Yiran Xuan – Looking Outward 10

I greatly admire Robin Hunicke’s work in the video game industry, especially in two very unique and memorable games, Boom Blox and Journey, the latter of which has won multiple awards for its visuals and interactions. Robin started in the industry at Electronic Arts, working on the Sims, before joining thatgamecompany as a producer. She recently started her own company, Funomena, to create VR and art games, such as Wattam in collaboration with the creator of Katamari Damacy.

Journey is a very emotional game, despite having no dialogue, and this is due to the very deliberate mechanics and environmental design choices that Robin had done research upon; players can be led to feel a certain way simply by an interaction. Robin also does research into dynamic difficulty adjustment, which is when a game procedurally evaluates player interactions and gameplay to adjust its difficulty.

http://danm.ucsc.edu/faculty/robin-hunicke