Speaking
I enjoy speaking to a wide variety of audiences. My areas of specialty include critical & experimental game design, impactful game design, and the interplay of videogames & poetry. More broadly, I am happy to engage almost any topic related to videogames, digital art, new media, interactive narrative, or electronic literature.
Past venues include: GDC, IndieCade, Google, DiGRA, ELO, USC, DigiPen, University of Utah, MIT, and others.
Don't hesitate to get in touch!
Past venues include: GDC, IndieCade, Google, DiGRA, ELO, USC, DigiPen, University of Utah, MIT, and others.
Don't hesitate to get in touch!
Keynote Presentations
2023
“Videogames Are Poems.” Keynote, Games Now Conference, Aalto University. November 6, 2023, Espoo, Finland.
Additional Conference and Festival Presentations
2024
“Formalism as a Philosophy for Designing the Unconventional.” DiGRA Workshop, guest contributor. DiGRA Conference, July 1, 2024, Guadalajara.
“How Poetry Can Help Us Make Better Games.” Game Developers Conference, March 18, 2024, San Francisco.
2023
“The Poetics of Resonant Game Design.” Layout Forum, November 22, 2023, Mexico City.
2020
“TIGSource Retrospective.” Panel discussion with Derek Yu and Bennett Foddy. IndieCade Anywhere and Everywhere, October 17, 2020.
2019
“Bridging Hypertext Stories, Interactive Fiction, and Videogames with Ishmael.” Artist talk. ELO Conference & Media Arts Festival, July 15, 2019, Cork, Ireland.
“Towards a Broad Conception of Computational Poetry.” Computational Poetry Workshop. May 25, 2019, University of California, Santa Cruz.
2018
“Videogames Are Not Games--And Why That Matters.” IndieCade, October 11, 2018, Santa Monica, California.
2017
“The Poetics of Games or: Another Lens For Thinking About the Expressive Potential of Digital/Computational/Interactive media.” Google Interactive Summit, December 1, 2017, Mountain View, California.
“Designing for Complex Emotions: The Poetics of Games.” IndieCade, October 7, 2017, Los Angeles, California.
Additional Talks and Presentations (Selections)
2024
“SocialMedia, AI, and... Game Poems?” Guest lecture, Seminar in Management: Social Media, AI, and the Meaning of Life. April 23, 2024. Creighton University, Omaha.
“Poetry as a Lens for Game Design.” International Game Developers Association Speaker Series. March 7, 2024. University of Wisconsin-Stout.
“Can Poetry Offer Us Something as Game Designers?” USC Game Innovation Lab Speaker Series. February 2, 2024. University of Southern California.
“Poetic Videogames.” Utah Games Speaker Series. January 18, 2024. University of Utah.
2023
“Designing Impactful Videogames.” Guest lecture, Game Concept and Design. October 25, 2023, University of Baltimore.
“Can Videogames Be Poems?” WordHack NYC. October 19, 2023, Wonderville, Brooklyn.
“Game Studies, Videogames, and Poetry.” Guest lecture, Game Studies. October 14, 2023, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“A Conversation with Independent Game Designer and New Media Scholar Jordan Magnuson.” Technoculture, Art, and Games Research Center. October 10, 2023, Concordia University, Montreal.
“Making Games that Engage Difficult Topics and Subjective Experiences.” Interactive Games and Media Graduate Colloquium. September 27, 2023, Rochester Institute of Technology.
“Do Real Work Now–And Other Production Lessons From 20+ Years Making Interactive Media.” Guest lecture, Interactive Media. September 14, 2023, Alfred State College, New York.
“The Poetry of Videogames” Computational Media Department seminar. University of California, Santa Cruz, March 9, 2023.
2021
“Designing for Difficult Topics & Complex Emotions: Considering an Unusual Lens for Game Design.” Tennessee Tech Game Dev Club, April 29, 2021, Tennessee Tech University and Zoom video stream.
2019
“Making Poetic Videogames.” Panel discussion with DigiPen Game Design Program Director Benjamin Ellinger. DigiPen Institute of Technology, November 25, 2019, Redmond, Washington.
“Beyond Ludology and Narratology: Other Lenses for Videogames,” Guest lecture, Video Games as Visual Culture. February 5, 2019, University of California, Santa Cruz.
2018
Guest scholar appearance. Scholar’s Play, October 26, 2018, University of California, Santa Cruz.
“Towards a Poetics of the Lyric for Videogames.” Sammy Showcase Research Talks, June 10, 2018, Santa Clara, California.
“Holistic Prototyping.” Guest lecture, Game Design Experience. May 2, 2018, University of California, Santa Cruz.
“Designing Richly Metaphoric Games.” GAP: Games and Psychology research group. February 1, 2018, University of California, Santa Cruz.
“The Poetics of Videogames or: Videogames are More Than ‘Stories’ and ‘Games.’” Guest lecture, Video Games as Visual Culture. January 30, 2018, University of California, Santa Cruz.
2017
“Poetic Games: My Approach to Creation.” DigiPen Institute of Technology, July 27, 2017, Redmond, Washington (by invitation of DigiPen Game Design Program Director, Benjamin Ellinger).
“Videogames as a Narrative Form.” Rosslyn Academy, January 16, 2017, Nairobi, Kenya.
2015
“Evasive shapes threaten basic needs satisfaction.” With Hales, A. H. & Williams, K. D. Presented at the Midwestern Psychological Association, May 2015, Chicago.