Creative Director at Riot Games – League of Legends and VALORANT.

Rockefeller Memorial Chapel 

12:00pm Videogame Music Carillon Concert 

Café Logan 

1:00pm Performance of “The Entertainment” from Kentucky Route Zero
Theater and Performance Studies BA Colloquium students under the guidance of  Devon de Mayo and Julia Rhoads 

Logan Center Performance Hall  

2:00pm Opening Remarks 

2:10pm – 3:30pm Games + Chicago: Then & Now 

Chris Granner, Andrew Borman, Josh Tsui, Billy Basso & Son M. moderated by Katherine Buse 

From legendary pinball machines and smash hit arcade games to indie game landmarks, Chicago has long been a vibrant hub of game design and culture. This panel brings together creative figures behind made-in-Chicago games like Mortal Kombat, Animal Well, The Addams Family (the best-selling pinball game of all time), and the upcoming Grave Seasons for a conversation about what it means to make and play games in the second city. 

Break 

4:00pm – 5:30pm Keynote: My Perfect Console: Alex Seropian 

Videogame industry trailblazer Alex Seropian in conversation with author Simon Parkin for a live recording of the My Perfect Console podcast. 

Break 

6:00pm – 7:30pm Sound, Music, Play  

Ben Babbitt, Joanna Fang, Chris Granner & Takashi Shallow moderated by Julianne Grasso 

Crucial ingredients in the art and culture of games, sound and music set fictional and emotional contexts for play, guide players and respond to their actions, circulate in fan-favorite soundtracks and live performances, and sit at the cutting-edge intersection of technology and musical expression. In this panel, hear from composers, sound artists, and scholars on how sound shapes play. 

7:30pm Dance Party  

with DJs Takashi Shallow and Ben Babbitt + machinima video loops by Kent Lambert

Logan Center Performance Hall  

11:00 am – 12:30pm Careers in Gaming with Riot Games  

Annie De Brock, Tim Lembke, Trevor Thernes & Katherine Waterman moderated by Emily Bembeneck & Ashlyn Sparrow  

Learn more about careers in gaming from UChicago alum Katherine Waterman (BA ’25) and her colleagues at Riot Games–a studio best known for games such as League of Legends and Valorant, television series such as Arcane, and the operation of major eSports leagues around the world. 

Break 

1:00pm – 2:30pm Keynote: My Perfect Console: Evan Narcisse 

Renowned journalist & comic book writer Evan Narcisse in conversation with author Simon Parkin for a live recording of the My Perfect Console podcast. 

This session is co-presented by University of Chicago Arts & Humanities Day and the Chicago Humanities Festival. 

Break 

3:00pm – 4:15pm Challenging Play: Puzzles, Performance, Practice 

Billy Basso, Celia Pearce, Jon Perry, Sandy Weisz, & Derek Yu moderated by Ashlyn Sparrow & Patrick Jagoda

Games are fun, relaxing, thrilling—and HARD. This panel explores difficulty in games: the mental attention needed to learn complex rules and solve riddles, the hours of practice put into improving tactics and physical dexterity, the emotional roller coaster of success and failure, and games as a medium for demanding subject matter. Come hear from the people who design the challenges that make us want to quit and then bring us back for more. 

Break 

4:30pm – 5:45pm How Games Get Made: Kentucky Route Zero 

Ben Babbitt, Jake Elliot & Tamas Kemenczy moderated by Sarah Martin & Jon Satrom 

Kentucky Route Zero is an atmospheric and literary point-and-click interactive fiction game. Though the game’s narrative focuses on an ordinary truck driver who is hired to make a delivery, this adventure delves into the extraordinary via magical realism and southern gothic traditions. Come learn how this critically acclaimed game was developed from start to finish. 

Break 

6:15pm – 7:30pm How Games Get Made: UFO 50 

Jon Perry, Tyriq Plummer & Derek Yu moderated by Chris Carloy & Cameron Mankin 

A critical and commercial success since its release last year, UFO 50 contains fifty fully-realized games in a breathtaking range of genres. Presented as a retrospective collection of games from the 1980s designed by a fictional team for fictional consoles, UFO 50 is at once a loving reflection on game history and a demonstration of the persistent creative power of historical styles. This panel presents a conversation with three of the (real life) creators of UFO 50. 

Logan Center Penthouse 901 

10:30am – 11:45am Various Futures of Games Preservation 

Andrew Borman, Simon Parkin, Josh Tsui moderated by Kent Lambert & Torsten Reimer 

With digital games a mere half-century old as a mass medium, we have a rare opportunity to preserve the early history of an art form: the objects it produced, the technologies that made it possible, the cultures that surrounded it, and the memories of those who experienced it. However, the preservation of digital games brings unique material, logistical, legal, and conceptual challenges. In this panel, representatives from a range of professional spaces (libraries, museums, design labs, journalistic media, and classrooms) discuss the current state and possible futures of games preservation. 

Break 

12:15pm – 1:30pm Future-Facing Forms of Inclusive Storytelling 

Fox Harrell, Mitu Khandaker, Evan Narcisse & Celia Pearce moderated by Alireza Doostdar & Ghenwa Hayek 

Though not always focused on storytelling in a traditional sense, games provide an opportunity for deep, playful, and even experimental narrative encounters. This panel will consider existing practices and possible futures for storytelling in games, including those that reach across art forms–from games to theater, comics, and beyond. 

1:45pm – 3:00pm Games + the Academy 

Jodi Byrd, Fox Harrell, Mitu Khandaker, Celia Pearce, Eddo Stern moderated by Patrick Jagoda 

In this panel, representatives from the University of Chicago, MIT, Northeastern University, NYU, and UCLA discuss issues at the intersection of games and the academy: games and play as fields of study; play as educational tool and method; logistical hurdles to games in the classroom; and the academy as institutional, financial, political, and social context for game design pedagogy.