Executive Director - Jason Pace
Jason comes to us with a wealth of experience in game design, development and marketing. He spent the past five years as a Creative Director and Lead Producer for the Halo franchise on Xbox, dividing his time between developing new intellectual property with external studios and leading internal projects to grow the franchise in new directions. Prior to Jason’s work on Halo, he led t
he product design teams for Microsoft Casual Games, focusing on game design, social features and metagame development. Jason is especially passionate about developing new talent and finding opportunities to apply game design principles to other educational environments.
In addition to Jason’s decade in the games industry he has a long history of connected experience design, with an emphasis on user experience and human-computer interaction. His interest in HCI initially attracted him to game design and has drawn him to projects that present unique interaction challenges. Jason is excited to bring his experience to CSP. He looks forward to working with students to grow their professional skills, and to working with faculty to explore ways for game design to support pedagogy and student learning.
Creative Director - Wanda Gregory
Lecturer in the Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences Program. Wanda has taught courses in game design, virtual worlds, and games for girls at UW Seattle and UW Bothell since 2005. She has extensive industry experience, having been Associate Producer for Edutainment Titles at Sierra Online, Senior Director of Online Media for Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro, Group Product Manager at Microsoft’s Xbox.com, Executive Producer for Interactive Entertainment at Hidden City Games. and Vice President and Executive Producer for Flowplay overseeing the development of an MMO for tweens and teens.
Wanda is a graduate of the UW, where she received a B.A. in English Literature, and her M.B.A. and M.A. in Communications. She is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Tasmania, Australia, where she previously lectured on game design in conjunction with the HitLab. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D through SMARTlab at the University College of Dublin, in Dublin, Ireland, focusing on “online identity and immersion as a healing modality.”
Executive Producer - Scott Berfield
Scott Berfield has been a producer of games since the mid-80′s when he started out as a “Jack of All Trades” (yes that was a real title) at Mindscape in Northbrook, Illinois. Since then, he has shipped dozens of titles across all platforms.
He was directly involved in the launch of the Playstation, Xbox and Xbox 360 consoles, has taught Game Production at the Digipen Institute of Technology and acts as advisor to several startup developers.
In addition to an abiding passion for getting cool stuff made on time and in budget, Scott also enjoys building and flying high powered rockets.
Program Coordinator - Savannah Martin
Savannah Martin graduated from the University of Washington Bothell in Winter 2011 with a degree in Media and Communications. In addition to working at the Center for Serious Play, Savannah also works on projects on the side, one of which is an indie film.
She loves video games, steampunk, attending conventions, theater, traveling, reading (especially high fantasy) and anything to do with mythology. Some of her favorite games include The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Age of Mythology, the original Halo and Skyrim.