Research Group
Faculty

Dr. Ian Bogost is a videogame designer, critic, and researcher. He is Associate Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Founding Partner at Persuasive Games LLC. His research and writing considers videogames as an expressive medium, and his creative practice focuses on games about social and political issues. He is a popular writer and speaker and widely considered an influential thinker and doer in the videogame industry and research community. Ian holds a Bachelors degree in Philosophy and Comparative Literature from the University of Southern California, and a Masters and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UCLA. He lives in Atlanta with his wife and two children.

Students

Mariam Asad is a second-year Digital Media M.S. student with a B.A. in English Literature and Communications from York University (Toronto, Canada). Her current research is a comparative analysis of game mechanics and linguistic structures in modernist poetry. She also enjoys rollercoasters, shawarmas, and Kirby's Dream Land speedruns.

Ben Chapman is a first-year Digital Media M.S. student. He holds a B.A. in English from Davidson College, where he focused on short fiction and literary theory. Ben's main interest is interactive narrative and its role within games. When outside of school, Ben enjoys assaulting Atlanta's streets on a skateboard.

Chris DeLeon is a first-year Digital Media M.S. student and a prolific videogame developer, responsible for 40 freeware games, more than 200 experimental micro-games, and a dozen iPhone games (including Topple, #2 Top Paid game in winter 2008, and feelforit, an IndieCade 2010 finalist). He served as a Technical Game Designer for EA on Medal of Honor Airborne and Boom Blox, and later for PlayCrafter.com, an online drag-and-drop game making site. Chris joined the graduate Digital Media program at Tech to research the application of videogame technologies to conveying mental models. In an ongoing effort to help others create videogames, he maintains HobbyGameDev.com.

Don Fernandez is a first-year Digital Media M.S. student. He holds a B.A. in Mass Communications/Journalism from the University of South Florida. His prior experience includes more than a decade in journalism, including positions as staff writer at The Orlando Sentinel and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, serving at the latter as digital lifestyle writer. In addition, he boasts several years of public and media relations experience with clients including Philips and Best Buy. His interests include digital media delivery, interactive narrative and design, mobile news and digital influences on culture and lifestyle.

Simon Ferrari is a doctoral student in the Digital Media program and a co-author of Newsgames: Journalism at Play. He has been a research assistant on the Newsgames project for two years now, serving as an editor for the project blog. Simon studies procedural rhetoric in relation to the evolution of genre. For his dissertation he will be studying the culture and rhetoric of e-sports.

Brian Hertler is a second-year Digital Media M.S. student. He holds a B.A. in English and Linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania and, following a pit stop in the financial bubble, has been studying video games as an artistic, expressive, and narrative medium. He is particularly interested in new methods of communicating stories in an interactive space. In his spare time Brian develops independent games, writes short fiction, drinks coffee, and does jigsaw puzzles.

Andrew Ho is a first-year Digital Media M.S. student, with a B.S in Computational Media from Georgia Tech. His professional focus is in game design, writing and production, and works as the Technology Officer for the Georgia Game Developers Association and Design Track Director at the Southern Interactive Entertainment and Game Expo. His academic interests lie in interactive narrative, design practice from a cultural perspective and experimenting with different game genres.

Jing Li is a first-year Digital Media M.S. student. Before coming to Tech, she worked at Purdue Serious Game Center as a research assistant for a year. She fully participated in the design and development process of various educational games,especially social study subject games. She received her MS degree in educational technology from Tongji University, China, where she focused on virtual learning environment design and data visualization. Her research interest is in serious games, information visualization and its persuasive uses.

Dr. Christopher Ritter is a Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture. He received his Ph.D. from Washington State University, where studied digital rhetoric, particularly in videogames. His dissertation analyzed the rhetorics of racism in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft, and his research interests orbit around games’ potential expressive, persuasive, and educational roles in struggles for social justice. You can view his online portfolio at cjritter.com.

Bobby Schweizer is a doctoral student in Digital Media and co-authored Newsgames: Journalism at Play. He studies the creation of space and place in expressive environments and applies this research to the analysis of videogames, theme parks, fairs and expositions, and cities. Bobby enjoys tweeting, podcasting, and Top Gear.

Hank Whitson is a first-year Digital Media M.S. student and former ballet dancer. He earned a B.A. in English with a creative writing emphasis from University of California at Irvine. He is interested in storytelling, video games, interactive narratives and samurai swords. In his spare time, he writes fiction and reviews entertainment for The Technique and at Sarcasmancy.com.