Suzanne Seggerman | |
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 Photo by MIT Media Lab Director Joi Ito |
Suzanne Seggerman is the co-founder of Games for Change and is a public speaker and adviser on new media and social impact. At the 2015 Annual Game Developers Conference she was given an award by the Higher Education Video Game Alliance along with Dr. Mary Flanagan, Professor of Film and Media at Dartmouth College and Dr. James Paul Gee, Professor of Literacy Studies at Arizona State University. [1]
Seggerman was co-founder and former president of Games for Change (G4C), [2] a non-profit that promotes and supports the emerging uses of video games for humanitarian and educational purposes. [3] The mission of G4C is to harness the extraordinary power of video games to engage people in the most pressing issues of our day, and to foster and promote new kinds of games. Early examples of games for change include Honorable Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's suite of games called iCivics; Food Force a game about global hunger created by the World Food Program; and Ayiti: the Cost of Life , a game about poverty set in Haiti. Seggerman ran G4C since its inception in 2004, [4] acting as the curator of the Games for Change Festival, and a frequent speaker and advisor on video games and social impact.
Seggerman also co-founded PETLab (Prototyping Education and Technology Lab), a public interest design and research lab at Parsons The New School for Design, supported by grants from MTV and the MacArthur Foundation. [5]
Her speaker resume includes Sundance Film Festival, [6] PopTech, [7] and TEDx. [8] As an invited expert on various new media projects, she has advised on Microsoft’s Imagine Cup, [9] Scholastic Art and Writing Awards [10] and the Knight Foundation News Challenge. [11]
Known for her expertise in games and social impact, she has often been featured in the press. [4] [9] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17]
Before co-founding Games for Change, Seggerman was a director at new media think tank Web Lab, [18] where she worked since its inception, with its founder Marc Weiss, [3] the creator of the PBS Independent film series P.O.V. Web Lab started as an early think tank dedicated to exploring and funding serious issues at the outset of the World Wide Web [19] While at Web Lab, Seggerman also co-curated Provocations in 2003, an exhibition dedicated to digital games and social issues, featuring artists Natalie Jeremijenko, Tamiko Thiel, Michael Mateas, Brody Condon, Eddo Stern and Anne-Marie Schleiner.
Previous to her work in new media, Seggerman was production manager for the PBS documentary series by Ken Burns and Stephen Ives called " The West ". [3]
Seggerman grew up in Fairfield, Connecticut, [20] the daughter of Harry G. A. Seggerman, who had been vice chairman of Fidelity, and Anne Crellin Seggerman. [21] She has five siblings; Patricia Seggerman, Marianne Seggerman, Yvonne Seggerman, Henry Seggerman, and Ed Seggerman. [21] Seggerman received a B.A. from Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, [20] and a master's degree from New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP). [22]
In October 2010, Seggerman pleaded guilty to conspiracy and tax fraud related to a $12M 2001 inheritance her family received in a Swiss bank account from her father. [23] [24] As of September 9, 2014, her sentencing has been postponed pending the outcome of the family financial adviser, Michael Little's, trial. [25] She was a cooperating witness in that trial, and in 2014, and again in 2019, the probation department recommended probation. [26]
In a surprise decision, on June 26, 2019 the four siblings Henry, Yvonne, Suzanne and Ed were each sentenced to prison. Suzanne received a four month sentence which she completed in December 2019. [27] The siblings, all well-educated and accomplished people, had funneled their inherited money into the U.S. tax-free through a variety of means: shell companies, a fraudulent foundation and carrying just under $10,000 cash on return trips from Switzerland. [28]
The Screen Savers is an American TV show that aired on TechTV from 1998 to 2005. The show launched concurrently with the channel ZDTV on May 11, 1998. The Screen Savers originally centered on computers, new technologies, and their adaptations in the world. However, after it was taken over by G4, the show became more general-interest oriented and focused somewhat less on technology. The final episode of The Screen Savers aired on March 18, 2005. Repeat episodes continued to air until March 25, 2005 when its replacement program Attack of the Show! began 3 days later on March 28, 2005. Two spiritual successors to The Screen Savers, This Week in Tech on the TWiT Network with Leo Laporte and Tekzilla on Revision3 with Patrick Norton, were started after the original show concluded. On April 19, 2015, Leo Laporte announced The New Screen Savers, which began airing on TWiT network May 2, 2015.
Phantom Entertainment, Inc. was a company founded in 2002 by Tim Roberts which made computer keyboards. However, Phantom was best known for the Phantom, a video game console advertised for Internet gaming on demand in 2004; it was never marketed, leading to suggestions that it was vaporware. The company's website was last updated in late 2011.
