We're Field Day

As a researcher and software engineer, Luke is drawn to the unique possibilities of games for learning. He understands that some kids aren’t best served by the traditional education system, and he’s interested in how games can help change that. Luke’s programming and data analysis work has allowed us to gain valuable insights into how our games are being used. Luke works tirelessly on the Open Game Data website, and does data analysis for many of our games, including Lakeland and Jo Wilder.

In his spare time, Luke is an amateur photographer and videographer. You can see some of his photography on the Computer Science department’s website.

Reyna is an artist with a flair for storytelling, character, and design. When she’s not making beautiful art and keeping administrative things running smoothly here in Madison, you might find Reyna traveling the world and putting her three languages to good use. Kids (and adults) fall in love with Reyna’s whimsical, creative characters. She enjoys tactile hobbies like baking, printmaking, and papermaking, and is a firm believer in helping others develop new passions through playful learning and collaboration.

Reyna was the lead artist on Jo Wilder and the Capitol Case, and the lead 2D artist on Legend of the Lost Emerald and Bloom: the Saga of the Fertilizer Economy. She has created art in some capacity for most of our games, whether concepts, comics, cutscenes, final assets, or poster illustration. You can find Reyna on Instagram @rey.groff, and check out her website here.

Rodney is a talented game designer, animator, and artist. Officially, he does technical art and animation for our games. He also asks insightful questions, knows a ton about games, and brings awesome energy to the room. Rodney made concept art and animation for Jo Wilder and the Capitol Case, contributed animation, technical art, and 8-bit final game art for Lost at the Forever Mine, and also worked on Wake: Tales from the Aqualab. Rodney started as a full-time animator at PBS Wisconsin, a local partner that we love working with, and is now a Senior Designer at Buck Studios. You can find more of his work on Instagram @rodgod38 and on his website.

Forest is a 3D artist with a background in graphic design and business. As a freelancer, he loves moving between different projects and exploring new ideas and styles. He has worked with Eric and Sarah (Art Director and Creative Director) to take their vision for games like Wake and Legend of the Lost Emerald, and translate it into amazing characters and background art. Forest is also a business owner and musician. He and his brother designed several games together as the small game studio Flippfly—including “Race the Sun,” for which Forest also created the soundtrack. You can find more of Forest’s work on Instagram @ForestSanFilippo

Terra is an amazing developer drawn to the challenge of learning games. She taught herself programming in high school and studied game development in college, before moving into a prolific career in educational games. Terra loves finding the balance of creating games that are simple and fun to play, so that kids will actually enjoy playing them, while communicating complex scientific ideas through the game mechanic. In her time as a game engineer at Filament Games, she created games for clients including Scholastic, Square Panda, and iCivics. At Field Day, Terra was the Lead Developer for Legend of the Lost Emerald.

Terra makes her own games at her independent game studio, Potato Interactive. Terra does all of the writing, visual design, and sound design for her games, as well as the development. Check out her work here!

Every creative team needs someone with the ability to “yes, and…” a story or design problem, and Cy is just about the best there is. He’s also one of the most creative people you’ll ever meet. When it comes to creating music for games, Cy starts by immersing himself in the subject matter--like watching ocean documentaries when he was composing music for Wake: Tales from the Aqualab--and trusting the music to come. It can be challenging to find the right tone for a scene, story, or moment, and Cy’s music helps us find it. He also brings our game worlds to life with inventive, playful sound effects.

Cy began as a visual artist, creating commissioned album cover artwork and T-shirt designs, before realizing that music had always been a constant in his life. He learned to play the drums through playing Rock Band--the perfect merging of his love for music and video games. When it comes to the creative process, Cy is passionate about improvisation and pushes himself to keep things fresh and different. He shares visual art and poetry on Instagram at dreamingspiders

Emily is a concept artist, animator, and game artist who uses art to educate people about unique species and conservation. In addition to being a talented artist, Emily is an amazing researcher with a love of learning. Her detailed concept art, research, and color studies bring depth and richness to our games. Emily studied natural science illustration and animation at the Rhode Island School of Design.

