The Experimental Gameplay Workshop

Background

Click here to read excerpts from the GDC interview that discusses the origins of the workshop, the philosophy behind it and what we hope to accomplish. 

Workshop Organizers

Jonathan Blow is an independent game programmer and designer. Most recently, he was lead gameplay programmer/designer on a technology demo for IBM's Cell microprocessor. He used to write the monthly technical column, The Inner Product, for Game Developer magazine. He often does game design and technology consulting for PC and console games; sometimes he lectures at conferences and the occasional university (including a recent residency at Ajou University in Suwon, South Korea).

Doug Church has been in the game industry since 1990, working on a variety of PC titles (Ultima Underworld, System Shock, Thief, a bit of Flight Unlimited thrown in) at what became LookingGlass Studios. He left in late 1999, consulting on a variety of titles, including  Ion Storm's Deus Ex and Harmonix's Frequency. Officially a programmer, and lately a tech director - he ends up mostly doing game design and some project management, with varied impact.

Chris Hecker is Technical Director of definition six, inc., a small game development firm working on high-end physics and graphics game designs and technologies. Chris has been on the advisory board for the Game Developers Conference for many years and is a regular speaker at the GDC, Siggraph, and other conferences. A frequent contributor to Game Developer magazine, Chris was the technical columnist for the magazine for two years and is currently the Editor-at-Large. He is also on the editorial board of the computer graphics research publication, The Journal of Graphics Tools.

Robin Hunicke is finishing her PhD in AI and Games at Northwestern University, and working as a game designer at Maxis. In addition to her work with the Game Developers Conference, she participates in the IGDA Education SIG, which facilitates communication and collaboration between academic researchers and the game development community.