Conceptorium
Insights from Emerging Designers
Fri Nov 14, 2025
Fresh eyes often yield fresh insights. What can the experiences of a team of emerging game designers reveal about serious game design practices?
Panel discussion
This panel features a team of early-career game designers who volunteered over the summer to create a wildfire preparedness game for community organizations. They’ll share candid stories about designing for non-gamers, navigating practical constraints of time and simplicity, and balancing real-world accuracy with imaginative play. Panelists will reflect on what it meant to take on a serious, community-focused project as volunteers—what motivated them, what they gained, and how it shaped their sense of purpose as designers. Expect fresh perspectives, surprises, and insights into how serious topics can be transformed into playful tools for learning and resilience.
Panelists will address questions such as:
- How did this project differ from your past design experiences, and how did that affect your approach?
- What was it like to commit your time and creativity to a real-life project without a paycheck?
- How did designing for non-gamers, short playtime, and specific learning goals shape your design process?
- How did you balance the need for factual accuracy with imaginative mechanics and narratives?
- Did working on a serious subject change how you view the role of games and fun in addressing difficult issues?
Time & Place
Fri Nov 14, 2025
2 PM PST
Register to receive Zoom link.
Attendees
Panelists
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Alex Dong, Game designer
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Anooj Vadodkar, Game designer
- Garett Dworman, Principal Designer, Creative Crisis Leadership
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Rahul Jogadhenu, Game designer
- Sienna Koizumi, Game designer
Moderator
- Aaron Vanek, Partner, Spectacular Disaster Factory, LLC
Hosts
- Susanne Jul, PhD, Founder & Executive Director, Creative Crisis Leadership
About participating
What to expect
The session will be divided into four parts: Introductions, Discussion, Review, and Wrap-up. A moderator will be on hand to deliver introductions, help keep the conversation moving, and lead the review.
After the session, we will share a list of participants and their contact information, a transcript of the session, and the session recording. You should review the recording, and let us know if there are sections you feel should be redacted before public release. Finally, we will ask for your feedback on the session so we can improve the experience for future participants.
Recording agreement
By participating, you grant permission for Creative Crisis Leadership to
- Record audio and video of the session
- Make session recordings and transcripts publicly available
- Publish your name, title, and affiliation as a participant
Intellectual property policy
This is a free exchange of ideas. We encourage participants to build on each others’ ideas, both during and after the discussion. Authors retain rights to materials authored after the discussion, but are expected to acknowledge the contributing role of Conceptoria discussions and individual participants when appropriate.
Creative Crisis Leadership retains ownership of session materials, including recordings and reports. Participants are granted the right to use redacted versions of these materials, with attribution.
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