Game Design Websites

Benjamin Rivers is the Creative Director and Co-Founder of the Toronto video game development studio BancyCo. He creates comic books and illustrations in his spare time. He taught illustration and game design classes at OCAD University for thirteen years. His first published visual work was in a 1991 issue of Simpsons Illustrated magazine.

Alex Hsu (徐小翔) is an independent developer and aspiring writer. He is a former Senior Engineer at Meta and the developer of the Japanese language learning app, MARU, which has over a million downloads. He holds a Master's degree in Computer Science from Stanford University and a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from UCSB. Alex was born in the US, grew up in Shanghai, and his parents are from Taiwan. He enjoys finance, self-improvement, and games. He is interested in Buddhism, Stoicism, and minimalism. He sends out a weekly newsletter called "週刊 ALEX".

Sarah Mak is a writer and narrative designer from Singapore. She creates story-rich video games and interactive fiction. Her interactive fiction game, You Can’t Save Her, won awards in the 2024 Short Games Showcase. She also writes poetry, with work published in journals and anthologies such as Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Eunoia Review, and Silver Birch Press. Sarah is a member of zer0sleep, a writing collective supported by Sing Lit Station. She participates in game jams as a game designer, project manager, and writer.

David Negrin is a Professor, Game Designer, VR Creator, Screenwriter, and Non-profit Founder. He is a Lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology in the School of Interactive Games and Golisano College of Computing and Information Science. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science and an M.F.A. in Cinema Arts. He was previously Lecturer and Undergraduate Program Coordinator at the University of Central Florida and Assistant Professor at Ithaca College. He was Executive Director of the NYC Screenwriters Collective from 2007-2015. He is Host of ‘ The Script Podcast ’, Author the ‘ Strategic ’ newsletter, and Moderator of @ScriptFeed .

Swapnesh Samaiya is an independent game designer and researcher. He designs games, playful interactions, and learning experiences, working with studios, institutes, startups, and in collaboration with other designers, artists, researchers, and developers. Currently, he is building an independent game design studio and working on two new game titles. He also teaches Game and Interaction design at various design institutes in India as a visiting faculty. Previously, he has worked as a design consultant for multiple organizations in the area of game design, research, gamification, interaction design, mental health, and experiential learning. In his spare time, he volunteers with play and learning centers, conducting workshops and developing playful learning tools and materials for teachers and homeschoolers.

J. Alan Henning is the author behind Troy Press, a publisher of free and PWYW role-playing games, print-and-play games, and books. He also shares market research into the tabletop gaming industry on the Troy Press website. He can be reached via Mastodon at @jalanhenning@dice.camp.

This individual maintains a blog called Ludochaordic, where they share their thoughts and creations related to games (board games, role-playing games, and logic puzzles), programming (particularly Python), and mathematics. They also post their role-playing game creations, presentation slides, and reading lists. A newsletter is available for updates on their game-related projects. They share links and news on their Shaarli.

Muzzug is a production support specialist at a bank, where they ensure banking applications function correctly. They also manage the PSD2 API and, since 2024, are involved with a new payment solution. Muzzug enjoys old games, particularly Ultima Online, and explores game design and development in their spare time, with aspirations of creating their own games. They are a fan of tabletop RPGs, especially Old-School Essentials, which they helped translate. Muzzug also plays the ukulele. They are active on Mastodon and can be contacted via email.

Victor de Paiva is a joguinista, producer, game designer, narrative designer, and writer. He is fascinated by games as a means of expression and by the miracle of seeing complex projects to the end. Victor is the Founder of Garoa Studios. He currently works as a Product Manager at Nuuvem and as a Columnist at Controles Voadores. His past affiliations include Caramelo Games, ACJOGOS-RJ, Itaú Bank, GDP UFRJ, and GameJam+.

Pippin Barr makes games. They are an Associate Professor in the Department of Design and Computation Arts at Concordia University in Montréal and the department chair. Pippin is a member of the Technoculture, Art, and Games (TAG) Research Centre, part of the Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture, and Technology. They teach or have taught creative programming, game design and development, game analysis and criticism, and internet/web-based art. Previously, Pippin taught at the Institute of Digital Games at the University of Malta (2012-2015), the Center for Computer Games Research at the IT University of Copenhagen in Denmark (2009-2012), and the HotSoft Lab at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada (2008-2009). Pippin has a doctorate and a master’s degree from Victoria University of Wellington/Te Herenga Waka in New Zealand. Their Ph.D. was about video game values and their M.Sc. was about user-interface metaphors.

Raph Koster is a game designer, author, and speaker. He is currently CEO and Creative Director at Playable Worlds, where he’s building Stars Reach. Since 1993, he has been making virtual worlds, starting with LegendMUD. He was the creative lead on Ultima Online and later led design on Star Wars Galaxies as Creative Director at Sony Online Entertainment. In 2006, he founded Metaplace, a platform for user-created virtual worlds. He consulted with companies including Google, Facebook, and Activision from 2010-2018. He wrote A Theory of Fun for Game Design. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Alabama and a BA in English (Creative Writing) and Spanish from Washington College. He was born on Long Island in 1971.