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....