Matt Parker

Matt Parker is a game designer, teacher, and new media artist. His work has been displayed at the American Museum of Natural History, SIGGRAPH Asia, the NY Hall of Science, Museum of the Moving Image, FILE Games Rio, Sony Wonder Technology Lab, and many other venues. His game Lucid was a finalist in Android’s Developer Challenge 2 and his project Lumarca won the “Create the Future” prize at New York Maker Faire 2010. He created the game Recurse for the inaugural No Quarter exhibition at the NYU Game Center. Recurse was a finalist for Indiecade 2010 and won the “Play This Now!” award at Come Out and Play 2012. Matt is a partner at the Brooklyn based game studio, Gigantic Mechanic, and also teaches at the NYU Game Center.

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Nikita Mikros

Nikita Mikros is a game designer/developer living in Brooklyn, New York, United States. He is the founder and CEO of SMASHWORX and Tiny Mantis Entertainment, two independent game studios located in New York City. Mr. Mikros’s most current project is a 10 player arcade game he co-designed with Joshua DeBonis. At SMASHWORX, Mr. Mikros designs and works on original titles including “Propaganda Lander” and his current project “Super Dungeon Force”. At Tiny Mantis, Mr. Mikros has worked on many games for clients including Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, LEGO, Bloomberg Tradebook and others. Before his current positions Mr. Mikros was co-founder of Black Hammer Game. Mr. Mikros was the lead designer of “The Egg Files” which was a 2002 Independent Games Festival finalist and was published by Manifesto Games. In addition, he was lead designer of Supremacy: Four Paths To Power which was also an Independent Games Festival finalist in 2005 and was published by Matrix Games.

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Phil Trelford

Phil Trelford is a Software Architect at an ISV supplying real-time electronic trading software. His career so far spans over 15 years, with experience in video games, leisure, retail and financial sectors.

Clara Fernández-Vara

Clara Fernández-Vara is Associate Arts Professor at the NYU Game Center. Her main research interest is the study of narrative in games and how it can integrate with game design, focusing on adventure games. She spent six years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a researcher, where she taught courses on game studies, writing for games and game design and development. Clara holds a Ph.D. in Digital Media from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and a Masters in Comparative Media Studies from MIT. Clara has presented her work at various conferences, such as DiGRA (Digital Games Research Association), Foundations of Digital Games and GDC (Game Developer’s Conference). She has worked on several experimental adventure games as part of her research, Rosemary (2009), Symon (2010), Stranded in Singapore (2011), and The Last Symphony (2011). At the moment, she is working on a book, Introduction to Game Analysis, which will be published by Routledge.

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Ida C. Benedetto

Ida C. Benedetto is a Brooklyn based media strategist and experience designer. She is Co-Founder of Antidote Games, a design studio making playful experiences for understanding complex realities. For more out-there adventures, she created , which practices transgressive placemaking through adventure, intimacy and exploration. Her contributions to the games community include work for Babycastles, , Games For Change, IndieCade, Different Games, and the Come Out & Play Festival. She studied Design & Technology at Parsons and History at the New School.

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