April 1, 2015
Grant Roberts, E-Line Media
In November 2014, E-Line Media and Upper One Games released the widely anticipated video game Never Alone (Kisima In’itchu’a), an atmospheric puzzle platformer developed in constant collaboration with members of the Alaska Native community. Grant Roberts, Lead Game Designer at E-Line Media, will describe how the tale of an Iñupiaq girl and her arctic fox companion came to be told with a controller on Xbox One, PS4, and Steam.
Further, Grant will share a variety of game and human-computer interaction design insights from his long career in the video game industry — which has featured Marvel Comics games for kids, free-to-play games for phones, big-budget sequels for the hardcore, and casino games for the bargain bin.
About the Speaker
Grant K. Roberts works at E-Line Media in Seattle. As Lead Game Designer there, he is collaborating with the first indigenous-owned video game company in the U.S. to make Never Alone (Kisima In’itchu’a), a unique partnership between members of the Alaska Native community and veterans of the video game industry. Grant briefly studied Computer Science at Virginia Tech before he realized his passions lie elsewhere, and soon moved to San Francisco at 22 to start his career in video games. Learn more about that and the intervening 17 years at www.GrantRoberts.com/work.
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“If It Isn’t Fun, No One Will Care” from CHIFOO Communications on Vimeo.