Interactive Media & Games

University of Southern California's Interactive Media & Games division. http://interactive.usc.edu/

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New Post has been published on http://interactive.usc.edu/2015/04/27/interactive-media-forum-for-42915-virtual-fieldtrip/

Interactive Media Forum for 4/29/15: Virtual Fieldtrip

Speakers: Joshua McVeigh-Schultz, Julian Bleecker, Flint Dille Time: Wednesday, April 29, 4-6pm Location: USC’s School of Cinematic Arts Interactive Media Building(SCI), Room 108

For the final seminar of this semester, we will experiment with a prototype learning experience designed to flip the idea of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Whereas MOOCs bring students from outside the university into the academy through a virtual learning experience, we are developing a platform that enables students within the university to venture off-campus and into the most exciting, demanding and provocative worlds of professionals in their field. The prototype uses available technology to create a series of two-way conversations between students on campus and professionals in the field using Google Glass and a customized interface designed to facilitate clarity and intimacy between the students and the professional. The seminar will start with a brief history of Telematics and Telepresence by iMAP PhD candidate Joshua McVeigh-Schultz and then connect to the viewpoint of a guide who will tour us through the remote location.

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New Post has been published on usc interactive media & games

New Post has been published on http://interactive.usc.edu/2015/04/09/im-forum-for-41515-experiments-prototypes-previews/

IM Forum for 4/15/15: Experiments, Prototypes, Previews

Speakers: IMGD 2nd Year MFA Students Time: Wednesday, April 15, 4-5:50pm Location: USC’s School of Cinematic Arts Interactive Media Building (SCI), Room 206

Please join us for a special event this Wednesday April 15 at 4:00-6:00PM in SCI 206 when the second year MFA students will be presenting their experiments, prototypes and previews of next year’s IMGD Thesis projects. This will be a dynamic, hands-on opportunity to experience and critique a variety of interactive experiences at a crucial moment in their development. Don’t miss this preview of things to come.

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New Post has been published on http://interactive.usc.edu/2015/04/04/interactive-media-forum-for-4815-diversity-in-games/

Interactive Media Forum for 4/8/15: Diversity in Games

Title: “Diversity in Games” Speakers: Anne Toole, Ekta Kumar, Stephanie Preovolos, Janine Tedford, Brian McDonald Time: Wednesday, April 8, 4-6pm Location: USC’s School of Cinematic Arts Interactive Media Building(SCI), Room 108

USC Interactive Media and Games Division in partnership with the International Game Developers Association invites the USC community and general public to a discussion and presentation regarding diversity in the games industry. The speakers will be presenting facts and strategies to promote diversity and educate others on how to be an ally.

Speakers: Anne Toole, IGDA Board Member and Women in Games SIG Co-Chair Anne Toole is a writer of games, television, webseries, and short fiction. Her credits include the Emmy-winning webseries THE LIZZIE BENNET DIARES and the WGA-nominated dark fantasy game THE WITCHER. Due to her transmedia experience, Anne has spoken at the inaugural Nokia OpenLab 2008 as well as about game design at GDC Europe, GDC Online, South by Southwest, the Login Game Conference, and Comic-con International. In addition to her work with the IGDA, she was appointed by the West Hollywood City Council to serve on the city’s Women’s Advisory Board. Anne graduated from Harvard with an ever-so-useful degree in Archaeology and suffers a minor zombie obsession.

Dr.Ekta Kumar, Director of USC Center for Women and Men Ekta Kumar, Psy.D, has been named Director of the Center for Women and Men. Dr. Kumar comes to USC from the Loyola University Maryland counseling center, where she provided sound leadership in responding to sexual assault and other campus crises, provided individual, couples and group counseling, and served as a consultant and trainer for multicultural communities. She has facilitated numerous workshops including issues involving LGBTQA, gender and women of color, and she has presented at national conferences and published in national journals.

