Tracy Fullerton: Video Games Innovator

on to become a bestseller and award winner. Projects like Walden have made Tracy Fullerton one of the most impactful and innovative game designers around. I'm Miland Revere and this is Senecas On Women to Hear. We are bringing you one hundred of the world's most inspiring and history making women you need to hear. As a game designer and an educator, Tracy Fullerton is influencing new generations of game designers.

She is the former director of the famous USC Games Program and she heads up the USC Game Innovation Lab. Working with artists Bill Viola, Tracy created The Night Journey, a video game that has been exhibited in museums around the world. Listen and learn why Tracy Fullerton is one of Seneca's On women to hear. I am speaking today with Tracy Fullerton, one of the most influential game designers. Welcome Tracy. We're looking forward to this conversation. It's great

to be here. Thanks for having me. Now, you're one of the top video game designers out there. What ex I to you about game design? What do people not understand about the power and potential of gaming or what do they understand? Well, I think, you know, when we say people, that's a broad term. So there's many people who do understand uh, the sort of wonderful potential of games, and those would be a players of games, people who are already enjoying this medium for all that it has

to offer. I would say that there is, however, a stigma when when we think of games, often the first thing that that jumps to mind are very violent games, games that perhaps are uh that don't show us immediately some of the more interesting qualities that I think, uh, playful experiences have to offer. And uh yeah, So for me, that's the interesting thing is uh really trying to um not only make games that are diving into new areas, but also to help folks in the public who aren't

yet accustomed to thinking of games. This way to broaden their horizons makes a lot of sense. And I know for many years you were head of the famous USC Games program and one of the things you achieved, which is of great interest to us at Seneca Women, was to bring more women into the program. Yes, and I understand at one point they actually outnumbered men, which I think in gaming is extraordinary. So why do we need women in gaming and how did you manage to increase

their numbers? That's a great question. So I think that you know what we need is diversity in gaming. We did focus on bringing more women into our program early on, but now we're actually focused on bringing in a wider range of folks from different races, ethnicities, backgrounds, et cetera. We actually recently started a fellowship up for black and

Indigenous students to support their growth in the program. So specifically in terms of women, of course, that's something that's very near and dear to my heart, because I wanted to foster a community where more women creative backgrounds could feel that they could come and be trained to have a voice and have a career path in the games industry. And interestingly, I think it's quite simple how you do this is you build a community that is based on

respect and inclusiveness where people can do great work. And then you know, we had some early successes of some wonderful women designers coming out of the program and starting companies and having great success, and that sort of feeds back in on itself when we see role models and then more people come to the program, etcetera, etcetera, And it is a positive feedback cycle that I hope begins to extend into the industry itself. What kind of skills sets does one need? Wow, that's such a deep and

rich question. There are so many different ways that one can participate in the games industry. So when we think of game designers and game developers, some of the first skills that come to mind obviously are programming, uh, and then obviously art, But there are so many more skills that I think people don't think of right away. So for example, um, there are people who are musicians and

audio designers. Um, there are people who are the designers of the actual concept, right, so what is the player thinking and feeling and what are they going to be doing? Those are really what we call game designers, And that's not necessarily it can be but it's not necessarily technical. It's really more about psychology. It's really more about understanding what the players motivated by and designing experiences that will compel them and want them to play right. There's also

business skills that one might have. So many of our students, for examples, start their own companies, so learning business skills and becoming an entrepreneur or becoming a producer or executive at a larger company that's already established in the industry. These are past that that folks can take. And then

there are user research skills. So just as an example, you know, there are people who study human computer interface and user research so that they can measure the effects of games and how games are working with the players, and what's successful and what's not successful, and they evaluate that and then they bring their findings back into the design process so that we can produce more successful games.

So it's really quite arrange. It really is. Now. I know you talking about having your own business, and I know that you have your own research centers. The Game Innovation Lab tell us about that. What are the goals for the lab? What do you do? So the Game Innovation Lab was founded actually back in two thousand four with a gift from Electronic Arts, and the mission of the Lab was to push the boundaries of what we

perceived as play and it always has that's remained our mission. So, you know, in the early days of the Lab, it was hard to imagine, for example, indie games having much of an influence in the industry. Some of our earliest projects that came out of the Lab included games like Cloud, which then started a company called That Game Company, and that Game Company has gone on to produce genre defining

games that are all about connecting people. They're about exploring emotions that have never been considered important in games like Wonder and a kind of community and respect for the players. So these emotional games, these are things that now a lot of people aspire to make, but very early on in the growth of the Lab, this had not been something that was really much thought of in the industry.

