Hongwei Z.

Game Design, Game Development, Programming

New York City

• One of my games was exhibited in a local museum in Santa Cruz, California.
• My research lab focused on interactive storytelling, where we discussed how to create stories that involve the players.
• I'm fluent in both Mandarin and English

Hello! My name is Hongwei (Henry) Zhou. I'm mainly a video game scholar and designer. I specialize in and have teaching and mentoring game design. I received my undergraduate degree from NYU, finished my PhD in University of California, Santa Cruz, and have finished a year of postdoctoral research in Canada. I believe teaching, especially for introductory lessons on practical topics, should foster playfulness and allow immediate ways to tinker, modify and experiment. For game design and game development, I like starting with existing examples and discuss with students what can potentially be changed. I also like to introduce fun commands in a context where students can see immediate and meaningful results. I believe in meeting students where they are, which includes their interests and experiences in existing media. I tend to find engaging with examples well-known to the students are effective to both learning and building rapport. I also emphasize respect and mutual trust to address behavioral issues in class. As a scholar-practitioner with a computer science background, I'm also fluent in programming and AI. I'm still an active scholar in games and modern computational technology. I also have experiences in many different art forms such as cello, computational art and figure drawing.