Indie Arcades and Livestreams
MAGFest, IMS, Extralife, elsewhere
TL;DR
I volunteer with multiple indie gaming groups as a designer, brand manager, curator, and event host. It's a lot of design work building assets for PR/social media and building out design, but also some fun hosting/interviewing people about their weird projects.
MAGFest Indie Arcade
I run the curation team for the MAGFest Indie Arcade, part of an annual non-profit games festival celebrating weird control interfaces and interactive art. The games we feature are made with custom hardware or otherwise unusual input mechanisms, and are often one of a kind experiences made buy hobbyists. In addition to the actual curation and submission processes this role also includes building out assets for livestreams and PR.
I was a solo designer for Indie Maker Syndicate in 2020, an online indie games festival primarily active over Twitch.tv. I built a light brand ascetic (largely out of crafting junk I had around the house), and designed a series of live stream overlays. Using similar process to the MAG Indie Arcade I ran curation for alt control submissions, as well as conducting live interviews with game developers about their games and creative processes. IMS aimed to give game developers a place to showcase their games in a year where all in person festivals were getting (correctly) canceled for public safety.
Fundraising
I am team lead and solo designer for The Couch and Table, a team participating in annual fundraising streams as part of Extra Life. I’ve run the team since it started 7 years ago, putting together schedules, coordinating with players, and designing all assets for our social media and livestreams. Our overlays have only gotten more complicated, in part because it's just a kinda fun lil design project (most of the final assets laid out here were web sources I coded up for scrolling carousels and donation alerts).
