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Who am I?

I am a game designer
I have worked in the game industry since 1994 and have created dozens of games for a wide variety of contexts. I have worked on award-winning multi-million dollar PC CD-ROM games, massively multiplayer online games, and small-scale web-based games. I have even created games off the computer. My work includes titles for entertainment, education, and museum contexts.

I am an entrepreneur
I currently run gameLab, an independent game development company based in New York City that I founded in 2000 with Peter Lee. gameLab creates experimental games on and off the computer, although most of our work consists of singleplayer and multiplayer games that are played or acquired online. I also was a founding partner of Flat, an interdisciplinary design studio based in NYC.

I am a writer
My most recent book is The Game Design Reader, which was co-edited Katie Salen and published by MIT Press in 2006. In November 2004, MIT Press published Rules of Play, a game design textbook I co-authored with Katie Salen. The next month, Eyebeam and Peter Lang Press published RE:PLAY, a book I co-edited with Amy Scholder. With Nancy Nowacek, I co-created Life in the Garden, an interactive paper book. I have also published many book chapters and papers on topics like game design, narrative and interactivity, the game design process, and independent games.

I am an academic
I have taught courses in game design, interactive narrative design, and related topics at the university level for almost ten years at places like MIT, NYU, School of Visual Arts, and Parsons School of Design at the New School University. I have also given a great many lectures and workshops, from keynote lectures at Digital Game Research Association conferences to talks at the Game Developers Conference and E3.

I am a game industry advocate
I am a very active member of the International Game Developers Association, chairing the Academic / Student Relations Committee and serving on the IGDA Developer Awards Committee. Through the IGDA, I have helped organize events that bring together game scholars and educators with game designers and developers. I also was the director of RE:PLAY, a series of earlier events sponsored by Eyebeam that had similar aims. I serve on the editorial board of Game Studies and on the advisory boards of many organizations as diverse as Games for Change, the NYC Tech Survey, and the ArtCenter’s Media Design Brain Trust. I have worked with the Electronic Software Association to combat anti-games legislation, and in general I try to stir things up for the better whenever I can.

And
I study Shaolin Kung Fu with Sifu Shi Yang Min in Manhattan. Amituofo! I live in Brooklyn NYC. You can reach me at gameLab’s office in Manhattan at +1 646 827 6644. Or you can email me at eric@gamelab.com.