Stephanie Preovolos and Janine Tedford, Blizzard Entertainment, Human Resources Brian McDonald, Game Designer at Activision / Infinity Ward Brian McDonald has been an out-and-proud force in the game industry since 2008. He has worked on world class properties from Call of Duty to Hannah Montana, created award winning personal projects, and is a mentor with the IGDA mentors program. On the job, he is an outspoken proponent of diversity and inclusion who helped successfully push for female avatars in Call of Duty multiplayer. Brian earned a BS in Psychology & Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and currently works as a gameplay designer for Activision / Infinity Ward in Los Angeles, California. More info at www.bmcd.me — follow me @latestevolution

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Speaker: Drew Murray & Marcus Smith, Insomniac Games Time: Wednesday, March 25, 4-6pm Location: USC’s School of Cinematic Arts Interactive Media Building(SCI), Room 206 Title: “Expect the Unexpected: Lessons from Directing Sunset Overdrive (and becoming old men in the games industry)”

It’s not every day that you are offered the opportunity to do “whatever you want” and that freedom can be a blessing or curse. Marcus & Drew will discuss the challenges they experienced trying to do something different, from the obstacles of communication to the unexpected expectations of running a AAA console title in this tumultuous period.   Drew Murray is the Game Director of Sunset Overdrive. 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 has worked on Resistance: Fall of Man, Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, Resistance 2, and Resistance 3.   Marcus Smith was the Creative Director of Sunset Overdrive. Before that, he fulfilled the same role on Resistance 3, was Project Manager of the first two Resistance titles. Prior to starting at Insomniac, Marcus worked for Mark Cerny’s design consultancy, Cerny Games for nearly five years. Marcus started his career in video games in 1995 working on ‘Steven Spielberg’s Director’s Chair’, more ‘video’ than ‘game’, but it was an educational experience. It also means Marcus is super old.

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Interactive Media Forum for 3/25/15: Refik Anadol

Speaker: Refik Anadol Time: Wednesday, March 25, 4-6pm Location: USC’s School of Cinematic Arts Interactive Media Building(SCI), Room 206

Refik Anadol is a media artist, director and designer born in Istanbul, Turkey in 1985. Currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California. He is a lecturer in UCLA’s Department of Design Media Arts. Refik is working in the fields of site-specific public art with parametric data sculpture approach and live audio/visual performance with immersive installation approach, particularly his works explore the space among digital and physical entities by creating a hybrid relationship between architecture and media arts. He holds a master of fine arts degree from University of California, Los Angeles in Media Arts, master of fine arts degree from Istanbul Bilgi University in Visual Communication Design as well as bachelors of arts degree with summa cum laude in Photography and Video. Co-founder and Creative director at Antilop.

As a media artist, designer and spatial thinker, Refik Anadol is intrigued by the ways in which the transformation of the subject of contemporary culture requires rethinking of the new aesthetic, technique and dynamic perception of space. Anadol builds his works on the nomadic subject’s reaction to and interactions with unconventional spatial orientations. Embedding media arts into architecture, he questions the possibility of a post digital architectural future in which there are no more non-digital realities. He invites the viewers to visualize alternative realities by presenting them the possibility of re-defining the functionalities of both interior and exterior architectural formations. Anadol’s work suggests that all spaces and facades have potentials to be utilized as the media artists’ canvases. He has been given awards, residencies and has served as a guest lecturer. His site-specific audio/visual performances have been seen in Walt Disney Concert Hall (USA), Hammer Museum (USA), International Digital Arts Biennial Montreal (Canada), Ars Electronica Festival (Austria), l’Usine | Genève (Switzerland), Arc De Triomf (Spain), Zollverein | SANAA’s School of Design Building (Germany), santralistanbul Contemporary Art Center (Turkey), Outdoor Vision Festival SantaFe New Mexico (USA), Istanbul Design Biennial (Turkey), Sydney City Art (Australia), Lichtrouten (Germany).

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New Post has been published on usc interactive media & games

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Interactive Media Forum for 3/4/15: Jeffrey Shaw

Speaker: Jeffrey Shaw Time: Wednesday, March 4, 4-6pm Location: USC’s School of Cinematic Arts Interactive Media Building(SCI),Room 108 Title: New Media Art and the Cinematic Imaginary

New Media Art today offers a large spectrum of perceptual experiences that forge new levels of heightened perception based on innovative methods of conveying and exchanging information. These new media technologies demonstrate the power of media to reformulate space and time as a surrogate experience. Their imperative is the disappearance of the picture frame, enabling the interactive viewer to become immersed and enlivened by the re-presented experience. In his presentation Professor Jeffrey Shaw will elucidate a forty year artistic practice than ranges between expanded cinema and virtual reality, showing examples of work that describe the reformulation of narrative as a situation of emergent interaction. He will also describe recent virtual heritage projects being developed at the City University of Hong Kong Applied Laboratory for Visualization and Embodiment (ALiVE).

