2014 Organizers


The organizers of QGCon 2014 came together from across industry and academic lines to bring you this interdisciplinary and open event. Between us, we represented game designers, games scholars, games journalists, and more.

2014 Co-Organizers

Chris Goetz is a PhD Candidate at UC Berkeley, where he works in the Film & Media and New Media departments. Chris’ dissertation looks at video games through the lens of fantasy. His article “Tether and Accretions: Fantasy as Form in Video Games,” appeared in the journal Games and Culture.

Chelsea Howe is a game designer who has worked for studios like Super Better Labs, TinyCo, Funomena, and Electronic Arts. She is also the organizer of the annual San Francisco Global Game Jam and a game design teacher at the California College of the Arts.

Deirdra “Squinky” Kiai is an independent game designer and a graduate student at UC Santa Cruz, where they study Digital Arts and New Media. They released their first video game at age sixteen and have since used their interactive storytelling skills to touch on such subject matter as feminism, race, gender, coming of age, and social awkwardness.

Bonnie Ruberg is a PhD candidate at UC Berkeley, where she works in the Comparative Literature, Gender & Women’s Studies, and New Media departments. Her dissertation, “Pixel Whipped: Pain, Pleasure, and Media,” looks at BDSM practices in online spaces. She is also a (now retired) games journalist with a focus on issues of feminism and queerness.

Zoya Street is a freelance historian and journalist from Britain, living in the Bay Area. He runs an e-zine about games history called Memory Insufficient, and crowd-funded and self-published Dreamcast Worlds, a book based on his master’s thesis in History of Design at the Royal College of Art.

Affiliated Advisors

Mattie Brice is a game designer, games critic, and graduate student at San Francisco State University. She is a frequent speaker on issues of queerness and games, and her game Mainichi has been featured at conferences and art galleries across the world. Her writing can be found at The Border House.

Laura Fantone is a lecturer in the Gender & Women’s Studies department at UC Berkeley. This fall she will be joining the faculty at the San Francisco Art Institute, where she will be teaching game design and co-coordinating the Queerness and Games design challenge.