Armstrong Professor @ Miami University
Director,
Persuasive Play Lab @ AIMS
Co-Director, AIMS Games Center @ Miami University
203 Laws Hall, Miami University, Oxford,OH, USA, 45056
Email: LGrace at Miami OH dot edu.
Twitter: Mindtoggle
Lindsay is the Armstrong Professor of Creative Arts within Miami University's Armstrong Institute for Interactive Media Studies. He directs the Persuasive Play Lab and is codirector of the Games Center within the Armstrong Institute for Interactive Media. His research areas include game design, human-computer interaction, critical gameplay, and web design. He also writes about design and education. Lindsay has served industry as an independent consultant, web designer, software developer, entrepreneur, business analyst and writer. Teaching [curriculum vitae / resume]
Lindsay joined the faculty of Miami University in 2009, where he holds a joint position between the Armstrong Institute for Interactive Media Studies and the School of Fine Arts. He has taught in digital interactive arts and writing at the Illinois Institute of Art in Chicago for 6 years. He also taught at ITT Technical schools and completed course writing for American Intercontinental University online. Art, Games , and Programming
Lindsay's creative practice is focused on uses of interactive media to explore cultural standards. Extending the foundations of human computer interaction, play design and design anthropology, the work explores the ignored. This work is computer game, gallery art, animation, sculpture or some interdisciplinary amalgamation. Lindsay’s work primarily pursues educational experiences and editorial critique of the social relationship between computers, humans and each other. The medium is typically screen based, software informed and aesthetic. The work demonstrates patterns through their amplification or the exposition of their absence in common awareness. The Critical Gameplay project is the current focus of this work, turning pattern into rhetoric.
Commercial Work
Lindsay currently creates commercial games via Mindtoggle Games. Lindsay has completed several projects as an independent contractor for small to mid-sized businesses. He consults on aspects of business system design and usability design. His areas of expertise are computer graphics, interface development, web design, and middle-tier programming.
A personal note:
I don't like talking about myself in the third person, but it makes it easier for other people to cut and paste my bio.
I teach because I have more people to thank than I can ever repay. If I went to medical school, I'd be where people needed me most. With the skills I have and my propensities - teaching digital design is what I do. I don't think the work I design will save a life, but it might just inspire one.
I also teach because I love it. I want every one of my students to have that ah-ha moment at least once in my classes. Most of my ah-ha moments have changed my life for the better. I hope I can facilitate the same.
Before I was 12 I started selling half-baked video games. I called that company Mindtoggle (from mind-switches). 8 years later I started a company with my friend Tony (now at Google), to sell club merchandise, DJ mixes, promote club specials and offer VIP access. I called that company Mindtoggle.com, but we also went by the more notable ChicagoClubber.com. It grew to be the 3rd largest resource for clubbing news, but I put it to rest when Metromix (the #1) matured. Now Mindtoggle sells mobile games. As Vonnegut writes - so it goes.
Hobbies: I race one of my cars in SCCA Autocross, bicycle (I used to race ABR and USCF), and play video games. The rest of life is peppered with travel, cooking, board games, fiction and philosophy.
A few photos of me (car racing photo courtesy of Jeff Lowe Imaging):
2012
2011
2010
2009
2009
Yes, my facial hair grows in direct proportion to my stress.
A few interesting numbers (as of July 2012):
79: The total number of courses I have taught between 2003-2012 (excluding independent studies)
5: the total number of Game Design courses I taught at Miami University 5: The total number of Web Design courses I taught at Miami University
28: The total number of Games courses I taught at AI-Chicago (Design, Scriptwriting, Programming) 18: The total number of Web Design courses I taught at AI-Chicago 15: The total number of general Digital Media courses I taught 4: The total number of film scriptwriting courses I taught at AI-Chicago 3: Total number of online only courses I have taught
1982: The first year I played a computer game 1986: The first year I started making computer games 1993: The first year I had been on an airplane
Grace, L. 2012. A Topographical Study of Persuasive Play in Digital Games. In Proceedings of the Academic Mindtrek (Tampere, Finland, October 3-5, 2012). ACM, New York, NY (forthcoming) Grace, L. 2012.
Critical Gameplay: Designing Games to Critique Convention, In Proceedings of the 20th ACM Multimedia, October 2012 (forthcoming)
In Review - Jamieson, P. Hall, J. Grace, L. 2012. A Survey to Help Adopt Human Computing Games in Mainstream Video Games Based on the Crowdsourcing Landscape.
