GAMEmason 2023 Knowledge Center

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MARCH 3, 2023

The Center for the Arts, Monson Grand Tier III  

1:00 pm – 1:50 pm The Metaverse

• Tim Cotten, Founder, Scrypted Inc., Virginia Serious Game Institute

2:00 pm – 2:50 pm Creating the Extended Reality and Games of the Future with Artificial Intelligence and Computational Design

• Craig Yu, Assistant, and Dr. Quincy Huang, Post Doctorate, Computer Science, George Mason University

3:00 pm – 3:50 pm Game Music Composition: Breathing Life into Your Game

• Matt Nolan, Assistant Professor Game Music, Computer Game Design, George Mason University

4:00 pm –4:50 pm Lose the Hero, Keep the Monomyth

• Seth Hudson, PhD, Associate Professor of Game Writing, Computer Game Design, George Mason University 

MARCH 4, 2023

The Center for the Arts, Monson Grand Tier III  

11:00 am-11:50 am MetroStar Presents:  Resume Tips and Tricks

• Learn from the MetroStar Talent Acquisition Team the tips and tricks of how to create your best resume!  What should you include or not include to make your resume standout?  Let us help you figure it out!

1:00 pm – 1:50 pm  Virtual Reality Performance Project – New Uses for Game Tech  

• Sang Nam, Director, Computer Game Design, George Mason University 

• James Casey, Interim Director, Virginia Serious Game Institute, George Mason University 

2:00 pm – 2:50 pm  Career Opportunities in Games and Esports Panel 

• Victoria Cheng – Co-Founder, CEO of Maincard.gg

• Grant Paranjape – VP of Esports Business, Washington Justice 

• Kayla Harris – Lead Game Designer, EA 

• Nathan Hahn, Associate Producer, Bethesda Game Studios 

• Rohan Shrivastava, Data Analyst, Zoomph 

3:00 pm – 3:50 pm  What’s Your Next Move? Learn from a Ludologist How to Gamify Your Collegiate Experience: explore experiential learning opportunities.

•  Dr. Michele King, Director of Esports, William & Mary 

4:00 pm – 4:50 pm  Intersection of Esports and Entrepreneurship  

• Evan Shubin, COO, Game Gym Inc. 

 

Speakers

 Craig Yu

Lap-Fai (Craig) Yu is an associate professor at the Computer Science Department at George Mason University, where he leads the Design Computing and Extended Reality (DCXR) group. He works on computer graphics, vision, human-computer interaction, and virtual reality, particularly in AI and data-driven techniques for computational design. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of California, Los Angeles, with an Outstanding Recognition in Research Award. His research has been featured by New Scientist, the UCLA Headlines, and the IEEE Xplore Innovation Spotlight; and has won Best Paper Honorable Mention Awards at 3DV and CHI conferences. He received an NSF CRII award and an NSF CAREER award for his research on computational design and virtual reality. He regularly serves on the technical program committees of ACM SIGGRAPH, ACM CHI, and IEEE Virtual Reality. 

Dr. Michele King

Dr. Michele King joined William & Mary in 1999 and has taught courses in public speaking, entertainment-education, small group, and intercultural communication and continues to coach and mentor students, faculty, staff, and alumni. She collaborates with colleagues across campus from the Raymond A. Mason School of Business, Entrepreneurship Center, and School of Education to the Graduate Center, and the Data Science Jump Start program. 

Her educational background includes a Ph.D. in Communication (Entertainment-Education), MS in Corporate & Professional Communication, and a BA in Speech Communication. As a charter member of Omicron Delta Kappa at Christopher Newport University, she encourages student leadership and engages students to take risks and develop their voice as pioneers in their fields. 

She is the Director of W&M’s Academic & Applied Esports Program and serves on the Esports Advisory Board, Faculty Task Force, and is the Electronic Gaming Federation (EGF) Board of Governor’s representative. Dr. King is the 2021-2022 National Collegiate Esports Director of the Year recipient. 

Dr. King is a ludologist, advocate for esports, and for the past decade, has traveled the world to present her research on play, games, and gamification at several International Board Game Studies Association colloquia. 

