Renowned game designer to speak April 10

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Experimental game designer Tracy Fullerton is the next speaker for RIT’s lecture series “Where Text and Code Collide: The Digital Humanities Speaker Series” on April 10.

Rochester Institute of Technology’s “Where Text and Code Collide: Digital Humanities Distinguished Speaker Series” continues with a talk by experimental game designer Tracy Fullerton at 8 p.m. April 10 in the Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science auditorium.

Fullerton, associate professor and chair of the Interactive Media Division of University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts and director of the USC Game Innovation Lab, is the author of Game Design Workshop, a design textbook in use at game programs around the world.

Fullerton’s current projects include Collegeology, a suite of games to help middle and high school students strategize their paths to college, and Walden, a game that simulates the experiment in living conducted by Henry David Thoreau at Walden Pond from 1845 to 1847.

Other recent credits include game designer for Participation Nation, a collaboration with Activision and KCET funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; The Night Journey, a game project in collaboration with video artist Bill Viola; and faculty advisor for award-winning student games Cloud, flOw, Darfur is Dying and The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom.

Regarding The Night Journey, a recent review by Wyatt Williams, culture editor of Creative Loafing, said: “Video artist Bill Viola collaborated with game designer Tracy Fullerton and others at the USC Game Innovation Lab to create a blurry, impressionistic landscape based on Viola’s videos; contemplation and stillness, rather than frenetic action, are rewarded with unexpected, beautiful visions. You might say that this is what would happen if Pac-Man became a philosopher.”

Fullerton’s work has earned numerous industry honors including an Emmy nomination for interactive television, best family/board game from the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, and appearances on Time magazine’s “Best of the Web” list and the Hollywood Reporter’s “Women in Entertainment Power 100.”

The presentation—free and open to the public—is sponsored by the RIT Project for the Digital Humanities, College of Liberal Arts and the Gannett Endowment for the Humanities.