In Press - Jamieson, P. Hall, J. Grace, L. 2012. Research Directions for Pushing Harnessing Human Computation to Mainstream Video Games. In Journal of Games and Culture. Sage.(top 5 paper, Meaningful Play)
In Press - Grace, L. 2012. "Critical Gameplay: Practice and Design" Computers in Entertainment. ACM.
Grace, L. Quinter, J, McCain, K, Kitchen, D, 2012. Swivelpad: an Active Body Controller. In Proceedings of the 17th international conference of the Computer Games (Accepted) (Louisville, KY: July 27-30, 2012). IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, 125-129.
Understanding Persuasive Play, Informational Technology Forum - Miami University Hamilton Campus (invited lecture), Hamilton, Ohio, February 2012
Gaming Augmented Reality, Place-based Applications and More, The Digital Non-Conference, September 2010, Cincinnati, Ohio
Digital Society Trends: New Forms of Machine-Human Interactions (panel): Critiquing Software Interactions, The Third International Conferences on Advances in Computer-Human Interactions (St Maarten), February 2010
Social Media and Digital Games for Environment Action (with G. Platt), Saving Species – July 2010 - Kinabatangan, Borneo, Malaysia
Peer reviewed
Play Strategies in Liberal Education, Organizing Panelist (with Dr. Shira Chess, Dr. Brooke Spangler , & Dr. Peter Jamieson) Meaningful Play,Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, October 2012
Bikini Beach Zombie Massacre - Sneaking Critical Gameplay Satire into the Mainstream, Arse Electronika, San Francisco, California, September 2012
Quoted: ABC News, CBS News, Business Week, National Public Radio, Huffington Post, Yahoo Games News, et al (Associated Press): Video game maker linked to US prisoner in Iran (1/10/2012-1/11/2011)
Quoted: ABC News, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Daily Herald, Backstage, Yahoo News, Arab Times, et al (Associated Press):
Next Gen Video Games Let Players Control the Story , Actors Storytelling Are Key Elements in New Video Games, Video Game Makers Focusing on Storylines(7/12/2011-7/25/2011)
Zombie Master: http://Zombies.LGrace.com
A micro site for a game prototype I released in 2005/2006. The game is very simple, and really doesn't aspire to anything more than a tech test. I wrote the program to gauge how much my students could accomplish in a quarter. I wrote the game in just under 3 weeks, but it did get reasonable download traffic.
My Applications
Autocross Advantage: http://mindtoggle.com/aa/ A quick mobile app I created to help autocross racers keep track of the course and their times.
Chicago Homicide Tool: http://Chicago.LGrace.com/
The micro site for my scientific visualization program to analyze geographic and chronological patterns in homicides. Last edited 2008
Interactive Travel Map: http://ITM.LGrace.com
Micro site for the Interactive Travel Map, a hastily "slapped together" program to create 3D interactive chronological histories of travel. The program allows the user to map any series of images to any 3D model, then create a timed animation rotating the model and moving through the image sequence. Last edited 2007.
Medical Image Viewer: Medical Image Viewer
Micro site for the Medical Image (e.g. dicom, CT scans, etc) viewer I wrote. It uses several common algorithms for generating 3D images from common data files.
My Work
Art: http://Art.LGrace.com
Descriptions of current digital art works, galleries and presentations.
Blog: http://Blog.Mindtoggle.com
My blog on digital media, interactive art and game related conferences, contests, and related information.
Cape Verde Narrative: http://CapeVerde.LGrace.com
The first few chapters of a narrative I am writing about my travels in west Africa. (incomplete work)
L-Grapher: http://LGrapher.LGrace.com
A program to create 3D height-maps and height-map based animations. Best used with images from the Chicago Homicide Tool. Last edited 2007.
Aii: http://Aii.LGrace.com/
Information for Illinois Institute of Art students, including syllabi, course documents, and related resources.
Camera: http://Camera.LGrace.com
A website introducing common terminology and concepts for describing camera movement. This micro site was created to provide my writing students an easy reference for scripting animated cut scenes in games. Last edited in 2006
Miami University: http://Miami.LGrace.com/
Information for Miami University students, including syllabi, course documents, and related resources.
Students: http://Students.LGrace.com/
A collection of links to work my students have completed. It was maintained for 2 years, while I was teaching web design. The work of my Game Art students requires more bandwidth than this collection would rightly support. Legal issues also prevent me from hosting student work on my own servers. Please visit AI for samples of current student game work. Student game programming examples can be viewed at http://lg3311.aisites.com/games.htm
Biography
Lgrace.com
