Projects
Leveraged Play
Leveraged Play is my consulting firm for serious games. Its aim is to help organziations explore the future and explain the present, through play. The site contains descriptions of different games I've designed and run and info about the design process. Comission something for your team!
Foresight.Games
Foresight.Games is a community I founded for practitioners who use games to explore the future. We have monthly meetups and an active Discord. Come join us!
Diegetic Games
Diegetic Games is my game design studio. Go there for free games that you can print and play or check out my store on Itch.io. Support my design process on Patreon and check out the Diegetic Games Blog.
Story Synth
I built and maintain Story Synth, a web platform that lets game designers playtest and publish their games online. Designers can upload their game content through a Google Sheet link and run sessions without ever needing to code.
Democracy.io
In 2015, two friends and I built Democracy.io to enable Americans to easily message their representatives in Congress. We then gave it to the EFF to run and maintain and it has seen heavy usage.
Sweet Nothings
I wrote a simple Twilio / Amazon Lambda app that randomly texts Avital inside jokes and sweet messages. Check out the Github Gist or blog post.
Acting Karaoke
Like karaoke but for acting out scenes from movies. Built with Firebase, AngularJS, and SimpleWebRTC. Currently down but read about it here.
Innovate Delhi / MaGIC Startup Academy
I lectured about entrepreneurship and mentored teams at Innovate Delhi Entrepreneurship Academy and MaGIC Startup Academy in Malaysia. The videos and slides from my MaGIC talks are on their site and the topics are Business and Revenue Models, Key Startup Models Frameworks, and Intro to Negotiations.
Reddit Karma Visualization
I built this with Chris Maury. Upon entering your Reddit username, it will visualize the sources (subreddits) of your Karma. Currently down but read about it here.
Ecosystem
This is an ecosystem simulator I built in p5.js as a fun art experiment. Click on the screen to add more blue guys. Play with it here.
Fiction
Some short stories I've written:
- The Caucus (2024) – pubished with support from Summer of Protocols
- Memes and Mayhem in New Maldives City (2023) – first published as part of the Peaceful Futures project
- Joan Henry vs the Algorithm (2019) – first published in Working Futures anthology
- Upload (2008)
- Time-Sickness (2008)
- Ambition (2008)
- Groundless (2008)
- Rock, Paper, Scissor (2008)
- The Vampire of Acapulco (2008)
- Alchemy (My Choose Your Own Adventure) (2008)
Talks, Lectures, and Hosting
- Workshop: Designing Storytelling Games at Nueva Intersession (2024)
- Talk: "Designing Futurecast" at Infite Games, Civil Service College, Singapore (2023)
- Host: "Peaceful Futures" workshop with SOIF and VZOR (2022)
- Host: "Freedom Dreaming" workshop for California 100 (2022)
- Panel host: Serious Games and Foresight Games (2021)
- Panelist: App and Digital Tabletop: An Exploration of Digital Tools for Tabletop Role Playing (2021)
- Panelist: Online Interactive Fiction & Collaborative Storytelling Games (2021)
- Host: Money City at MozFest (2021)
- Host: Existential Hope Writing Workshop (2021)
- Host: Dungeon Court at Roguelike Celebration (2019)
- Host: Walking the Future at Refactorcamp (2019)
- Talk: Stage Gate Development for Storytelling Games at Metatopia (2018)
- Panelist: Take the Streets - Guerilla Larp and Political Play at Living Games (2018)
- Host: Disruptive Strategy Summit (2018)
- Talk: Collaborative Storytelling at the Rathskeller Club (2017)
- Host: Coding Bootcamp at Washington University in St. Louis (2015)
- Talk: Learn to Code! at Civic Hackathon SF (2015)
- Talk: Games, Narrative, and Story at Refactorcamp (2015)
- Lecturer: MaGIC Startup Academy (2014)
- Lecturer: Innovate Delhi Entrepreneurship Academy (2014)
- Talk: Collaborative Production at Refactorcamp (2014)
Press coverage and interviews
- How to Write the Future interviewed me about using games to design futures.
- FuturePod interviewed me about FutureCast and democracy games (2024)
- ABC News interviewed me about our public domain game jam for an article and their radio show Perspective (2024)
- FuturePod interview about Games and Foresight (published 2024, recorded 2023)
- TechCrunch article about Trust & Safety Tycoon (2023)
- Techdirt podcast discussion of our game Trust and Safety Tycoon (2023)
- Techdirt podcast discussion of our game FutureCast (2023)
- Techdirt podcast discussion of our game Moderator Mayhem (2023)
- Interview on Amble about Foresight Games (2022)
- The Verge article about Startup Trail (2022)
- Techdirt podcast discussion of our game Startup Trail (2022)
- Podcast interview on Draw Your Dice (2021)
- Video interview on Plus One Exp (2021)
- Techdirt podcast discussion of our game Money City (2021)
- Techdirt podcast discussion of our game jam Gaming Like It's 1925 (2021)
- Techdirt podcast discussion of our election manipulation game Threatcast 2020 (2020)
- Techdirt podcast discussion of our game jam Gaming Like It's 1924 (2020)
- Techdirt podcast discussion of my sci-fi short story for Working Futures Anthology (2019)
- Gizmodo article about our game Machine Learning President (2018)
- Techdirt podcast discussion of our game CIA: Collect It All (2018)
- Techdirt podcast interview about Games That Tell Stories (2017)