Brian Upton is an internationally-known game designer and game theorist with over 20 years of professional experience in the game industry.  For 14 years he worked as a senior game designer at Sony’s Santa Monica Studio where he collaborated with external teams on titles such as Fat Princess,Warhawk, Sorcery, Everybody Has Gone to the Rapture, Bound andHere They Lie.  Prior to joining Sony, he was the creative director at Red Storm Entertainment where he pioneered the tactical shooter genre as the lead designer on Rainbow Sixand Ghost Recon.  He is the author of two books on game design:The Aesthetic of Play and Situational Game Design.Currently he is working as a senior designer at Tangent Games.

Join us at Playthink for a conversation between Brian Upton and Tracy Fullerton, Professor of Cinematic Arts in Interactive Media & Games on October 16, 2018 fro 5:30-6:30PM in the SCI 201 Think Tank. This conversation will be recorded as part of our Playthink podcast. This year, our salons will also be shorter, focused conversations. Beat the traffic home and join us for this fascinating conversation!

Adam Badawy is a computational social scientist and a PhD candidate in the Political Science Department and Information Sciences Institute (ISI) at the University of Southern California (USC). Working at the Machine Intelligence and Data Science Lab, Adam uses machine learning, network analysis, and natural language processing to study and measure malicious activities and political behavior on online social networks. His latest research on the political misinformation campaign during the 2016 US presidential elections has been covered widely by various news outlets, including the MIT Technology Review, VOX , infobae, and PBS NewsHour.

Here is his latest article on "Analyzing the Digital Traces of Political Manipulation: The 2016 Russian Interference Twitter Campaign".

Join us at Playthink for a conversation between Adam Badawy and Jeff Watson, Assistant Professor of Cinematic Arts in Interactive Media & Games on September 18, 2018 fro 5:30-6:30PM in the SCI 201 Think Tank. This conversation will be recorded as part of our inaugural Playthink podcast re-design. This year, our salons will also be shorter, focused conversations. Beat the traffic home and join us for this fascinating conversation!