Game Designer Naomi Clark on 'How to Find the Next Weirder Idea,' April 19
April 13, 2018
Contact: Office of Government and Public Affairs
Phone: 410.837.5739
Naomi Clark, an independent game designer based in Brooklyn and an assistant arts professor in the NYU Game Center, will deliver a talk, "Changing the Game: How to Find the Next Weirder Idea," at the University of Baltimore on April 19. The final session in the "Voices of Color in Games" speaker series, sponsored by the University of Baltimore Foundation, the talk will take place at 5 p.m. in the Moot Court Room in the John and Frances Angelos Law Center (home of the UB School of Law), 1401 N. Charles St. The event is free and open to the public.
For some game designers, climbing the nearest challenge is enough: fixing and polishing a broken game, or finding a small improvement to satisfy fans of a genre. Another kind of game designer is less interested in tackling a nearby hill than trying to jump across a chasm to find new terrain, seeking the unseen peaks and valleys. This is how new ways of playing are discovered and new genres are founded. Where do those leaps of insight and creativity come from?
Tech industry startups talk about "failing fast" to innovate, while video games celebrate the creators of historic titles like SimCity, Minecraft, or Doom as creative geniuses who were able to spot and pursue their one brilliant new idea that would open up new horizons.
Since 1999, Naomi Clark has designed, produced, and written for a wide variety of games, spanning many platforms and audiences: early text-based virtual worlds, online games for LEGO, educational games about everything from upcycling to electrical circuits, game development tools for kids, and more. In addition to teaching at several New York City schools, she's written about games for publications like Feministe as well as for collections of essays, e.g., Videogames for Humans; Queer Game Studies. She also co-authored a textbook, A Game Design Vocabulary, which has received many positive reviews. Her latest game is Consentacle, a two-player card game of trust, communication and intimacy that was successfully funded on Kickstarter last year.
Learn more about UB's Simulation and Game Design program.