Jeffrey Shaw has been a leading figure in new media art since the 1960′s. In a prolific oeuvre of widely exhibited and critically acclaimed works he has pioneered and set benchmarks for the creative use of digital media technologies in the fields of virtual and augmented reality, immersive visualization environments, navigable cinematic systems and interactive narrative. Jeffrey Shaw was the founding director of the ZKM Institute for Visual Media Karlsruhe (1991-2002), and in 2003 he was awarded an Australian Research Council Federation Fellowship to co-found and direct the UNSW iCinema Centre for Interactive Cinema Research. Since 2009 Shaw has been Chair Professor of Media Art and Dean of the School of Creative Media at City University in Hong Kong). Shaw is also Visiting Professor at the Imperial College Institute of Global Health Innovation and at the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing.

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Interactive Media Forum for 2/18/15: Justin Shacklette, Parker Lowrey, Spencer Stirling (Activision)

Speakers: Justin Shacklette, Parker Lowrey, Spencer Stirling, Activision Time: Wednesday, February 18, 4-6pm Location: USC’s School of Cinematic Arts Interactive Media Building(SCI), Room 206 Title: Big Data in Games

Justin Shacklette is a Principal Data Scientist in Activision’s Game Science division. He spends his days building analytic services to support Activision’s multiplayer online games, such as Call of Duty. Prior to joining Activision, Justin spent ten years developing enterprise software for web, mobile, and cloud applications. In his younger years, Justin earned his doctorate in physics before turning to development. His Evil thesis advisor had him working day and night on a portable laser beam system that could be mounted on the head of a shark. Needless to say, it didn’t work out.

Parker Lowrey is a PhD mathematician and data scientist currently working in the Game Science division of Activision. Parker has extensive analytics experience ranging from helping found a bioinformatics startup in Austin, Texas to Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Beyond mathematics, his expertise spans large scale computing, machine learning, and statistics. When not researching new machine learning techniques or model building, Parker can be found destroying n00bs on the video game battlefield.

Spencer Stirling earned his PhD in mathematics and quantum physics in 2008, then spent the next four years managing a research group modelling exotic cold materials for quantum computers. Switching to industry in 2012, Spencer developed computer vision software for the satellite imagery, focusing on designing scalable algorithms (in C++ and Python) for large-scale mosaicing of the earth. Now with the Game Science division of Activision, he develops algorithms and statistical models to catch all manner of cheaters for the Call of Duty franchise.

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New Post has been published on usc interactive media & games

New Post has been published on http://interactive.usc.edu/2015/01/19/interactive-media-forum-for-12115-jeremy-bernstein/

Interactive Media Forum for 1/21/15: Jeremy Bernstein

Speaker: Jeremy Bernstein Time: Wednesday, January 21, 4-6pm Location: USC’s School of Cinematic Arts Interactive Media Building(SCI), Room 206 Title: Sequence Structure for Games- Beyond 3 Acts in Narrative Design

3-Act Structure—Hollywood’s dominant paradigm in film narrative—has often been adopted as a guideline for game narrative. But 3-Act structure meshes poorly with the requirements and vocabulary of gameplay design. Fortunately, there are other paradigms, including one taught right here across the hall in the USC School of Cinematic Arts Screenwriting program… Though created for film and other linear media, “Sequence Structure”, can easily be adapted for use in games, melding seamlessly with game elements such as mission objectives, experientiality, and gameplay loops, paving the way for even stronger narrative in the next generation of games. Join USC Screenwriting Alum and games industry professional Jeremy Bernstein for a talk and discussion, as he walks you through the basics of Sequence Structure with a specific eye to how it adapts to games.

