Good, well-run teams are hard to come by. Perhaps because they are built rather than stumbled upon. A functional team needs a leader who is confident, kind, and firm, and team members who can take initiative while still following guidance. Everyone involved needs to know how to actively listen. When that team is constructing part of an interdimensional travel station, these requirements remain largely the same.
In this post-mortem, researcher, designer, game developer, and artist F. Ria Khan explores how they managed a team as they built the Galactic Autoquarium for Meow Wolf’s Convergence Station in Denver, CO. They talk about what kind of attitudes make for the best collaboration and how sometimes having the most experience doesn’t necessarily mean you are the best person for the job. They also reflect on other projects they’ve done that prepared them to lead this team and the things they would’ve done differently.
About Your Speaker
My name is F. Ria Khan (they/them) and I am a researcher, game developer, and designer for tech equity. My interests revolve around Human-Computer Interaction where I express my passion for exploring the intersections between fine art, critical design, science, and gamified interaction for social reflection. These explorations involve developing alternative technologies, games, and applications that enable better intersectional engagement and comfort within tech, academia, and game communities through analyzing, mitigating, and provocatively exposing discrimination. Intersectional discrimination, for me, means the nuanced and politically entwined issues of race, gender, ableism, and sexuality in tech, and how these issues stunt creative diversity and inclusivity in both technological advancements and in academia. I want to focus on using play and expression specifically as a vehicle for these alt-tech and games because I find a unique persuasion in the abstract concept of play. Especially when designed as a core component of interaction within a technology, play is unique in its power to engage a wide range of a community and evoke participation and experiences that elicit thinking about different perspectives and lessons. I aim to develop technologies and playful interactions that tap into that persuasion, as I believe there's a real potential for it to enable social change and better and safer intersectional engagement in tech communities.
Good, well-run teams are hard to come by. Perhaps because they are built rather than stumbled upon. A functional team needs a leader who is confident, kind, and firm, and team members who can take initiative while still following guidance. Everyone involved needs to know how to actively listen. When that team is constructing part of an interdimensional travel station, these requirements remain largely the same.
In this post-mortem, researcher, designer, game developer, and artist F. Ria Khan explores how they managed a team as they built the Galactic Autoquarium for Meow Wolf’s Convergence Station in Denver, CO. They talk about what kind of attitudes make for the best collaboration and how sometimes having the most experience doesn’t necessarily mean you are the best person for the job. They also reflect on other projects they’ve done that prepared them to lead this team and the things they would’ve done differently.
About Your Speaker
My name is F. Ria Khan (they/them) and I am a researcher, game developer, and designer for tech equity. My interests revolve around Human-Computer Interaction where I express my passion for exploring the intersections between fine art, critical design, science, and gamified interaction for social reflection. These explorations involve developing alternative technologies, games, and applications that enable better intersectional engagement and comfort within tech, academia, and game communities through analyzing, mitigating, and provocatively exposing discrimination. Intersectional discrimination, for me, means the nuanced and politically entwined issues of race, gender, ableism, and sexuality in tech, and how these issues stunt creative diversity and inclusivity in both technological advancements and in academia. I want to focus on using play and expression specifically as a vehicle for these alt-tech and games because I find a unique persuasion in the abstract concept of play. Especially when designed as a core component of interaction within a technology, play is unique in its power to engage a wide range of a community and evoke participation and experiences that elicit thinking about different perspectives and lessons. I aim to develop technologies and playful interactions that tap into that persuasion, as I believe there's a real potential for it to enable social change and better and safer intersectional engagement in tech communities.
Our Approach
Game-Making Practice
It's for everyone! We believe that game design and thinking is not limited to "the video game industry." It's a creative point of view that any discipline can use.
LEARN FROM Doing
Our workshops are focused on activities with a majority of time spent on making things.
this is only the start
You'll grow from here. We hope that this is a stepping stone for you to permanently work with the material of games.