Game Education Summit USA

Lee Sheldon has written and designed over 20 video games including a successful recent series based on Agatha Christie novels. Other titles include the award-winning The Riddle of Master Lu, Dark Side of the Moon, and Wild Wild West: The Steel Assassin, and the early ARG (Alternate Reality Game), The Light Files. He has worked on massively multiplayer worlds for companies such as Cyan (URU: Ages Beyond Myst) and Disney (Disney's Virtual Kingdom), as well as an experimental multiplayer X-Box project for Microsoft. His book Character Development and Storytelling for Games, published by Cengage/Thomson Learning in 2004, is being used as a primary text book in game design programs at some of the world’s most distinguished universities. He is a contributor to the recent books Writing for Video Game Genres, Game Design: A Practical Approach, Second Person and Visual Storytelling. Before his career in video games Lee wrote and produced over 200 popular television shows, including Star Trek: The Next Generation, Charlie's Angels, and Cagney and Lacey. As head writer of the daytime serial Edge of Night he received a nomination for best writing from the Writers Guild of America. Lee has been twice nominated for Edgar awards by the Mystery Writers of America. His first mystery novel, Impossible Bliss, was re-issued in 2004. Lee has been a consultant on an online multiplayer world recreating jazz clubs of the 1940s and 50s in Oakland, California for the University of California at Berkeley, and a single-player game teaching Iraqi Arabic to soldiers for the University of Southern California. He is currently a professor at Indiana University where in addition to teaching he is leading the design of his own narrative-driven virtual world Londontown; and wrote and designed The Skeleton Chase and Skeleton Chase 2: The Psychic, ARGs funded by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. He was also creative consultant on a new Sci-Fi Channel reality show called Danger Game; has written and designed his fourth Agatha Christie videogame; and is writing his second novel The Keys. In August Lee and his colleague, Edward Castronova, will present an intensive workshop at IU designed to teach corporations and educators how to build compelling, practical and useful virtual worlds; and save millions of dollars in the process.