Lochlan Belford
Game Designer, Programmer
Lochlan Belford is a narrative designer and game designer in his final semester of study at the Carnegie Mellon Entertainment Technology Center. He has a multidisciplinary background in writing, theatrical performance, and computer science. His career focus is on combining those skills to create emotionally resonant video games, especially those with interactive or branching narratives. However, he has also gained experience working on a wide range of projects at the ETC, producing experiences as varied as an abstract VR horror game and a multiplayer sports game controlled by a full size MIDI piano! As a consequence of playing “Spyro: Year of the Dragon” when he was five years old, his favorite color is, always has been, and always will be purple.
Tingru (Tina) Lian
Producer, Programmer
Tingru Lian is a producer and programmer with a passion for being a product manager/ producer for games and themed entertainment.
Tingru earned her bachelor degree from Boston University, dual degreed in Computer Engineering and Psychology.
Chia-Wei (Jeffrey) Liu
Game Designer, Assistant Producer
Jeffrey is a game designer and developer from Taiwan with a passion for economic systems, puzzles, and player interactions. He designs in an experience-oriented way and conveys ideas through the player experience. With bachelor’s degrees in Digital Media Art and Software Engineering received at Tsinghua University, Beijing, Jeffrey previously worked full-time in Heluo Studio, focusing on Chinese fantasy turn-based strategy games. He is currently a master’s student in Entertainment Technology at Carnegie Mellon University. He has recently made several XR games and board games, and he is currently interested in level and puzzle designs
Yicheng Lu
Game Designer, Programmer
Yicheng currently is a game designer and programmer at ETC. He has professional skills on Unity and C# programming. There are some projects he already done on his personal website. His future career path is to be a game designer.
Yilin (Lucy) Wang
Programmer
Yilin Wang is a student programmer at ETC. She loves games so she interned at Qingguo, a game development company in China, in summer 2018 and Tencent Next studio summer 2021 – spring 2022. From those interns, she learnt the basic pipeline of the game development and got a basic understanding of the rendering process. She also learnt how to work with Unreal Engine and Unity engine. During the first semester at ETC, she created six virtual worlds. In those worlds, the work she does include networking, audio input detection, UI implementation and audio and animation implementation. Prior to ETC, she graduated from Smith College with a degree in Mathematics and a degree in computer science. She enjoys crafting virtual worlds for her potential guests because she enjoys sharing the excitement brought by the new ideas of worlds. In her spare time, she loves to try out new games because she also enjoys others’ creativity.
Yongzi (Eliza) Ye
Artists
Yongzi Ye is a 3D artist and designer with fine art background. After graduating from Rhode Island School of Design studying Painting and Art History, she knows what truly inspires her to work as a game artist—and it’s how well she can connect with other people through those engaging game worlds and characters that she creates.
Being enthusiastic about game art and graphic art, Yongzi combines digital art with practices in traditional medium such as oil, print-making, and watercolor to convey multi-disciplinary approach of art that brings all her passions together and renew the traditional narrative. As a keen visual learner, she likes to maximize art performance in various main stream tools such as Zbrush, MAYA, Substance Painter, Houdini and more, while studying how games as a way of art are refracted, contained, and amplified within and across different national boundaries.
Special thanks to Sy Suo for sound support and Quoey Wu for programming support.
Instructor
Jonathan Walton
Jonathan is an award-winning indie game designer, a former China policy analyst, and a teacher and scholar focused on critical analysis of science, technology, and media. A native of North Carolina and Virginia, Jonathan studied Chinese language at the School Year Abroad (SYA) and Associated Colleges in China (ACC) programs in Beijing, as an East Asian Studies major at Oberlin College, and as a Fulbright Fellow at Nanjing University.
As a PhD Candidate in Communication at UC San Diego, Jonathan’s interdisciplinary research exists at the intersection of game studies, media studies, and science and technology studies. His dissertation focuses on hands-on, play-based learning in science centers and museums, “edutainment” institutions where visitors engage with STEM topics and design thinking. By conducting ethnographic fieldwork at multiple science centers prior to the pandemic, Jonathan found that visitors conduct conceptual and physical “repair” work on interactive exhibits that are confusing or broken, playfully making sense out of their experiences even in the face of technological failure. While at UC San Diego, Jonathan also taught courses in game studies, transmedia design, and science & technology studies.
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