Jeremy Bernstein is primarily a television and video game writer, who has also worked in game design, feature films, and comic books. And the pharmaceutical industry. Seriously, he’s had a weird career. His TV credits include TNT’s hit shows Leverage The Librarians, while his video game credits include both Dead Space 2 and Pretty in Pink. That’s right. Dead Space 2 and Pretty in Pink. Jeremy wields Masters degrees in both Biochemistry and Screenwriting (the latter earned right here at the USC School of Cinematic Arts). He has been writing stories and designing games since he was eight years old. He’s much better at it now.

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Course Outline

Course Outline: (This material is subject to change)

This is available online here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PaNlDd7doVVgK8zS79l0vpeusO_CVqceXKoLDOtXv3o/edit

Please bookmark the link for future reference.

Week 1 – 1/12/2015 - Overview of the Course — You are a Game Designer!

Lecture: Overview of the course. What is a game? Intro to Playcentric design. Role of a game designer. Games are actions.

  Lab: Up the River: Re-design a simple game system

Assignments: Group – Up the River Mod

  Reading: GDW: Ch. 1, 2

MDA paper: http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~hunicke/MDA.pdf

Doug Church, Formal Abstract Design Tools: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3357/formal_abstract_design_tools.php

  Week 2 – 1/19/2015 (NO LECTURE)

Lecture: NO LECTURE / MLK Jr. Day

  Lab: Playtesting / Up the River Mod Final Playtests

UP THE RIVER MOD DUE

Assignments: Group – Game Project 1

  Reading: GDW: Ch. 3, 6

Anthropy and Clark, Ch. 1 (Language), 2 (Verbs and Objects)

Greg Costikyan, I Have no Words and Must Design: Toward a Critical Vocabulary for Games:

http://www.digra.org/wp-content/uploads/digital-library/05164.51146.pdf

Week 3 –  1/26/2015 - Formal Elements, Game Language.

Lecture: Discussion of elements that make up the formal structures of game systems. Analysis of game rules from classic games. The language of games and interactivity. MDA.

  Lab: Game Project 1 Playtests

Assignments: Group – Game Project 1

Individual – Game Analysis

  Reading: GDW: Ch. 7, 9

Mattie Brice: Death of the Player

http://www.mattiebrice.com/death-of-the-player/

Watch video: Three Ways to make Your Game More Inclusive:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xKkaYt3BtU

Week 4 –  2/2/2015 – Playcentric Design and Playtesting. Inclusive Design. Lecture: Player at the Center; articulating design goals; the aesthetics of play; values at play; prototyping, playtesting, and iteration.

  Lab: Game Project 1 Final Playtesting

GAME PROJECT 1 DUE

INDIVIDUAL GAME ANALYSIS DUE

Assignments: Individual – Game Project 2

  Reading: GDW 4

Anthropy and Clark, Ch. 3 (Scenes) and 4 (Context)

Watch: Jenova Chen Lecture: Blank Canvas: Designing a New Era of Emotional Storytelling through Games

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_RKKuKvAvA

Week 5 –  2/9/2015 - Emotion in Games and Experience Design; Dramatic Elements

Lecture: Emotion as a game aesthetic. Games as experiences. Applying traditional tools of drama to game design.

  Lab: Playtesting / Workshopping Game Project 2

Assignments: Individual – Game Project 2

  Reading: GDW: Ch. 5

Watch: Don Norman video on Affordances:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK1Zb_5VxuM

Watch: Clint Hocking: Dynamics: the State of the Art

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/185510/Video_Clint_Hocking_discusses_dynamics_in_games.php#.USAMFGdZNLY

Week 6 – 2/16/2015

Lecture: NO LECTURE

  Lab: Playtesting / Workshopping Game Project 2

Assignments: Individual – Game Project 2

  Reading: GDW: Ch. 10, 11

Week 7 – 2/23/2015 - System Dynamics

Lecture: Systems in motion. Interesting choices. Affordances. Game loops and states. Emergence.

  Lab: RPG Class Play

GAME PROJECT 2 DUE

Assignments: Group – Game Project 3

Individual - Mid-Term Paper

  Reading: Raph Koster: Excerpt from A Theory of Fun:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2173/book_excerpt_a_theory_of_game_.php

Anthropy and Clark, Ch 5 (Creating Dialogue) and 6 (Resistance)

  Week 8 – 3/2/2015. GDC.

