Big Picture Studio
An interdisciplinary team bringing in our various backgrounds to make a visually appealing, technically impressive, and emotionally engaging narrative puzzle game across 4 phones!
Team
Samantha Lai
Samantha is a Canadian filmmaker with seven years of experience in the TV and film industry, specializing in directing and narrative design. She has a strong track record of leading creative projects and shaping compelling cinematic experiences. Looking ahead, she aims to explore interactive and technology-driven projects that blend storytelling with innovation.
Derek Wong
Derek is our system architect and programmer. You can see him finetuning phone networking latency and observing player’s natural movement for best UX!
Ian Accetta
Ian is an aspiring 3D artist who loves building environment art and interactive game objects. He graduated from Princeton University as a History major with a minor in Electronic Music. He loves historically-inspired games and hopes to work on bringing unexplored historical settings to life. He loves music production, creative writing, acting and visual art, and strongly believes that interactive digital media is the best way to maintain those interests in his professional career.
James Huang
James Huang is a game developer passionate about creating innovative experiences. With a background in engineering and a love for playing board games, he bridges technical craft and creative design.
He identifies as a Killer player type, using that competitive drive into setting high standards for balance and meaningful challenge in games.
His work explores new mechanics, from VR sensors to transformational storytelling, always aiming to deliver experiences that surprise and inspire players.
Skye Gao
Skye earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Wesleyan University with majors in art studio and computer science. Prior to joining the ETC, he primarily made observational, figurative drawings and paintings focused around queer digital culture. In order to have more meaningful conversations with this subject matter, he now learns to make and frame images digitally at the ETC by working on interactive media projects. Skye is also a confident performer thanks to his training in theatre and dance. He has taken on several teaching assistant positions to share his knowledge with students ranging from high school to graduate level.
Winnie Tsai
Winnie describes herself as proudly interdisciplinary.
With a BS in Applied and Computational Math Sciences (Discrete Math and Algorithms) and a Dance minor from the University of Washington, she’s drawn to design that balances logic with human experience : Entertainment and Technology encompasses both. Her approach is grounded in user research and marketing, shaped by both academic projects and industry internships.
At ETC, she’s working toward becoming a technically fluent interactive experience designer who helps unify creative visions through open-minded synthesis and clear, collaborative communication. She’s especially interested in adaptive sound design and crafting immersive experiences that respond to guests in ways that sparks emotional connection.
Faculty
Each ETC team has faculty acting as advisors and providing guidance for the project.
Dave Culyba
Dave Culyba is an Associate Teaching Professor and Director of Curriculum at the Entertainment Technology Center. He teaches Building Virtual Worlds, one of the four immersion courses for new students. Through his courses, he focuses on game design, transformational design and experience design — particularly as they intersect with technology. As the Director of Curriculum his focus is on developing new ways for creative professionals to plan, create and problem solve as teams.
Beyond the ETC, Dave works as a game designer and developer at Ludoliminal, a board game publisher founded by his partner, Sabrina Culyba. He also really likes spreadsheets.
Dave Culyba joined the ETC in 2013.