Inclusive Game Dev @ MSU Presents
Sovereign Game Prototyping
With Allen Turner and Elizabeth LaPensée
Thursday, Dec. 7 // 12:00 to 2:00 PM // CAS 191 (Deeb Room)
What would analog game prototyping look like using Indigenously-determined materials like leather, beads, copper, and birch bark? What kinds of games can we imagine that reflect sovereign bodies and relationships? What game spaces can we co-create which we are reciprocal with?
Find out in this one-of-a-kind workshop at Michigan State University open to all students, faculty, staff, and community members.
Allen Turner is part of the game design faculty at DePaul University where he teaches students, at all levels, various skills and processes for good game design. Allen has worked at Bungie Software, and Day 1 Studios, and has spent the last 9 years at Wideload Games/Disney Interactive Studios as Lead Designer. At Wideload, he worked on Stubbs the Zombie, Hail to the Chimp, and Disney Guilty Party. He was also Game Director for Marvel XP, a narrative driven meta-system for Disney/Marvel games which he launched on Facebook and iOS. He is the author of Ehdrigohr: The Roleplaying Game, a tabletop dark fantasy roleplaying game that explores tribal themes and allegorical battles with depression, solitude, identity, and erasure. The inspiration for that work comes from within the Chicago Native American community where he is a known storyteller and serves on the Board of Directors for the American Indian Center in Chicago.
Elizabeth LaPensée, Ph.D. is an award-winning designer, writer, artist, and researcher who creates and analyzes Indigenous-led media such as games and comics. She is both Anishinaabe with relations from Bay Mills Indian Community and Métis named for Elizabeth Morris. She is an Assistant Professor of Media & Information and Writing, Rhetoric & American Cultures at Michigan State University. Most recently, she designed and created art for Thunderbird Strike (2017), a lightning-searing side-scroller game which won Best Digital Media at imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival.