Maybe it’s just a different type of joy, but whenever I sit down to leaf through some academic journals to see what kind of thinking is going on in the ivory towers these days, I always get depressed. Why does academia always seem so joyless? Why is academic writing so dry, why does it constantly focus on the tearing-down rather than the building-up? Why is so much of the work coming from creative writing programs so bleak? Why are the papers coming out of comparative literature and English literature programs so mind-numbingly dull? Where’s the happiness, the joie de vivre, the signs of people enjoying themselves?
Sigh. Maybe I should just aim to earn an honorary doctorate from somewhere, somehow, someday.
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.
