The Well-Read Game

Tracy Fullerton, M.F.A. is an experimental game designer, professor and director emeritus of the USC Games program. Her research center, the Game Innovation Lab , has produced several influential independent games, including Cloud, flOw, Darfur is Dying, The Night Journey, with artist Bill Viola and Walden, a game, a simulation of Henry David Thoreau’s experiment at Walden Pond which was named “Game of the Year” at Games for Change 2017 and “Developer Choice” at IndieCade 2017. Tracy is the author of “ Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games ,” a design textbook used at game programs worldwide, and holder of the Electronic Arts Endowed Chair in Interactive Entertainment. In addition to her teaching and design, she is a member of the Board of Directors for Square Enix Holdings, Co. and Games for Change . 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, Tracy was a founding member of the New York design firm R/GA Interactive. As a producer and creative director she created games and interactive products for clients including Sony, Intel, Microsoft, AdAge, Ticketmaster, Compaq, and Warner Bros. among many others. Notable projects include Sony’s Multiplayer Jeopardy! and Multiplayer Wheel of Fortune and MSN’s NetWits , the first multiplayer casual game. Additionally, Tracy was Creative Director at the interactive film studio Interfilm, where she wrote and co-directed the “cinematic game” Ride for Your Life , starring Adam West and Matthew Lillard. She began her career as a designer at Bob Abel’s company Synapse, where she worked on the interactive documentary Columbus: Encounter, Discovery and Beyond and other early interactive projects. Tracy’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, most “sublime experience,” the “Impact” and “Trailblazer” awards from the Indiecade Festival, ID 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 and the Hollywood Reporter’s Women in Entertainment Power 100. Matthew Farber, Ed.D. is Associate Professor of Educational Technology and Codirector of the Gaming SEL Lab at the University of Northern Colorado. He is a play theorist who studies how games can foster empathy, compassion, perspective-taking, and ethical decision-making. He was a contributing writer for Origin101, the official learning companion for Ava DuVernay’s critically acclaimed film Origin. Author of several books and articles, Dr. Farber writes for Edutopia , has been invited to the White House and to keynote for UNESCO, and has been interviewed by NPR, The Washington Post, APA Monitor on Psychology, EdSurge, The Denver Post, Fast Company, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal. He has codeveloped game-based lessons with Tracy Fullerton for her award-winning Walden, a game EDU. In The Well-Read Game: On Playing Thoughtfully, Fullerton and Farber explore how personal and subjective meanings are evoked through a new theory of player response. Links: Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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The Well-Read Game is an episode from No Such Thing: Education in the Digital Age by Marc Lesser.

This episode is 1:03:19 long.

This episode was published on Apr 29, 2026.

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