16 May 2025
I am pleased to announce that the projects my graduate students created from the last two semesters are now available on the TUBBA Games Manufacturing Concern Itch page.
The games can be found here: https://tubba-games.itch.io/. Most of the games are available for Windows and are FREE to download. However, there is one board game project that includes a fabrication package so that players can build their own version at home.
Below are sample gameplay videos for each game:
26 April 2025
I was surprised, but quite thankful, to be invited to the Transformer AI 2025 Symposium at Kennesaw State University. I am far from an expert in AI but I was happy to share my thoughts on AI use in game design education. To help me out, I enlisted the help of two of my graduate students, Audrey Chung and Xinmeng (Melody) Ren.
The full video of the talk and the question period can be seen here:
31 March 2025
I have started work on a new research project. However, unlike most of my projects, this represents a brand new research trajectory for me! Stemming from a conference paper abstract about the samurai invasion of the Korean peninsula in 1592, I have been inspired to undertake a full-scale Korean games project.
I was happy to give another talk in our DM Talks series at Georgia Tech that outlined my early findings. The video outlines my research methods, early impressions, and future research trajectories for the project. It includes a detailed account of the works that I have been reading, a discussion of my research trip to Korea, and of course, some of my thoughts on all of the Korean games that I have been playing.
I’m looking forward to continuing this project! For now, I’ve been expanding my knowledge base by reading more Korean history books and playing a bunch of Korean games. I’m also starting to seek out potential collaborators.
20 February 2025
I’m very excited to announce that my new video game lab, the Game Philosophy and Design Lab (GamePaD Lab) is now open at Georgia Tech!
Our first official event was today. We hosted judges for the Peabody Awards, who used are space to review submissions for the Interactive Narrative Category of this year’s awards. Moving forward the space will focus on graduate student game-based research and game-centric public events.
Our collection currently consists of numerous retro consoles and video games, VR equipment, and board games. Come drop by and see us in the TSRB building at Georgia Tech or send us a message at gamepadlab[at]gatech[dot]edu.
9 September 2024
I am in the early phases of a new game design project! As of this writing, it is still untitled, however I have been using the codename Conclusion/Clarity. Based on my historical research, it will be a ghost game where the player controls a detective character. I hope to blend historical research with supernatural elements to create a unique and informative game.
This research talk, which was part of my department’s DM Talk series, outlines the research that I have completed and some of the early design and development work that I have been working on. I plan for this to be a long-term, iterative project, so it is nebulous at this point in development but I plan to start full-scale work on the project shortly.
In terms of next steps, I plan to start creating formal design documents which I can use to help better define the project.
30 August 2024
I am pleased to announce that some of the student projects from my Project Studio: Game Design class from last semester are now available on the TUBBA Games Manufacturing Concern Itch page. The students were challenged to make small prototypes over the course of a 16-week course. The prompt that they were given was to make postcolonial games that incorporated ghosts or monsters. They were allowed to use any tools of their choice, but they were required to use Godot as their engine.
The games can be found here: https://tubba-games.itch.io/. Each game is available for Windows and is FREE to download.
Below are sample gameplay videos for each game:
17 April 2024
It was amazing to have my teaching and game design featured on the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts website. I gave a brief interview which was turned into an article and a video. Check them out!
You can read the article here -> https://iac.gatech.edu/feature-news/2024/03/video-game-design-nagasaki-kitty
25 March 2024
I have always been a huge fan of Godzilla, but I have not had the opportunity to incorporate that love into my research until now. I have started to pursue a long-term, multi-media project centered on Godzilla and anti-nuclear representation. As a first step, I was happy to present my early findings in the DM Talk series at Georgia Tech.
My talk examines the origins of Godzilla from a collective memory perspective with a focus on the anti-nuclear representation of the early Godzilla films and novelizations. From here, I briefly discuss 5 selected Godzilla video games and their connections (or disconnections) from that original narrative. I conclude with a short look at how I wish to pursue these ideas through a multi-media project.
I’m excited to continue on with this project. The next step will be to refine my observations of the video games for my conference presentation at RePlaying Japan 2024!
I am very excited to announce that the Call for Papers for our collected volume Trophy Cases is now available. I am co-editing this volume with Dan Staines (Torrens University) and Sarah Christina Ganzon (Simon Fraser University).
Trophy Cases: The Theory, Design, & Cultural Politics of Video Game Trophies & Achievements
PlayStation Trophies, Xbox Achievements, and Steam Achievements (hereafter: “trophies”) are an essential part of contemporary video games that affect many aspects of design, distribution, and play. These frequently mandatory systems have been implemented in a variety of digital ecosystems, including industry-standards like PlayStation Store, Xbox Live, and Steam. Despite their ubiquity, there is currently limited scholarship focused directly on trophies specifically. The goal of this volume is to interrogate and analyze the theory, design, and player practices of trophies. We invite submissions from all academic disciplines focused on game studies and game design, as well as submissions from current and former game designers.
Proposed chapters can include but are not limited to:
-> Critical theoretical approaches to trophies
-> Demographic approaches to trophies (gender, race, class)
-> Trophies as game design practice
-> The ethics of trophy design and implementation
-> Industry perspectives of trophies
-> Political economy of trophies
-> Platform Studies of trophies
-> Player practices such as “trophy hunting”
-> Online communities dedicated to trophies
-> Trophies as paratexts
-> Historical forerunners to contemporary trophies
-> Case studies of specific/significant trophies
Submissions should be up to 500 words (+ references) and can be sent as PDF files to trophycasesbook@gmail.com by May 6, 2024. Questions regarding the volume can also be directed to trophycasesbook@gmail.com.
Please Note: This volume is under contract with Lexington Books with a proposed publishing date of November 2025.
11 September 2023
I was pleased to be invited to give a research talk in my new department’s DM Talks series. I agreed to participate right after I arrived in Atlanta and did not have a solid idea of what I wanted to talk about exactly. Luckily, I have been working on a book chapter that I thought would benefit from some public discussion while I was drafting the first version. I think that the talk went very well and I was able to get some great feedback that helped with the first draft. It was also awesome to get to talk about my research in detail with my new colleagues and our amazing graduate students.
The talk examines the Atelier Ryza trilogy and assesses the games’ attempts at decolonization (both narratively and through game design). While I think that the decolonialization attempts made by the series are not perfect, I argue that the games are significant and interesting from a postcolonial perspective. Please note that this video is rough. The talk was delivered in a hybrid format, so the audio is extracted from the original Microsoft Teams recording. My introduction of my other research and the question period have been cut for the sake of time and avoiding privacy issues. The screen recording has been replaced by still images of the slides from the talk and some limited gameplay from the Atelier Ryza games.