Organizing
I’m active in helping broaden perspectives around games. Some of the things I’ve been doing:
A Whole Different Ball Game: Playing Through 60 Years of Sports Video Games
With Jason Eppink, I co-curated an exhibition looking at the intersections of sports and video games. The show includes everything from a replica of Tennis for Two and an early Electric Football to NBA Jam and Rocket League. Stitching the show together are critical appraisals of sports culture, the ways sports transpose into video games, and an examination of data as a driving force in both sports and video games. Open September 2018 – March 2019.
IndieCade International Festival of Independent Games
From 2010 until 2015, I served as co-chair for the conference portion of the IndieCade International Festival of Independent Games. I wrote a thing on some of the reasons I stepped down.
Spacewar!: Video Games Blast Off
Using the 50th anniversary of Spacewar!, the first video game as its historic anchor, the exhibition looks at trends in videogames that connect back to the first game including shooting as a game mechanic, the modeling of the world through game systems, and the math and technologies behind game graphics. The exhibition includes 25 playable games. I curated this show along with the awesome MoMI staff.
XYZ: Alternative Voices in Game Design
An exhibition curated celebrating games in which women held prominent creative roles. I co-curated this exhibition with Celia Pearce, Cindy Poremba and Akira Thompson.
I’m the Associate Editor of Well Played, a journal and book series that explores writing about play as a way to explore the role of games and play in our lives.
Along with Celia Pearce and Helen Kennedy, I co-organized the 2013 Digital Games Research Association conference.
Art History of Games Symposium
I co-organized the Art History of Games Symposium with Ian Bogost and Michael Nitsche.