What is “Fun”? Social play, the aesthetics of games.

  Lab: Playtesting / Workshopping Game Project 3

MID-TERM PAPER DUE

Assignments: Group – Game Project 3

  Reading:

Anthropy and Clark, Ch. 7 (Storytelling)

Alice and Kev (sims 3, emergent play): http://aliceandkev.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/alice-and-kev/

GNS and Other Matters of Role-playing Theory:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/1/

  Week 9 – 3/9/2015 - Role-Playing Games and Narrative Play

Lecture: Role-playing Games, emergent narrative, collaborative storytelling, drama, world-building, community design.

  Lab: Game Project 3 Mid-Project Playtests

Assignments: Group – Game Project 3

Individual - Final Project Pitch

  Reading: GDW: Ch. 15, 16

Liz England: From Student to Designer Part 2: Portfolio http://www.lizengland.com/blog/2014/06/from-student-to-designer-part-2/

  SPRING BREAK – 3/16/2015

Week 10 –  3/23/2015 - Pitching & Professionalism

Lecture: Talking about your project, pitching, presenting professional materials. Networking, interviewing, and professionalism.

  Lab: Final Project Pitches

GAME PROJECT 3 DUE

FINAL PROJECT PITCH DUE

Assignments: Group – Final Project

  Reading: GDW: Ch. 13, 14

Daniel Cook, Game Design Logs:

http://www.lostgarden.com/2011/05/game-design-logs.html

Ant’s Life GDD:

http://www.cs.tufts.edu/comp/150CIS/AnAntsLife/AnAntsLife-GameDesignDocument.pdf

Erin Robinson: 5 Alternatives to a GDD

http://livelyivy.com/gravityghost-com/5-alternatives-to-a-game-design-doc/

Week 11 – 3/30/2015 - Macro Design and Documentation

Lecture: Thinking through the big picture of your design, documenting your process, communicating design to others.

  Lab: Playtesting / Workshopping Final Project

Assignments: Group – Final Project

  Reading: GDW: Ch. 8

   Week 12 – 4/6/2015 - Designer Rules: Decisiveness

Lecture: Concept through delivery, making Decisions, killing your favorites

Assignment: Prepare your slides for full course review (assignment handed out in class).

Lab: Playtesting / Workshopping Final Project

Assignments: Group – Final Project

  Reading: Review your readings.

  Week 13 – 4/13/2014 -

Lecture: Full Course Review

  Lab: EXAM (1 hr) and Workshopping Final Project

Assignments: Group - Final Project

  Reading:

GDW: Ch. 12

Watch Brian Sharp: Concrete Practices to Be a Better Leader (2010)

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1012346/Concrete-Practices-to-be-a

Week 14 – 4/20/2015

Lecture: Team communication, team structure, process and documentation

Reading: Watch a GDC Microtalk: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020391/GDC-Microtalks-2014-One-Hour

Lab: Final Project Turn-In

FINAL PROJECT ASSETS DUE

Assignments: Group – Final Presentation

  Week 15 – 4/27/2015 - Lecture and Discussion

Lecture: Final Lecture, Full Class Review

  Lab: Final Presentation Rehearsal

Assignments: Group – Final Presentation

Final Exam – 5/8/2015 11:00 AM - Project Pitches

FINAL PROJECT DUE – PRESENT PITCHES IN CLASS

Final Exam Time: Present pitches

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New Post has been published on usc interactive media & games

New Post has been published on http://interactive.usc.edu/2014/10/30/interactive-media-forum-for-11514-nauman-javed-gaikai/

Interactive Media Forum for 11/5/14: Nauman Javed, Gaikai

Speaker: Nauman Javed, Gaikai Time: Wednesday, November 5, 4-6pm Location: USC’s School of Cinematic Arts Interactive Media Building(SCI), Room 206

Nauman Javed is a computer engineer presently working at Gaikai, a Sony Computer Entertainment company, on integrating its revolutionary video game streaming service to all kinds of consumer electronics devices, from smart TVs and cable/satellite set-top boxes to tablets and smart phones. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Engineering earlier this year from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He has worked in the research and development of various large-scale distributed computer systems, ranging from defense command and control systems to networked radar systems and other cyber-physical systems. Among some of his avocational forays was his development of a language understanding software system to be used on a robot. In his spare time, he enjoys consuming good literature in cognitive science and neuroscience.

