Tracy Fullerton

Who is Tracy Fullerton?

Tracy Fullerton is an American game designer, educator and writer. She is Associate Professor and Chair of the USC Interactive Media & Games Division of the USC School of Cinematic Arts and Director of the USC Game Innovation Lab. In December of 2008, she was installed as the holder of the Electronic Arts Endowed Chair of Interactive Entertainment at USC. Fullerton is the author of Game Design Workshop, a textbook advocating a playcentric design process. She was also faculty advisor for the award-winning student games Cloud and flOw, and game designer for The Night Journey, a game/art project in production with media artist Bill Viola, and Participation Nation, a game to teach Constitutional history being produced in collaboration with KCET and Activision. Her current project, Walden, a game, is supported by a media arts grant from the National Endowment from the Arts, one of the first video game projects to be awarded such a grant.

Prior to joining the USC faculty, she was president and founder of the interactive television game developer, Spiderdance, Inc. Spiderdance’s games included NBC’s Weakest Link, MTV’s webRIOT, The WB’s No Boundaries, History Channel’s History IQ, Sony Game Show Network’s Inquizition and TBS’s Cyber Bond. Before starting Spiderdance, Fullerton was a producer and creative director at the New York design firm R/GA Interactive. While there, she created games and interactive products for clients including Sony, Intel, Microsoft, AdAge, Ticketmaster, Compaq, and Warner Bros. among many others. Her projects include Sony’s Multiplayer Jeopardy! and Multiplayer Wheel of Fortune and MSN’s NetWits, an early multiplayer casual game launched in 1996. Additionally, Fullerton was Creative Director at the interactive film studio Interfilm, where she wrote and co-directed the “cinematic game” Ride for Your Life, which starred Adam West and Matthew Lillard. She began her career as a designer at Robert Abel’s company Synapse, where she worked on the interactive documentary Columbus: Encounter, Discovery and Beyond and other early interactive projects.