Emily’s passion for natural science illustration began when she drew an endangered species of antelope to share with her art group. The species was so unfamiliar that her group thought she’d made a creature up! That was the spark for Emily’s popular Instagram series, Real and Endangered, in which she shared 125 days of endangered species art with fun facts and conservation status for each animal. Emily believes that education is a powerful, underutilized aspect of conservation. She uses art as a tool to help people connect with nature, because, in her words, when you learn about something, you start to care about it.
Check out Emily’s art Instagram here and her website here.

As a game designer at Field Day, Bobby brings a rich depth of experience in educational game design and development. When he was a kid, Bobby noticed his classmates’ halfhearted response to a programming environment that he loved working in. As a designer, he’s drawn to the challenge of figuring out why those kids weren’t interested, and how he can design with them in mind. Bobby uses his expertise to create games not just for the kids (and adults) who are already excited about learning, but for the ones who start out reluctant or uninterested. In addition to front-end design, he has worked closely with the writing and art teams at Field Day, developing story concepts and working with artists to create game art that is beautiful and cohesive.

Bobby was a lead game designer at a casual games studio before starting his own studio, Important Little Games. He was the lead designer and programmer for Codemancer, a fantasy game that teaches programming for kids ages 6 through 12. Bobby wears a lot of hats and looks good in all of them. His background includes game design and programming—and also screenwriting, creative direction, and toy design, plus an educational background in film, TV production, math, and computer science. He can always be counted on for a good pun.

Levi is a game engineer who cares about using games to make a lasting impact on people’s lives. At Field Day, we rely on Levi for the magic of making things work. He worked extensively on game mechanic development for Legend of the Lost Emerald, and continues to build prototypes and implement content for many of our games, as well as support and contribute to the writing team. He has always been drawn to doing work that benefits people, and he considered psychiatry and writing before discovering game design and its rich potential for learning.

Levi grew up traveling the world—he has lived in Washington, Hawaii, Qatar, and Germany before moving to the Midwest to study at UW-Madison. In addition to computer science and game design, he studied Finnish—both because he loves the language, and because he’s interested in the technology and game design opportunities in Finland. He has worked on his own game design projects outside of Field Day and joined in game jams with other Field Day interns.

Check out Levi's work here!

Amelia is a game engineer with a knack for story and design. With a biochemistry major and certificates in game design and folklore, she brings a unique background and lots of creative insight to our team. Amelia loves working across disciplines. She has impressed everyone with her ability to take on different roles, from game development to prototype design and writing. When she first joined us, she took the lead on developing a Twine prototype for Headlines and High Water, plus supporting our writing team in using Twine and adding her own witty, playful story ideas to the mix.

Amelia has been designing games since she was a kid, creating handmade board games and coming up with elaborate recess activities for her classmates. She has a long list of hobbies and hidden talents—ink and pencil drawing, writing, 3D printing, bicycling and hiking, her own game design projects, and even being a Dungeons and Dragons dungeon master, which makes sense, considering her on-the-fly storytelling prowess!

Check out Amelia’s projects here!

Mary is a 3D artist with a background in game design and studio art. At Field Day, she primarily creates 3D art with an expertise in modeling, texturing, and animation. Mary brings a rich background in drawing, painting, sculpture-making, and VR. She has been the lead 3D artist on many of our games, including Legend of the Lost Emerald, Wake: Tales from the Aqualab, and all our VR games. She also produced Thermolab.

Mary has a personal mission to encourage curiosity and play for people of all ages, and especially adults. This is demonstrated through the interactive sensory-based sculptures she creates, as well as by being an artist at Field Day. She likes to connect her hobbies with motion and play, which has led to an amazing list of hidden talents--including drumming, fishkeeping, and underwater hockey. During college, she researched and created an independent project about motion and how it relates to physics, psychology, and art. She brings a love of learning to everything she does.

Check out Mary’s portfolio here!