Evan Shubin

Evan Shubin is COO of Game Gym Inc., a position he has held for three years.  Evan also serves as COO of Leed Seed LLC, and President of Candlelight Partners LLC.  Evan and his wife Michele have founded four companies together, and Evan has been directly involved in 20 different startups, as a founder, investor, or senior executive, and often a combination of all three. 

Haikun Huang

Haikun Huang is a postdoctoral research fellow of the Department of Computer Science at George Mason University. He received my Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from UMass Boston. His research interests include AR/VR/MR, computational design, graphics, HCI, and vision, particularly on the applications of artificial intelligence techniques for creating novel 3D content creation tools and virtual experiences. His research has been published in IEEE VR and ACM CHI and was recognized with a Best Paper Honorable Mention Award at CHI 2019. He frequently serves as a reviewer for IEEE VR and CHI.  He also has years of experience working in the game industry and serving as a columnist for popular game development forums. 

James Casey

James Casey is the Interim Director of the Virginia Serious Game Institution which is the applied research, business incubation, and outreach arm of the Computer Game Design program at George Mason University.  As Interim Director, James participates, engages, and mentors with all of the incubated companies at the VSGI and serves as principal investigator on applied research projects initiated at the VSGI.  As an Associate Professor in the Computer Game Design program, James teaches and oversees the Senior Capstone Synthesis classes. Prior to joining George Mason University, James had over 12 years of experience developing video games. He has extensive knowledge in the production and live management of games working on titles from Mythic Entertainment, Bioware, EA, and EA Mobile. James worked in a number of roles including customer service, design, content lead, and producer. The majority of his tenure in the industry was in the producer role with production experience on Live and in-development titles. His portfolio of work includes such PC titles as Dark Age of Camelot, Ultima Online, Imperator Online, Warhammer Online: Age of Chaos, Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes as well as the mobile titles Ultima Forever and Dungeon Keeper. As well, James worked on a number of prototype projects and co-development titles for the studio and helped to lead the transition to mobile for the studio. He’s earned his Master and Bachelor degrees in Business Administration as well as a creative writing minor. 

Kayla P. Harris

Kayla P. Harris is an award-winning game designer, and currently the Lead Online Game Designer for EA Sports College Football. While working for the Nexon subsidiary, Big Huge Games, she led feature release teams, designed game systems, gameplay features and countless amounts of content for DomiNations, one of the highest grossing mobile games of all time. She also worked for Oculus VR’s Ready at Dawn on one of the most successful multiplayer VR games, Echo VR. On Echo VR she helped to close the monetization loop as a Monetization Designer resulting in the launch of the Echo Store. 

 She is an alumni of George Mason University’s Game Design program and holds a Master’s degree. While working towards her degree she participated in many game jam competitions, and was an award-winning finalist for the E3 ESA AARP Social Game Jam competition for her game Neighbors. She was also an International Game Developers Association (IGDA) Scholar to the Game Developers Conference where she was one of only 18 students from around the globe selected to the program.  

 Kayla loves helping others and has volunteered for years by helping students learn how to create their own games and launch their game industry careers. She’s currently the Gaming Pillar Lead for EA’s BEAT! organization, where she focuses on increasing representation of minorities in games. 

She practices martial arts in her free time and is a black belt in both Hapkido and Tae Kwon Do. She’s really passionate about sports, all things Korea, and free-to-play systems design. She’s a recovering Tottenham Hotspur fan and hopes that one day they can win the league. Actually, if they were to win any trophy at all, she would be ecstatic so she remains hopeful.   

Nathan Hahn

Nathan Hahn got his start in game development as the lead programmer on an indie game called The Girl Who Sees, a fantasy adventure game set in the Philippines during World War 2. After shipping that game in 2019, he went back to school to get an MA in Computer Game Design from George Mason University while being lead programmer and producer for a VR action game that shipped in 2022 called Give the People What They Want. Since early 2022 he has been an associate producer in programming at Bethesda Game Studios working on Starfield. He considers himself a programmer at heart who just happens to be way better at managing tasks and making production decisions than writing code!