We've also done a lot of work in learning in games, so we have pushed on the boundaries of how games can be considered either spaces or say even almost texts, playable texts for educational settings. And so in that regard, we work with teachers, we work with students, and we try to create games that illuminate for the players the same kind of ideas, critical ideas, critical thinking possibilities as say, one might get if they were reading a piece of literature.

So games and learning games as artworks. We we've made games with world renowned artists such as Bill Viola. We made a game called The Night Journey, which has been exhibited around the world and numerous museums. And this is the idea where games themselves may take another place in in culture, and we may think of them as actual artistic expressions and experiences rather than say, just commercial media.

We've also we've made games that are more political in nature, and games that really look to build certain types of communities. So all these come together with the idea that the lab is there to push the boundaries of what we think of is play and where play really sits in culture. And does the designer usually come up with his or her idea of what kind of game maybe a terrific innovation. Is it more of a group process? How does that work in terms of the stimuli if you will, Yeah,

there's a lot of different ways that work. So as an example, the art game that I was talking about with Bill Viola. That idea came from Bill and he wanted to make a game about the spiritual journey, and so that was a collaboration between myself and Bill Viola and the team at the Lab. On the other hand, my game Walden, which is based on the work of Henry David Thorow, was a personal project that began with a question that I asked about how we might understand

and play for ourselves throws experiment in living simply. Uh. Some of the other projects that we've done have been more group oriented or come as responses to say, for example, calls from the community outside. We've done a lot of work in games and health, specifically the work of Mary Tina gutsis where she's answering some of the needs of different calls for games in neuroscience and social work, for example. Really interesting. You know, speaking to guests like yourself, I

often wonder, you know, what got them into this. So let's go back a bit. How did you get into gaming in the first place. Well, it's an interesting question because I you know, when I was growing up, there were no video games when I was very young. Uh, you know, I think Pong didn't come out till I was I don't know, eleven or twelve, it seems like, um. And so, you know, I grew up in uh, I guess, a very different kind of environment where we spent a

lot of time making our own fund. Um. You know, my father's garage was a place where you could, you know, find lots of stuff to nail together and you know, make all sorts of contraptions, and we would make theater sets and um, we made a telegraph that you know, went across our neighborhood and things like that. And so we're always making our own fund. And then as video

games emerged, and even more importantly as personal computers. You know, my parents bought a personal computer for us very early on, a Commodore six or four for those of you out there who are as old as I am. And there were magazines you could buy where you could they had blocks of code in them and you could type them in and make things happen on the on the computer. And that really opened my eyes to the possibilities of technology, uh, computer technology specifically. But I was a kid who put

on plays. I was a kid who I made Super eight movies, and you know, drew comic books and wrote stories and I was always making things, and so I kind of, I guess, fell into gaming because it was, you know, eventually the one career where I could use all of those interest together. And you said that very well, because it's both tech skills as well as the enormous creativity and amazing possibilities come out of that mix. I guess.

I think storytelling is a really big part of game design, and for me as uh, it's a really big part of what drives me storytelling and experience making creating things for other people to enjoy. So what was it like in those early days of game design for you? Did you face obstacles where women looked at as you know, why are you into game design? What was it like? So there are two or multiple ways to look at this. One way is I myself didn't face many hurdles. In fact,

I guess I was sort of precocious. But I you know, I went into the industry UM and I almost immediately was made a creative director. First of all, I had great mentor and I was almost immediately put in charge of the design of of projects UM. I had training in filmmaking. I had gone to USC in their film school,

and so I knew how to run projects. I knew to break projects down and and you know, make them happen right, And I had my own self training and uh in terms of technology, and so it was a very unique time because there really weren't a lot of people who had that combination of creative skills and technical skills. And so I was very lucky. And I guess I was also a bit Uh. I didn't even understand how lucky I was. I just sort of expected to be

put in charge of creative projects. Well that's you know, having confidence is important too, it is I these days I kind of wonder how how in the world old I got that confidence. But I was put in charge and I never expected anything otherwise. Uh So, so that was one That's one thing for me. But I will say this because I know many people, especially now, struggle

more than I did to find success. I will say that there were times in my career where I absolutely noticed that I was not being promoted as fast as some of the my peers who were who were men. And I also was not listened to uh and and those things they matter, right, the kind of respectfulness matters. Um. It was harder for me as a president. When I started my own company, it's harder for me to raise money.

