Tracy Fullerton

Tracy Fullerton

Tracy Fullerton in 2013
Born (1965-06-21) June 21, 1965
Los Angeles, California, USA
Nationality United States American
Education USC School of Cinematic Arts, Los Angeles, CA
Known for Game Design
Notable work The Night Journey (2007)
Walden, a game
Awards Indiecade Trailblazer 2013
Games for Change Game Changer 2015
Website www.tracyfullerton.com

Tracy Fullerton (born June 21, 1965) is an American game designer, educator and writer. She is a Professor and Chair of the USC Interactive Media & Games Division of the USC School of Cinematic Arts and Director of the Game Innovation Lab at USC. In 2014 she was named Director of the USC Games Program, an interdisciplinary collaboration between the School of Cinematic Arts and the Viterbi School of Engineering at USC.[1]

Biography

In December 2008, she was installed as the holder of the Electronic Arts Endowed Chair of Interactive Entertainment at USC.[2] Fullerton is the author of Game Design Workshop, a textbook advocating a playcentric design process. She was also faculty advisor for the award-winning student games Cloud and flOw, and game designer for The Night Journey, a game/art project in production with media artist Bill Viola, and Participation Nation, a game to teach Constitutional history being produced in collaboration with KCET and Activision. Her current project, Walden, a game, is supported by a media arts grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, one of the first video game projects to be awarded such a grant,[3] as well as the National Endowment for the Humanities.[4]

Prior to joining the USC faculty, she was president and founder of the interactive television game developer, Spiderdance, Inc. Spiderdance’s games included NBC’s Weakest Link, MTV’s webRIOT, The WB’s No Boundaries, History Channel’s History IQ, Sony Game Show Network’s Inquizition and TBS’s Cyber Bond. Before starting Spiderdance, Fullerton was a producer and creative director at the New York design firm R/GA Interactive. While there, she created games and interactive products for clients including Sony, Intel, Microsoft, AdAge, Ticketmaster, Compaq, and Warner Bros. among many others. Her projects include Sony’s Multiplayer Jeopardy! and Multiplayer Wheel of Fortune and MSN’s NetWits, an early multiplayer casual game launched in 1996.[5] Additionally, Fullerton was Creative Director at the interactive film studio Interfilm, where she wrote and co-directed the “cinematic game” Ride for Your Life, which starred Adam West and Matthew Lillard.[6] She began her career as a designer at Robert Abel’s company Synapse, where she worked on the interactive documentary Columbus: Encounter, Discovery and Beyond and other early interactive projects.

Fullerton’s work has received numerous industry honors including an Emmy nomination for interactive television, best Family/Board Game from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, I.D. Magazine’s Interactive Design Review, Communication Arts Interactive Design Annual, several New Media Invision awards, iMix Best of Show, the Digital Coast Innovation Award, IBC’s Nombre D’Or, Time Magazine’s Best of the Web, IndieCade's Festival of Independent Games, The Hollywood Reporter’s Women in Entertainment Power 100 and Fortune's 10 Powerful Women in Videogames.[7]

Fullerton appeared in Danny Ledonne's documentary Playing Columbine.

She is the cousin of television, novel, comic and game writer Charlotte Fullerton.

Writings

Awards

Controversy

In April 2016, whilst Director of the Game Innovation Lab at USC, she cancelled the planned "Legends of the Games" event after the lone female participant signaled that she wouldn't be able to attend. She made the determination that an all-male panel was unacceptable, and cancelled the event a mere four hours before it was due to start.[9]

The panel would have included Jeffrey Kaplan of Blizzard Entertainment, Brandon Beck of Riot Games, and David Stohl of Infinity Ward.[10]

"There was no perfect choice her," she said. "There was only the choice to stand for one set of values or another. So, I chose the path I believe in. You all are free to disagree, but I think it is the right side of history."[11]

The decision to cancel the event lead to widespread condemnation from the student body at USC Interactive Media & Games Division through social media, including senior graduating students that would now not have the opportunity to meet the heads of the games industry. "Both males and females I talked to were really upset that they did not get to meet some of their idols," said an anonymous USC student majoring in computer science for game design who planned to attend the event. "It would have been the biggest names they could have gotten at this school."[10]

References

  1. ↑ https://news.usc.edu/63108/tracy-fullerton-named-director-of-usc-games/
  2. ↑ Fullerton Installed as Endowed Professor, USC news, Dec. 17, 2008
  3. ↑ NEA Arts: Level Up!, The Official Blog of the NEA, March 8, 2013
  4. ↑ USC professor Tracy Fullerton is getting $100,000 from the NEH to design a game based on Thoreau's Walden, LA Times, Dec. 9, 2014
  5. ↑ MobyGames - NetWits for Windows, MobyGames Game Database
  6. ↑ Ride for Your Life (1995) at the Internet Movie Database
  7. ↑ 10 Powerful Women in Videogames, Fortune.com, September 23, 2014
  8. ↑ "IndieCade 2012 Award Winners-The Complete List". indiegamereviewer.com. October 2012. Retrieved 2013-03-07.
  9. ↑ USC Cancelled an Awesome Video Game Panel for Including Too Many Men, Reason.com, April 29, 2016
  10. 1 2 USC Cancels ‘Legends of the Games Industry’ Event for Not Including Women, Heat Street, April 27, 2016
  11. ↑ POINT: Postponement of SCA panel reveals snowflake culture, Daily Trogan, April 25, 2016

External links

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