BrainPop is a group of children's educational websites based in New York City. It hosts over 1,000 short animated movies for students in grades K–12, together with quizzes and related materials, covering the subjects of science, social studies, English, math, engineering and technology, health, arts and music. In 2022, Kirkbi A/S, the private investment and holding company that owns a controlling stake in Lego, acquired BrainPop.
Idit R. Harel is an Israeli-American entrepreneur and CEO of Globaloria. She is a learning sciences researcher and pioneer of Constructionist learning-based EdTech interventions.
GamePolitics.com was a blog which covered the politics of computer and video games. GamePolitics was launched by freelance journalist Dennis McCauley in March 2005. At the time, McCauley was the video game columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, a position he held from 1998 to 2009. Growing somewhat bored of writing video game reviews, McCauley created GamePolitics in order to track the political, legal and cultural impact of video games. The site was often referred to as GP by followers.
Games for Change is a nonprofit organization. The organization provides support, visibility, and shared resources to individuals and organizations using serious games for social change. It also runs the G4C Student Challenge, a STEM competition that teaches middle and high school students about game design and computer programming.
Newegg Commerce, Inc., is an American online retailer of items including computer hardware and consumer electronics. It is based in City of Industry, California. It is majority-owned by Liaison Interactive, a multinational technology company.
Jean Case is an American businesswoman, author, and philanthropist who is chair of the board of National Geographic, CEO of Case Impact Network, and CEO of the Case Foundation. She is married to AOL co-founder Steve Case.
Adora Svitak is an American writer, public speaker, former child prodigy, and activist. She did work for the Wikimedia Foundation as a communications associate.
Kongregate is an American web gaming portal and video game publisher. Its website features over 124,000 online games and 30+ mobile games available to the public. The company also publishes games for PC, mobile, and home consoles. It was purchased by GameStop Corporation in 2010 before being acquired by Modern Times Group MT AB in 2017.
Desktop Tower Defense is a Flash-based tower defense browser game created by Paul Preece in March 2007. The game had been played over 15.7 million times as of July 2007, and was one of Webware 100's top ten entertainment web applications of 2007. Desktop Tower Defense is available in an English, Spanish, German, French, or Italian interface. In May 2009, a commercial Nintendo DS version became available.
Mary Flanagan is an American artist, author, educator, and designer. She pioneered the field of game research with her ideas on critical play and has written several books. She is the founding director of the research laboratory and design studio Tiltfactor Lab and the CEO of the board game company Resonym. Flanagan's work as an artist has been shown around the world and won the Award of Distinction at Prix Ars Electronica in 2018.
Amy Susan Bruckman is a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology affiliated with the School of Interactive Computing and the GVU Center. She is best known for her pioneering research in the fields of online communities and the learning sciences. In 1999, she was selected as one of MIT Technology Review's TR100 awardees, honoring 100 remarkable innovators under the age of 35.
Zynga Inc. is an American developer running social video game services. It was founded in April 2007, with headquarters in San Mateo, California. The company primarily focuses on mobile and social networking platforms. Zynga states its mission as "connecting the world through games".
JulesHardy is a non-binary British television presenter known for their interests in gaming, music, ESports and new technology. They are the creator and presenter of the online fitness programme Game To Train. In addition to their professional work, they are a Twitch streamer and a YouTuber.
Burak Arıkan is a Turkish contemporary artist. His work is based on complex networks and thereby generates data and inputs in the custom abstract machine. Arikan is the founder of Graph Commons, a platform for mapping, analyzing and publishing data-networks. Graph Commons workshop for artists, activists, critical researchers, and civil society organizations are being conducted internationally.
Vivian Rosenthal is an American designer and entrepreneur.
Jesse N. Schell is an American video game designer and author, as well as the CEO of Schell Games, and a distinguished professor of the practice of entertainment technology at CMU's Entertainment Technology Center (ETC), a joint master's program between the College of Fine Arts and School of Computer Science in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
J Dakota Powell is a multidisciplinary artist, writer/producer, and the founder of XR Lab and TimeWave, a transatlantic organisation that gathers creative media artists and technologists to explore the use of technology in storytelling and to invent new forms of media and entertainment. She was the Producing Artistic Director of Brave New World on Broadway, which gathered the American theatre to respond to the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Gabe Zichermann is a Canadian-American author, public speaker, and businessman. He has worked as a proponent of leveraging game mechanics in business, education, and other non-entertainment platforms to increase user engagement in a process called gamification.