In fact, finally, our strategy as a company was to take the same pitch and let my business partner give it and wham, we got the money. So those things matter. And one of the reasons that, you know, bringing more diverse voices into the industry, into academia where people are trained, and because that is a pipeline into the industry. That's why it's so important to me to be part of

that process. You know, you're you're mentioning what it was like when you were trying to get the investment money, and that's something we hear repeatedly from women entrepreneurs, and the shortfall in terms of access to investment is so much more difficult. Yes, it's shocking. Really, it's so much greater in terms of just how big it is. Senecas one hundred women to hear will be back after the

short break. You know you mentioned Walden, Yes, your extraordinary hit game, but you didn't mention that it got very wide press coverage when it came out, not just in gaming journals but everywhere, from the New York Times just Smithsonian Magazine. It was even named game of the year. What was it about Walden that made it so different or gave it the receptivity it got? And did you have a clue when you you PopEd for this kind of success? I would imagine, But did you expect that

you were onto something? Well? I hope, uh, I hope that I was onto something. Uh. Let me answer the question about what makes it so different first, because I think on the surface, it's on the surface, it seems obvious that it is a strange little game about a philosopher, when if you tried to name another game about a philosopher, you might be hard pressed to do so. Um, it's

a game where you play as Hen David Thorough. You go to the woods to act out his experiment in living, and you, you know, are seeking not only to just survive in those woods, as as you might in many games. Many games are have survival simulations at their core, But you're not just trying to survive in the woods of Walden. Frankly, that's a very simple thing to do, because he really wasn't that far away from family and friends. But you're

trying to understand what makes us thrive? H What is it about life that inspires us that, you know, beyond just gaining things, what what is it that will make our lives more beautiful, more interesting and more successful from a philosophical point of view? And so, uh, that is what makes the game different. What makes the game different is that it asks, I think, a question that I

don't think I've seen another game ask. Um. And so when I set out to design it, I I had First of all, I was a little bit nervous, right, And second of all, I had no money. Um, there was no funding. I started designing a game in two thousand and seven, and I just brought it to the folks in the lab and I said, listen, I've been thinking about this for a while. I had really really thought about wanting to do it in two thousand two,

and I just hadn't seen a way forward. But I brought it to the you know, folks who worked in the lab, and I said, listen, I'd like to try something. Let's let's all read this book together, and let's have a kind of a workshop, a weekly workshop where we work on ideas about how we might bring it to a game format. And we did. We started with a group of volunteers and we did what we called paper prototyping, which is you make essentially board game versions of your ideas.

It allows you to do very cheap um investigation. We did that, and we then began and to make very simple, rough digital prototypes. And we were about five years into the project before there was any inkling on the horizon that someone might be interested in funding a game like this. UM. Around that time, things were changing, you know, and and I think we in the lab and and and other

groups were part of that change. You know. I talked about making sure, you know, getting the word out to people that games can be different, and some of the success of the early projects of our lab and other

other folks started to make that change possible. UM. And so it was about midway through that programs like the UM National endow Humanities began their digital projects for the public that specifically mentioned that they would accept games interesting, and the National Endowment for the Arts changed the wording of their Media Arts grants to include the word games.

And so that made it possible for us to actually take our ideas and with them supported now to to really execute in a way that would make the game an actual viable project to bring to the public. So you know, in a way the game was. It began with an inkling of a question that I asked, and then it became in many ways a a standard bearer for the types of games that might be made under the new way of of conceiving of them and the new support available to them from various sources, and it

raised gaming to a different level. At the same time, I didn't know that about both the n A and n e H. They have been great supporters of our work. They also supported the Night Journey project with Bill Viola, that's the National Down for the Arts did that, and

the National Down for Humanity Ease. Even after we published the commercial game, they gave us some exploratory funding to build an educational version of Walden, which is something we're working on now, and this is free for teachers, and many many teachers have been using the beta versions during COVID and writing to us because these are humanities teachers, you know, English language Arts, also social emotional learning, and the writing to us and saying we've never experienced games

made for our classrooms before. Mostly they be made for say, science classes. Games do very well in STEM, but the teachers that we speak to our you know, say English teachers who are so excited to find a game that brings the Book of Walden to life for their students when it may not seem like Walden is something that is topical, but the themes of living simply close to nature, understanding you know what it is that we need not just to survive but to thrive. Also concern for the environment,

a sense of civic responsibility. All of these themes that run throughout the book are exceptionally topical, exceptionally so absolutely what a wonderful not just void that has been filled, but an opportunity to have access to Walden as a game that can make that kind of difference in somebody's life. Clearly, Walden is not a violent or sexually exploit of game. It's just the polar opposite of all of that. But would you agree, Tracy, that the gaming industry has a

longstanding reputation for being hostile to women players? Is that still fair? I think we need to sort of separate that. So the industry itself, I think is does not set out to be hostile to women players. However, it does cater to male players, if that makes any sense. And so I would say that what does happen is because

it does cater to specifically young male players. There is a sense of entitlement on the part of those players, and that entitlement has in the age of social media, which we know UM has a cutting edge to it, UM has fostered a kind of uh toxic community that is hostile to many women players. And I think that's a that's a shame, and I put that on the

game industry. You know, the industry needs to stop catering to one specific public and stop defining themselves as UM focused on that particular public, because they are creating a sense of entitlement in those players, and they need to realize that play is universally human and we play across all of our ages. We played differently when we're children than we do when we're adults, but we certainly play right.

