In this episode, I am joined by Constance Steinkuehler, a professor in the Department of Informatics at the University of California Irvine. In this conversation, we explore her journey from a graduate student in cognitive science, to Senior Policy Analyst under the Obama administration in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, to running Game Labs at both University of Wisconsin-Madison and UC Irvine. This journey begins with an aversion to media and pop culture, makes an unexpected turn at Lineage II, and ends with Prof. Steinkuehler setting the foundation of what we now know as the field of 'game studies'.