Games offer some of the most popular and diverse forms of contemporary entertainment. Their impact on players and culture is undeniable, and yet often misunderstood. Designers and experts will discuss ideas from their recent books that explore the evolution of game design, the player experience, and the profound impact of games on our culture.

• Professor Tracy Fullerton is an experimental game designer, professor, author and founding director (emeritus) of the USC Games program. Her research center, the Game Innovation Lab, has produced a number of influential independent games, including Cloud, flOw, Darfur is Dying, The Night Journey, and Walden, which was named Game of the Year at Games for Change 2017 and Developer’s 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. She is co-author of the recently released The Well-Read Game: On Playing Thoughtfully, from MIT Press, a player-centric theory of interpretive interactivity.

• Richard Lemarchand is a game designer, educator, writer, and consultant. He worked at Naughty Dog for eight years where he led or co-led the design of all three PlayStation 3 games in the Uncharted series. He also helped to create the game series Gex and Soul Reaver at Crystal Dynamics. He is now a professor of Cinematic Arts in the USC Games program, teaching game design, development, storytelling, and production, and is the author of A Playful Production Process for Game Designers (and Everyone), published by the MIT Press in October 2021.

• TreaAndrea M. Russworm is the Microsoft Endowed Chair and a professor in the School of Cinematic Arts at USC. Russworm is the author or editor of Blackness is Burning, Gaming Representation, and Theorizing Tyler Perry. She is a Series Editor of the book series Power Play: Games, Politics, Culture (Duke University Press), and she was an inaugural associate editor of Outreach and Equity for the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies.
• Tara McPherson (moderator) is the HMH Endowed Professor of Cinema + Media Studies at the USC School of Cinematic Arts and Director of the Sidney Harman Academy for Polymathic Study. She is author or editor of five books, including the award-winning books Feminist in a Software Lab: Difference + Design (Harvard 2018) and Reconstructing Dixie: Race, Gender and Nostalgia in the Imagined South (Duke 2003). She is currently researching hate online and making anti-fascist media as part of the Mellon-funded Data Fluencies grant. The collaboratively authored book, Data Fluencies, is forthcoming in 2026 from the University of Minnesota.