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CONGRATS to James Earl Cox III and his brother for getting their game EnviroGolf into EGX London's 2014 Leftfield Collection: http://www.egxlondon.net/whats-on/show-floor/

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New Post has been published on usc interactive media & games

New Post has been published on http://interactive.usc.edu/2014/09/12/interactive-media-forum-for-91714-david-marlett/

Interactive Media Forum for 9/17/14: David Marlett

Speaker: David Marlett (CINEMERSIA, dmarlett.com) Time: Wednesday, September 17, 4-6pm Location: USC’s School of Cinematic Arts Interactive Media Building(SCI), Room 206 Title: CINEMERSIA – So thus Begins the Era of Immersive Cinema

David Marlett is a misfit storyteller – an author, filmmaker, photoartist, screenwriter, professor, innovator, designer, doctoral student… oh and he’s also an over-educated recovering-attorney and crowdfunding guru. (Want to skip ahead? Feel free to browse around on www.dmarlett.com instead.)

Marlett is researching and developing what he calls “cinemersia” – the cinematic, storytelling, and artistic skills and ideas necessary to develop, produce, and distribute feature length, live-action, narrative, HMD-delivered ‘films’ to a broad audience. [insert deep breath here] To that end, Marlett and producer Richard Middleton (The Artist, Hitchcock, I Love You Phillip Morris) are producing Marlett’s screenplay/stage-play, Blue Highway, as one of the first such ‘cinemersive’ films. (Marlett will direct.) Due to its theatrical qualities, limited sets and action, close-in dialogue, and intimate subject matter, Blue Highway is in simultaneous development as both a stage play and a feature film (a ‘first’). See: Variety: Broadway? Bigscreen? ‘Blue Highway’ Preps for Both (2013) http://variety.com/2013/film/news/broadway-bigscreen-blue-highway-preps-for-both-1200487739/ This cross-platfrom suitability renders Blue Highway ideal for “immersive cinema’, the production of which is often surmised as akin to filming a play from an on-stage perspective. (BTW, Marlett is always on the hunt for artists, innovators, techies, producers, and hardware companies right for the Blue Highway production team.)

He is currently pursuing his doctorate in Immersive Cinema at the Arts & Technology Department (ATEC) at the University of Texas (Dallas) where he is a Senior Research Fellow in the ArtSciLab, under the guidance of Dr. Roger Malina. He has a law degree from the University of Texas School of Law, degrees in accounting, economics and finance, and has served on numerous boards and committees, including with the Clinton Global Initiative, United Way Foundations, and the SEC’s Forum for Small Business.

Marlett is a best-selling author, with his first novel, FORTUNATE SON, recently at #3 on Amazon in ‘All Literature and Fiction’, and #2 in ‘All Historical Fiction’. He has created a new sub-genre of historical fiction: the Historical Trial Drama. These novels take major historical trials, and the characters and events surrounding them, and bring them alive. He is published by legendary fiction publisher Lou Aronica (HarperCollins) through a new imprint, StoryPlant; and his literary agent is the incomparable Jane Dystel (NY). All of Marlett’s novels are available on Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble (online and in stores), and Apple’s iBooks. FORTUNATE SON is currently out to producers for placement as a Premium Cable/Netflix dramatic series. Fingers crossed.

He speaks and gives guest lectures regularly on new media, entrepreneurship in the arts, and crowdfunding. In addition, he has written a number of online and print pieces on filmmaking and new media, including columns in Moviemaker Magazine and Digital Book World. He has appeared on all national television news networks and many times in Variety, Deadline Hollywood, and The Hollywood Reporter. Further, Marlett is one of the leading experts in the world on crowdfunding. He is the Founder and Executive Director of the National Crowdfunding Association, the oldest trade association for crowdfunding, and Past-Chairman of the Board of Governors of the World Crowdfund Federation, which pulls together crowdfunding organizations around the globe. In addition, he formed and leads www.CrowdFormation.org, a crowdfunding support organization for the advancement of crowdfunding’s use in an academic environment.

