After graduating, I took a post-doctoral research position at the Morgridge Institute for Research (2009-2011). At the time, there was an Education Research group focusing on the creation of educational video games built on the science from other research areas at the institute. I worked with three people from UW-Madison (two professors and a staff member) to write grants, prototype games, perform education outreach, and hire game artists, developers, and designers. We grew the research group from the four of us to over twenty-five people by the time I left.

During this time, I led a team of developers/artists to create the group’s first publicly released game, Virulent. I designed the game from paper prototypes through level design and release. I was a certified Scrum Master and led the project, but because of the limited size of our group I needed to play multiple roles. I was at times a Stakeholder, a Scrum Master, and a Developer. Design and development of the game required that I balance input from research scientists, education experts, programmers, artists, and play-testers.

We included agency for virus particles that the scientists found mildly offensive, released it before proving understanding and comprehension as the education experts wanted, and didn’t include the guns that play-testers requested. However, I believe that getting to over 20,000 downloads for a free, educational game is fairly successful.

Software used: Unity
Languages used: C#