
I'm currently a full professor in the Department of Computational Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where I'm a core faculty member in the Center for Games and Playable Media. Until June 2015, I was an associate professor jointly appointed between the Computer Science department at New York University’s School of Engineering in Brooklyn, and the NYU Game Center, and I was the founding Research Director of the Game Innovation Lab at NYU's School of Engineering.
After completing a Ph.D. at Stanford University, where I studied Communication as well as Human-Computer Interaction, I worked in research labs in Japan, Sweden, Denmark, and the U.S., and in software start-ups and design consultancies (past clients include Microsoft, Paramount, BMW, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, and others), in addition to being a research professor. Along the way, I've written several books: Better Game Characters by Design, Game Usability, and most recently, How Games Move Us. Better Game Characters was nominated for a Game Developer Magazine Frontline Award. In 1999 I was selected as one of MIT Technology Review's TR100 Young Innovators most likely to shape the future of technology, and have been busy ever since(!)