Phil worked as Field Day’s lead software developer and game designer for almost 10 years. He was the principal developer for ARIS, The Yard Games, Lakeland, Jo Wilder and the Capitol Case, Play the Past, and Lost at the Forever Mine. Phil’s capacity to understand technical fields outside his expertise, such as thermodynamics, is mind boggling. Recently, he returned to consult with Field Day on The Legend of the Lost Emerald and Headlines in High Water.

Phil is an amazing developer, which goes without saying. He’s also a kind soul and an articulate teacher. He understands programming and game theory on a deep, intuitive level, and he’s able to step back and meet people where they’re at. He’s a fantastic teacher, developer, and learner. Everything he says feels thoughtfully considered. When Phil says, “Hmm, that’s a good question,” you know you’re getting somewhere.

Lindy is a creative writer, blogger, and copywriter. She brings a combination of keen story-building skills and intellectual depth to the worlds of both our games and our blog. Her years of experience working with teachers and learning game designers gives her a unique capacity as a writer. She contributes not only a love of story, but also the ability to learn about the complexities of education theory and game design.

Lindy wrote the scripts and in-game dialog for Jo Wilder and the Capitol Case, Lost at the Forever Mine, STEMPorts, Lakeland, and many of The Yard Games. She works closely with Sarah to write and refine all of our web copy, iterating until we are able to explain complex projects in just a few lines.

Lindy is the reason the farmers in Lakeland have folksy wit and the Artificial Intelligence in Forever Mine is relatable and dimensional. She crafts stories that allow kids to embody the spirit of a scientist, historian, or detective, and she fosters a sense of wonder in the process.

At Field Day, Ameya focuses on analyzing game data to provide actionable insights and improve engagement and learning outcomes. He's created features to track user behavior in games like Bloom and Thermolab, developed data visualization dashboards, and conducted in-depth analyses to enhance gameplay experiences. He's particularly proud of building robust features for several games that enabled deeper insights into player behavior!

Ameya is pursuing a Master's in Computer and Information Science at UW-Madison. In his free time, he enjoys experimenting with new machine learning projects, writing, and exploring the outdoors. Fun fact: he's published two books and reviewed several research papers!

A graduate of Rhode Island School of Design, Ben is a talented 2D artist with a background in comics and illustration. He was the lead artist on Headlines and Highwater, bringing the sleepy town of Twin Lakes to life with his playful, graphic characters and his careful eye for pattern and architectural detail. Ben has written and illustrated several books, including The White Snake and The Jewish Deli: an Illustrated Guide to the Chosen Food. You can find more of his work on his website, and check out his Instagram.

Jeremy helped with the initial implementation of Wake's model balancing, including implementing a few features that would allow for more natural simulation of species like scarcity. He also set up the automated build system for the games using Github actions.

In the past, Jeremy was a professional software developer for PerBlue Games in Madison, WI. He currently works for Sony Playstation on their web checkout team as well. In his free time, he can be found at Gemini Games DMing games of D&D or playing Magic the Gathering. He has also contributed to the many mods for Minecraft and Stardew Valley. Jeremy is a mathematician and enjoys thinking about programming in terms of simplifying solutions and elegant algorithms. He is also a great purveyor of cat memes.

Xander began creating games when he was in middle-school. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin—Madison with a bachelor’s degree in computer science and certificates in game design, digital art, and Japanese communication. Working at Field Day as an undergrad developer inspired him to return for his master's in Design, Informal, and Creative Education (DICE), where he explores the use of new technologies and media in the service of learning and human growth. Now he fills a dual role at Field Day: working in both development and UX and game design.

Xander has a diverse range of experience developing games and tutoring others on their journey in game development. He can frequently be found in international fan games, hackathons, and game jams, expressing his passion for transformational games and FOSS. He has taught as a game development instructor at Maydm Inc. and Code Ninjas, where he was also involved in creating and developing game dev curriculum for kids in K-12. He has also worked as a youth e-sports coach with XPLeague, and a software trainer within UW—Madison’s DoIT Academic Technology.

Check out Xander's portolfio here.