There are more changes to “Video Games as a Force and Art Form: Teaching, Learning, and the Creative Economy,” Mesa Community College’s lineup of video game lecturers.
Tonight (March 27, at 7:30 p.m.) USC interactive media professor and Electronic Arts Game Innovation Lab director Tracy Fullerton will appear as planned, discussing “the playcentric game design process.”
Karl Stewart, who had originally been scheduled for a late February lecture on the evolution and branding of Tomb Raider vixen Lara Croft, and Ken Levine, who had been set for early March before the release of BioShock Infinite complicated things, both had to back out. They are being replaced by Ken Rolston, who will wrap up the series 7:30 p.m. April 9.
Below are bios for Fullerton and Rolston provided by MCC:
Tracy Fullerton, M.F.A., is a game designer, educator and writer with fifteen years of professional experience. Currently an Associate Professor in the Interactive Media Division of the USC School of Cinematics Arts and Director of the Electronic Arts GameInnovation Lab, she has seen close up how our definition of entertainment is shifting from a passive to increasingly interactive one. In December 2008, she became the holder of the Electronic Arts Endowed Chair of Interactive Entertainment. Prior to joining the USC faculty, she was president and founder of the interactive television game developer, Spiderdance, Inc. Spiderdance’s games included NBC’s Weakest Link, MTV’s webRIOT, The WB’s No Boundaries, History Channel’s History IQ, Sony Game Show Network’s Inquizition and TBS’s Cyber Bond. Before starting Spiderdance, Tracy was a founding member of the New York design firm R/GA Interactive. As a producer and creative director she created games and interactive products for clients including Sony, Intel, Microsoft, AdAge, Ticketmaster, Compaq, and Warner Bros. among many others.
Ken Rolston, the last in MCC’s speakers series, “Games as a Force and Art Form: Teaching, Learning, and the Creative Economy,” has over thirty years of experience in the games industry. He is, among other things, the internationally celebrated lead designer of two Elder Scrolls games (the standard hit Morrowind and the mega-hit Oblivion), as well as the IP massive-RPG (Role-Playing Game) Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, released by 38 Studios/Big Huge Games. Early on in his career, Ken was the principle designer on the classic tabletop game Paranoia, as well as many fine analog games. He will be talking about the interface between board and video games and designing vast narrative games (stories that build upon one another and intertwine in such a way as to build entire self-contained worlds, much like Lord of the Rings, only in game form). Ken has a Masters Degree from NYU and is a member of the Science Fiction Writers Association. He has been a professional games designer since 1982.
Both the Fullerton and Rolston lectures will take place in LB145 on the Mesa Community College campus at Southern and Dobson.
