My name is Gonzalo Frasca. I am a game developer, researcher, entrepreneur and Chair of the Videogame program at ORT University.
I currently live in Montevideo, Uruguay, where I create games at Powerful Robot Games, a studio that I co-founded 10 years ago. It's one of the oldest and longest standing game studio in South America. We create both commercial and experimental games. Our clients include Cartoon Network, Disney, Pixar, Lucasfilm and Warner Bros.
I write a videogame column for CNN at CNNenEspanol.com and spend quite a lot of time travelling around the world giving lectures, workshops and consulting.
One of my most popular indie projects so far has been Newsgaming.com, a project mixing journalism with videogames. It received the Knight Foundation News Games Lifetime Achievement Award at the Games for Change 2009 conference.
In late 2003 my studio pioneered in the campaign use of videogames by producing and co-designing (with Persuasive Games) the first official videogame ever commissioned for a U.S. Presidential Campaign. We later insisted with a game for the Uruguayan Presidential Elections (this time our candidate won by a landslide!)
I hold a PhD in Videogame Studies from the IT University of Copenhagen. My research interests deal with videogames, games and toys, particularly within the fields of communication (read: serious games, newsgaming, educational games). I often lecture and teach about these topics. Here you'll find a list of my articles.
I also have a Master of Science in Information Design at the Georgia Institute of Technology and my degree in communication and film studies at the Catholic University of Uruguay.
Before working full-time in the game industry, I worked in advertising, TV scriptwriting and for companies such as Cartoon Network and CNN, where I was Editor of Science and Technology for their Spanish website.