And one only has to look at the success of something is crazy as word, for example, which is UM, you know, just making the rounds of of of social media, which is just a word guessing game, right, and that so many adults are captivated. You get one chance a day to guess a word, and it's a kind of intellectual mind play that people enjoy. It so everyone plays. That's that's the key here. Everyone plays during times like this. By the way, everyone's played more. This has been a

fantastic year for games. And one of the huge irony is it's been just an amazing year for games, you know, because what have we to do when we're trapped in our in our houses but to play games, right And so, you know, for me, I think it's important for the industry to grow up a little bit and understand that they are making experiences for a multitude of publics and markets. And are they thinking very narrowly that this is where their business lies and not thinking about all the other

publics that are out there. Yes, And I think that's changing. So I want to be fair. Um, I think there are you know, there are definitely people in the industry who are thinking beyond that sort of core gamer market that they've always serve, but they haven't really come out and based and and and said hey, you're only one of our one of our groups. They don't want to lose that core, that core public, right Uh. And to me, I think you need to be a little braver than that.

You need to basically come out and say, hey, we're here to serve humans across all ages and backgrounds and genders and races and you know, et cetera, nationalities everything. Right, we're here to create play and plays universal. Well, may you get through on that? It would be extremely beneficial. You had mentioned just how much interest there has been in in video game playing, As you said, you know

what all can you do when you're in lockdown? So the pandemic has spurred a lot of that, And I wonder did COVID teach you anything new or surprising about gaming, because there's been so much greater engagement. I don't know if it taught me as so much as it confirmed things that I had been thinking about UM. Early in

the pandemic. Of course, there was this massive uh success of UM Animal Crossing, which is a little game where you made your own island, your own private island, and you you know, decorated it and had little you know, visitors and friends and everyone had their own private islands,

which was so appropriate, right UM. And I had this moment when I was playing, when I was playing Animal Crossing like everyone else, at this moment where my niece, who I hadn't seen in a couple of months, came over to my island to visit it being and I

was almost in tears. It happened to be reigning on my island and we were sort of running around in the rain and laying on the jungle gyms of the island, and um, you know, I honestly was almost in tears because it just felt so good too interact with her. And I think that that really confirms to me how much part there can be when we play in environments that allow us to feel, you know, environments that are

not necessarily about direct competition or violent competition. When we are allowed to be layful, in environments that support our heart to live, that's beautiful. I can just imagine how you felt by the way you described it. It's the really extraordinary. We never have enough time for these conversations, and this one has been particularly rich, and I'm wondering these are difficult times. I think there's no surprise in

that statement. But given the difficulty of these times and all of the challenges, can games help us move forward? In games give us hope? It seems so much of what you described does have that capacity, I hope. So that is what I you know, have dedicated the lab too. That is the work that I do. It depends on the games. And and this is you know, this is true of any medium. What is it that you're saying? What is it you're supporting? What? How are you inspiring people?

Are the questions that I would ask of game makers in these types of times? Are we making games that help us become better citizens, that help us be come engaged in fruitful ways and ways that help drive our society forward? Are we making games that help us learn in times where we can't necessarily be together? Are we making games that support us in our emotional growth and our emotional health? Are we making games that bring us together as communities. If we're doing that, then games can

move us forward. Well, on that note, it's a very wonderful note to end on, and I can't thank you enough. I'm sure our listeners are feeling similarly. It's been my pleasure well just learning about gaming and game design and all of what you have achieved already, but also the extraordinary possibilities you laid out today. So we are very very grateful to you for making us so much smarter

about this field than we were when we started. Thank you, Tracy Fullerton, Oh, thank you it's so great to look at the world through the fresh perspective of video games thanks to Tracy Fullerton. Here are three things I took from that conversation. First, video games are about more than action and dazzling artwork. As Tracy says, they allow us to push the boundaries of play. They can help us

to build community, even to live a more fulfilling life. Second, the games industry, like every other field, benefits when women are involved. Tracy made it a priority to bring more women into the games program at USC. She succeeded by developing a space where women could feel they had a voice and a real career path in the games industry. Finally, it's fascinating to know that games can actually help us

move forward as a society. That can happen, Tracy tells us if we demand games that show us how to be better citizens, that contribute to our emotional health, and that give us hope in challenging times. Tune in next week to hear about our next featured woman and discover why she's one of Seneca's Women to Hear. Seneca's one hundred Women to Hear is a collaboration between the Seneca Women Podcast Network and I Heart Radio with support from founding partner Pung. Have a great day.