www.ericzimmerman.com
This is the under-reconstruction website of Eric Zimmerman.

 

Who am I?

I am a game designer. I have worked in the game industry
for a decade and have created dozens of games for a wide
variety of media. I have created award-winning multi-
million dollar PC CD-ROM games, massively multiplayer
online games, small-scale web-based games, non-computer
social games played by thousands of people at conferences,
and physical games played in museums and galleries. My
work includes games for entertainment, education,
research, and art contexts.

I am an academic. I have taught courses in game design,
interactive narrative design, and related topics at the
university level for almost ten years at places like MIT,
New York University, School of Visual Arts, and Parsons
School of Design at the New School University. I have also
given a great many lectures and workshops and I serve on
the editorial board of Game Studies.

I am a writer. In November 2003, MIT Press published
Rules of Play, a game design textbook I co-authored with
Katie Salen. The next month, Eyebeam and Peter Lang Press
published RE:PLAY, a book I co-edited with Amy Scholder.
I have also published numerous book chapters and papers on
topics like game design, narrative and interactivity, the
game design process, and independent games. I am also the
co-creator with Nancy Nowacek of the interactive paper
book Life in the Garden.

I am an entrepreneur. I currently run gameLab, an
independent game development company based in New York City
that I founded in 2000 with Peter Lee. gameLab creates
experimental games on and off the computer, although most
of our work is web-based. I was also a founding Partner of
Flat, an interdisciplinary design studio based in NYC.

I am a game advocate. I am a very active member of the
International Game Developers Association, serving on the
steering group of the Education Committee and on the IGDA
Developer Awards Committee. Through the IGDA, I have
helped organize events that bring together game scholars and
educators with game designers and developers. I also was the
director of RE:PLAY, a series of events sponsored by Eyebeam
that had similar aims.

And... I study Shorin-Ryu Karate under the direction of Hanshi
Robert Scaglione and have received the rank of Sho-Dan (first
degree blackbelt). I live in Brooklyn, NYC. I can be reached
at gameLab's office in Manhattan at +1 646 827 6644. Or you
can email me at eric@gmlb.com. For my adoring nonexistent fans,
here's what I look like.

 

My new website is under construction and will be online in early
2004, with links to games, articles, syllabi, and documentation
of my non-digital work. In the meantime, you can find more info
on me and recent game projects at the gameLab website.

Play more.