For more: www.DMarlett.com, www.Cinemersia.com, and follow his tweets @David_Marlett

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Bonus game! Let's talk about it in lecture when we consider dynamics. What is this game about?

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New Post has been published on usc interactive media & games

New Post has been published on http://interactive.usc.edu/2014/08/31/interactive-media-forum-for-9314-flint-dille/

Interactive Media Forum for 9/3/14: Flint Dille

Speaker: Flint Dille, Google Time: Wednesday, September 3 , 4-6pm Location: USC’s School of Cinematic Arts Interactive Media Building(SCI), Room 206

Flint has been described by a number of titles: Transmediologist, World builder, ARGonaut, Gameifyer, Narrative alchemist and sometimes simply writer and game designer… He is currently creative lead on Google’s Ingress geo-mobile Alternate Reality Game, authoring Social Storm for DARPA and world-building at DreamWorks Animation as well as co-writing Primacy, the third installment of the Autocracy graphic novel trilogy from IDW. Flint’s career started by turning toys into TV Shows with G1 Transformers (and Movie) G.I. Joe, Inhumanoids and Visionaries.  He has designed games with Gary Gygax and written movies for Steven Spielberg. Flint has sold game design documents as feature films twice (Venom: Dimension 2006) and Agent In Place (Lionsgate 2010).  He created the ‘Comics Module’ for TSR, a comic book that contained both role-playing and tabletop gaming content way before Transmedia. His Agent 13 novels, are in feature film development.  Flint directed the Interactive Movie Terror T.R.A.X., which became a television pilot for Fox as well as Dragonstrike, one of the first hybrid film projects.

Flint’s graphic novel for Diablo III, The Book of Cain charted on the NYT, and his digital Transformers Comic, Autocracy was 2012’s best-selling digital-only comic. Flint has, himself, become a fictional character.  Frank Miller immortalized him as Dillios (Spartan-ization of Dille), the narrator in 300.  Gary Gygax made him a Barbarian named ‘Chert’ (in geology a low grade of flint), Thomas Greanias based the treacherous international rogue Abdil on Flint.  And nobody knows whether Flint from G.I. Joe was named for Flint, but Mr. Dille certainly elevated the Warrant Officer’s career. Deemed by the Writer’s Guild of America, the most published Game Writer in the World, Flint has twice won ‘Game Script of the Year’ (Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay (with JZP) and Dead to Rights and was nominated for Ghostbusters and Dark Athena.  He has multiple platinum titles and has worked on crown jewel franchises including James Bond, Mission: Impossible, Tiny Toons, Batman: Rise of Sin Tsu (Guiness Book of Videogame Records for creating the first Batman villain outside of the comics) and also adapted as a novel, Superman, Dungeons & Dragons, Teen Titans and Scooby-Doo.

He has a degree in Ancient History from U.C. Berkeley and an MFA from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts and has taught a class on Alternate Reality Games at UCLA film school.  His follow up book to The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design is tentatively titled THE BLUR. In 2013, documentarian Bob Bryan made a documentary about Flint Dille entitled Gaming Our Reality (Available on Amazon, previews on YouTube).

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We're excited to announce that the Game Industry Workshop course this Fall will be based on Imagineering and taught by Disney Imagineers! 

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New Post has been published on usc interactive media & games

New Post has been published on http://interactive.usc.edu/2014/04/20/im-forum-for-42314-emilia-schatz/

IM Forum for 4/23/14: Emilia Schatz

Speaker: Emilia Schatz Time: Wednesday, April 23, 4-5:50pm Location: USC’s School of Cinematic Arts Interactive Media Building (SCI), Room 108

Emilia is a game designer veteran of 12 years and has been at Naughty Dog for over four of them, where she worked on Uncharted 3, The Last of Us, and is currently slaving away on Uncharted for the Playstation 4. Prior to Naughty Dog, she was at Terminal Reality and worked on Ghostbusters: the Video Game and a variety of other titles. She is a graduate of the University of North Texas where she studied game development in the Laboratory for Recreational Computing and was a founding member of Females United for Computing Knowledge. She specializes in level layout design and is particularly interested in how choices in game design presentation influence player behavior and emotion. Her talk will explore the role architectural layout takes in instructing, confounding, surprising, and inspiring players.