Rohan Shrivasta

 Rohan is a data analyst at Zoomph, a partnerships analytics platform for sports and esports brands, leagues, teams, and media companies – helping partners like 100 Thieves, Activision Blizzard, Riot Games, etc measure media value, consumer insights, and marketing insights. Rohan’s journey towards esports, gaming, and partnerships began at GMU, as one of the founding members of GAMEmason and the former GMU Esports Club President from 2017 – 2019.” 

Prof. Sang Nam

Prof. Sang Nam teaches technology-intensive courses in Computer Game Design at George Mason University. He holds a MFA in Electronic Integrated Arts from NYSCC at Alfred University and a BA in Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts and a BS in Molecular Biology from the University of California, San Diego.

Prof. Nam’s work metaphorically explores how technologies are used in various art disciplines and how people perceive these art products in various dynamics. Prof. Nam has explored new possibilities when art and technology merge, and his work has been exhibited worldwide, including the US, UK, Korea, and Hungary. As a teacher-scholar, Prof. Nam has actively pursued his research on the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning. He has been selected as 2010 National CASTL Teaching Scholar, 2010-2012 Elon CATL Teaching Scholar, and 2008 Wisconsin Teaching Fellow.

Prof. Nam founded his software/game company, Nam ER Technology LLC. in 2018 and has been producing serious games for clients including US Army, USAID, DOD, and many other government agencies and private companies. He partnered with ThunderCat Technology, and they officially became a U.S. Army Information Technology Enterprise Solutions Software 2 (ITES-SW2) contract holder in 2020. They will be one of only 31 contractors on the $13 billion 10-year award. Also, Prof. Nam has a tenure with Fulbright Specialist Program (U.S. Department of State) and have been working with Tunis International Center for Digital Cultural Economy in Tunisia for the project, Capacity Building in Game Design and Virtual Reality.

Seth Hudson

Seth Hudson is Associate Professor of Game Writing in the Computer Game Design program at George Mason University, where he teaches Story Design for Computer Games, Research Methods and Criticism, the History of Computer Games, and Foundations of Undergraduate Inquiry—unable to shake the potential of narrative, all of these courses end up incorporating storytelling concepts. Hudson’s scholarship explores playful approaches to teaching; game writing pedagogy; portfolio-focused curriculum development; and undergraduate student research and creative activity. Over the past decade, he has presented work at a number of national conferences, including: DiGRA, the East Coast Game Conference, GDC, the Conference on College Composition and Communication (4C’s), and the Serious Play Conference. Hudson’s book, Approaching a Pedagogy of Game Writing (2022), is available from Routledge. 

Victoria Cheng “Chubbyninja” 

Co-Founder, CEO of Maincard.gg 

Host of Valorant Champions Tour: Pacific League

Victoria  “Chubbyninja” Cheng is an award-winning writer, TV presenter, and content producer. Known for her presence in the culinary, adventure sports, and media scene over the past two decades, her lifelong passion for gaming and tech has fast made her a familiar face in the APAC region. Victoria is a TEDxTalk Youth Speaker 2019 on championing your identity, “Embrace your Misfit”.

She hosted the globally record-breaking esports tournament FreeFire World Series 2021 (5.41 million concurrent views), Gamescom Studio Primetime, RazerCon 2022, TwitchRivals Asia, Lenovo Legion Keynote Event 2021, and guest-appeared for the Asia-Pacific PlayStation 5 Launch with JJ Lin.

Based in Singapore, she also works behind the scenes as producer and director for content and events, including Dale Chihuly: Glass in Bloom (Gardens by the Bay, Singapore) and GEFestival 2021 (Zouk, Singapore) for the Global Esports Games 2021.

Victoria co-founded startup MAINCARD, an esports and video game platform. MAINCARD.GG is a gamer passport to track all your gaming and industry achievements, as your permanent gamer resume. Users can also create communities, scout for talents, and get first dibs on events or video game access.
 

She is a 2nd Dan Black Belt with 20+ years of competitive Tae Kwon Do, archery, freediving, and boxing. Catch her content on @Supnerd.TV