“I would not dream of writing off escapism… The desire to go somewhere else in fiction is what moves a lot of fiction, and is why a lot of fiction is great. You don’t read Moby Dick to come away a morally improved person; you read it because you get to get lost with this bloke and ride on this ship with this madman hunting whales. If you can do things in fiction that change the perceptions of the people who are reading it, that’s good. You probably should have something to say. If you don’t have something to say, then the fiction tends to be vacuous and morally unfixed. I like to get the feeling that something here is being said.”
– Neil Gaiman, The Comics Journal #169
Storyteller, scholar, consultant. Loving son, husband and father. Kindhearted mischief-maker.
I'm the Director of the Games and Simulation program at Miami University in Ohio, where I am also an Assistant Professor in the College of Creative Arts' Emerging Technology in Business and Design department. I'm also the director of Miami's Worldbuilding and Narrative Design Research Laboratory (WNDRLab). I have a Master's in Comparative Media Studies from MIT and a PhD in Media Arts and Practices from the University of Southern California.
In past lives I've been the lead Narrative Producer for Microsoft Studios and cofounder of its Narrative Design team, working on projects like Hololens, Quantum Break and new IP incubation; in a "future of media" think tank for Microsoft's CXO/CTO and its Chief Software Architect; the Creative Director for the University of Southern California's World Building Media Lab and the Technical Director, Creative Director and a Research Fellow for USC's Annenberg Innovation Lab; a Visiting Assistant Professor at Whittier College and director of its Whittier Other Worlds Laboratory (WOWLab); the Communications Director and a researcher for the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab; a founding member of the Convergence Culture Consortium at MIT (now The Futures of Entertainment); a magazine editor; and a award-winning short film producer. more »
The opinions put forward in this blog are mine alone, and do not reflect the opinions of my employers.
