In addition to my [Dominion Divider Generator]({{ref “dominion-dividers”}}) I’ve written bits of code to produce more general boardgame related pdfs and provided online generators for them. I was inspired by Michael Kröhnert’s cool chitboxes for the game Shipyard to write a generalized script to produce bits boxes with lids in that style and found a cool card tuckox design somewhere that I used to write a card tuckbox generator.
I am currently working for DeviantArt for the third time. I left once to become a professor and another time to form a company but am currently back once more, co-leading the DeviantArt AI team. Why? It’s a good job that has gotten even better. DeviantArt has always appealed to my contrarian sensibilities, and building machine learning and artificial intelligence systems there lets me play with its immense amounts of interesting data in a small group while having a direct impact on our end users to make their experience a better one....
I played a lot of Dominion and its first couple of expansions when they came out. I also took them to enough friends’ places that I grew frustrated with the inefficient storage in the boxes. So, I built a foamboard insert for my Dominion box and wrote a python script to generate dividers for the base game and the first 3 expansions. Since then, I have maintained and improved this script and added all Dominion expansions to date with the help of a lot of volunteer contributors....
I received my Ph.D. from the MIT Media Lab. There’s a lot to talk about regarding that, but for now I’ll just link to my old site that has a bunch of project descriptions and materials from those years.
During my Ph.D. I started playing online games with remote friends and both developed and sustained several friendships in this manner that would like have withered away otherwise. One of the games we played was Bioware’s original Neverwinter Nights. I had played and loved the first two Baldur’s Gate installments, and this was a sequel that allowed collaborative online play. I was also learning Python at the time, and in my spare time started writing an editor that would allow non-Windows users to produce content for the game as the game only came with an editor in its Windows version....
I had wanted to conduct more research on or at least experimental development of AI in the game industry, but the options to do so in Vanocuver are rather limited. So when a position opened up for a professorship in game research at a local university I had to apply. I thus became a professor at Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology. Why did I only stay two terms?...
After my Ph.D. and postdoc, despite having a great experience, I was ready to be done with academia for a while. It was also difficult to accept one of the academic positions on offer in New England because I was waiting for Cydney to be done her Ph.D. and move back to Vancouver. I had met Ian Davis during my time at M.I.T. and started working for his game company Mad Doc Software as an AI programmer, and later as the studio AI head....
In 2013 I was a professor at Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology program (I’m still an adjunct professor there, now). Amongst other things, I taught a course called “Foundations of Game Design” (IAT 312) there and used both my background in video game research and my love of boardgames heavily to motivate course materials and design projects. Many of the students had never played modern boardgames, so I familiarized them with some of the concepts by having them play Dominion and Lords of Waterdeep and then asked them to design a game that combined two of the mechanics from these games, Deckbuilding and Worker Placement....
From 2016 to 2018 Chris Nell and I owned a Machine Learning Consulting company called Tideline Data. We spun out of our Artificial Intelligence group at DeviantArt and provided AI services for a number of Vancouver clients including BuildDirect and Widerfunnel but also kept a contract with DeviantArt going. Soon after, DeviantArt was purchased by Wix and hired us back to re-form an Artificial Intelligence team for the company here in Vancouver....