leading the narrative focus area in the Computer Game Design program. He is the author of Quests: Design, Theory, and History in Games and Narratives (A K Peters Ltd., 2008) and the program committee chair for the Workshop on Integrated Design in Games (IDIG). He continues to develop his transmedia work, Arcana, while filling the quiet moments by researching and writing for his book on magic systems in games.
Christina Kadinger is currently a professor at Full Sail University in the Game Design program. She has a BA in Economics from Rollins College and a Law Degree from Barry University. She enjoys playing games, seeing live bands, and playing ice hockey in her spare time.
Chris Keeling is a video game industry veteran; he first worked on Panzer Elite in 1998, followed by America’s Army, Twilight War, Order of War, and other military titles (which probably has something to do with his 23 years of service in the US Army and Army Reserve). He is currently chained to a desk in Eastern Europe at Wargaming.Net, where he is a senior producer on the highly successful World of Tanks, as well as on the forthcoming World of Warplanes, World of Warships, and several unannounced projects. Chris has also worked as a game writer, game designer, and game educator, and until recently, as Program Manager for the Game Design program at Full Sail University, where he still serves on the Program Advisory Board. He also volunteers on the Executive Committee of the International Game Developers Association’s Game Writing Special Interest Group and blogs about his tedious life at www.aconnecticutyankee.com.
Casey Kuczik is a senior producer at Ubisoft Entertainment in Paris, where he is part of a team responsible for advancing mobile game development and publishing. During his career, Casey has held the roles of head of mobile, producer, designer, writer, and tester at the companies Bigpoint, Electronic Arts, and Seven Studios. Since 2009, Casey has been an instructor at Full Sail University, where he teaches Design and Development Analysis, a course focused on deconstructing video games with a critical perspective; this is an original course of his creation. Casey graduated from Yale University in 2003 with a BA double major in American Studies and Film Studies, and in 2010, he completed an MBA from Loyola Marymount University.
Nicole Lazzaro is a world-renowned game researcher, designer, and speaker who makes games more fun. Nicole discovered the Four Keys to Fun, a model used by hundreds of thousands of game developers worldwide, in 2004. She used this model to design the iPhone’s first accelerometer game, now called Tilt World, in 2007. Nicole is referred to as one of the 100 most influential women in high-tech, one of the top 20 women working in video games, and one of the top 10 women in gamification. Nicole’s work has been widely cited by global news media such as CNN, Wired, Fast Company, CNET, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Hollywood Reporter, Red Herring, and the Boston Globe. She has advised the White House and the US State Department on the use of games to unlock human potential to improve our world. For the past two decades, as the CEO of XEODesign, she has improved hundreds of millions of player experiences for companies such as Ubisoft, EA, Disney, and Cartoon Network; as well as worked on best-selling franchises such as Myst, Diner Dash, Pogo, and The Sims. One of the pioneers in applying game design outside of games, she designed game-inspired UI for Oracle, Cisco, Kaiser, Sun, Roxio, and others as early as 1992.
Tom Long is an award-winning game studies educator and game designer. He has worked in the game and simulation industry for more than 15 years. During those years, he has twice judged the Front Line Awards for Game Developer magazine, has won the Unity Great Education Giveaway Contest, and has contributed to many published game titles. In his spare time, he can be found at the local hacker space, FamiLAB, working on his Maker Faire project. Tom currently teaches Level Design II at Full Sail University in Winter Park, Florida. Follow him on Twitter at @tomlong74.
Michael Lucas was a gamer before the advent of video games; he played tournament Chess and Backgammon and worked to develop one of the best Chess-playing software systems in the world by 1979: DUCHESS (for Duke University Chess). As a National Master of Chess out of college, Michael continued in competitive gaming and worked in war-game simulations for the Navy. Michael later trained artists on Monster House, Open Season, Beowulf, Surf’s Up, and many other films at Sony Pictures Imageworks and Sony Pictures Animation. His areas of expertise there were in hair and cloth simulation, Python and Maya scripting, and stereoscopic 3D. He has also worked in TV and on documentaries. He was the postproduction supervisor in 2010 on Mark Kistler’s Imagination Station, and helped the show win an Emmy Award. He is now a course director at Full Sail University and teaches Level Design with UDK, Usability, and The Game Industry.
Dave Mark is the president and lead designer of Intrinsic Algorithm, an independent game development studio and AI consulting company in Omaha, Nebraska. He is the author of Behavioral Mathematics for Game AI (Course Technology PTR, 2009), has written for numerous other industry books and Game Developer magazine, and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences on the topics of game AI, game theory, and psychology. Additionally, he is the co-founder of the AI Game Programmers Guild and is the co-advisor of the GDC AI Summit. Dave continues to further his education by attending the University of Life. He has no plans to graduate any time soon.
Doug Oberndorf has a BA in Art with a focus in 2D & 3D Animation, and an MFA in Special Effects Animation. Doug is a course director at Full Sail University and teaches courses about the game industry. He owns the indie game development company Tropic Mods Development and volunteers at events for the National Kidney Foundation (NKF).
Patricia Pizer debuted in the gaming industry at Infocom in 1988, where she made games back when you didn’t even need graphics. Over the next decade, she worked at such studios as Boffo Games, THQ/GameFX, and Harmonix Music. Patricia moved into massively multiplayer online (MMO) games as Creative Director at Turbine Entertainment before she worked on MMOs at Ubisoft and Disney’s VR Studio, the makers of Toontown. After applying her design skills to alternate reality games for 42 Entertainment, she returned to Disney Interactive Studios, where she designed DGamer, a DS online avatar SNA service, and worked on the Club Penguin Elite Penguin Force. Most recently, Patricia was Creative Director for ZeeGee Games. Mostly, though, Patricia just likes to play games.
Michael Pynn is a creative writing instructor at the college level as well as a game designer. He has taught numerous subjects relevant to students of game design, including composition, professional communication, narrative development, analog game design, game documentation, and more. As a designer, Michael has produced multiple alternate reality games and interactive story experiences. A member of the International Game Developers Association, he holds a BA from the University of Central Florida and an MFA in Creative Writing for Entertainment Business from Full Sail University.
Brian Stabile is a game designer/programmer, musician, audio engineer, teacher, and linguist. In addition to teaching online classes at Full Sail University, Brian is the drummer for Yogurt Smoothness, a nationally touring indie rock band, and co-owner of Astro Crow, an independent game developer best known for their iOS title The Last Ace of Space. He worked as a programmer and Japanese translator for the PC title Three Dead Zed, and worked with the University of Central Florida’s RETRO Lab programming “serious games” for clients such as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the Defense Acquisition University.
Jason VandenBerghe has been making games for 17 years, and is currently a creative director at Ubisoft (most recently on Far Cry 3 and Ghost Recon: Future Soldier). In his career, he has been a programmer, producer, designer, and director. He has worked on bad games, good games, hard-to-make games, and, er, less hard-to-make games, and he intends to keep on doing that for as long as they will let him.
About the Illustrator
Raymond Yuen is an illustrator and designer from New York and is currently living in San Francisco. His love of comics inspired him to work through the caricature ranks at Six Flags Great Adventure and in the colorful offices of Pokémon USA. Currently, he is the cofounder and art director at Suspended Belief Studios, his game design company. You can find him at www.rayuen.com.