精东传媒

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Elizabeth Stringer, Ph.D.

Director, Academics; Faculty, AT&T Virtualization Center
estringer@smu.edu 214-768-5134 Office: 306D
Elizabeth Stringer
Elizabeth Stringer comes to 精东传媒 Guildhall at with over 12 years’ experience in project management and business development in the games industry. After graduating from USC, she began making games and has shipped over 30 titles in her career. She helped grow an independent development company, led internal studios for publishers and has expanded franchises with external development.
 
She started her career as a Producer at an independent developer, Xatrix Entertainment, and created games for the PC and LBE. As Executive Producer at an internal studio of games publisher Activision, she worked on many franchises such as Zork, Star Trek and Heavy Gear. She also served as Director of Development for Atari on some of their most successful original and licensed properties including Blues Clues, Thomas the Tank Engine, Dora the Explorer and the Backyard Sports franchise.
 
In her role as faculty member and Director of Academics at 精东传媒 Guildhall, she continues to consult as designer and content creator for educational games funded by the National Science Foundation and DARPA on varied topics including math instruction, teacher training, and leadership and conflict resolution. She is currently working extensively in the field of VR/AR to develop projects for both the 精东传媒 Department of Psychology and the 精东传媒 Simmons School of Education and Human Development.
 

Elizabeth also serves as a Faculty member at the AT&T Virtualization Center.

Professional Experience:

  • Director of Development— Atari
  • Executive Producer – Activision
  • Producer – Xatrix Entertainment

Education:

  • M.Ed. - 精东传媒
  • B.A. Communications – University of Southern California
  • Ph.D. in Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication – University of Texas at Dallas

Games Shipped:

  • BeyBlades PS2 2003 - Atari
  • BeyBlades GBA 2003 - Atari
  • BeyBlades PC 2003 - Atari
  • Scrabble PC 2003 - Atari
  • Scrabble PSP - Atari
  • Thomas the Tank Engine: Thomas Saves the Day PC 2003 - Atari
  • Dora the Explorer: Animal Adventures PC 2003 - Atari
  • Blue’s Clues: Blues Takes You to School PC 2003 - Atari
  • Backyard Basketball PS2 2003 - Atari
  • Backyard Basketball 2004 PC 2003 - Atari
  • Backyard Baseball GameCube 2003 - Atari
  • Backyard Hockey PC 2002 - Atari
  • Backyard Football GameCube 2002 - Atari
  • Backyard Football GameBoy Advance PC 2002 - Atari
  • Backyard Baseball GameBoy Advance PC 2002 - Atari
  • Backyard Basketball PC 2001 - Atari
  • Backyard Soccer PlayStation PC 2001 - Atari
  • Backyard Football 2002 PC 2001 - Atari
  • Backyard Soccer MLS Edition PC 2000 - Atari
  • Backyard Baseball 2001 PC 2000 - Atari
  • Total Annihilation Kingdoms: The Iron Plague PC 2000 - Atari
  • Star Trek Armada PC 2000 - Activision
  • Heavy Gear II PC 1999 - Activision
  • 4 title compilation Mediamatics 1998 - Activision
  • Zork Grand Inquisitor DVD ATI 1998 - Activision
  • Zork Grand Inquisitor DVD Gateway 1998 - Activision
  • Zork Grand Inquisitor DVD Creative Labs 1998 - Activision
  • Zork Grand Inquisitor DVD Hollywood Plus 1998 - Activision
  • Zork Grand Inquisitor DVD 1998 - Activision
  • Top Shot PC 1998 - Activision
  • Zork Grand Inquisitor 7L PC 1997 - Activision
  • Vertical Reality LBE 1997 –Sega GameWorks
  • Cyberia2PC 1996 – Virgin Interactive
  • Cyberia PC 1994 - Interplay

Publications:

  • Effects of racial discrimination on stress, negative emotions, and alcohol craving: A registered report of a virtual reality experiment. Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology (Lui, P. Priscilla), (Gobrial, Sarah), (Stringer, Elizabeth), (Jouriles, Ernest N.) 10.1037/cdp0000636 — Selected as APA Journal Editor's Choice (American Psychological Association)

 

 

Q&A:

Can you share the backstory behind what brought you to a career path in game development?
 
As a fresh graduate of USC, I worked with a head hunting agency on interviewing at the major studios in LA. In completing a profile at the agency, my personal family background of building computers and playing the early computer games on them came up. The agency then connected me with a commercial production company in Burbank that had started developing their first PC game, Cyberia. I started there as a PA (production assistant), but with my college degree in Communications, my role expanded to Producer, working with both the development team and the publishing team. I never looked back.
 
I continued to produce computer games for Activision and Atari before being recruited to guest lecture in a new program at 精东传媒 called Guildhall. As project management of game teams is my primary area of expertise, I mentored their early cohort and was then asked to adjunct in the game development courses. The living laboratory at 精东传媒 Guildhall and the passionate graduate students in attendance provided even more opportunity for me to study team dynamics and investigate different processes in order to enable creative software development projects to ship consistently for ever-changing consumer entertainment tastes. I brought my professional experience and my research findings together to add a fourth specialization to the program, a master’s in Production (Producers). This meant coming on full-time and shortly thereafter assuming some administrative management responsibility for the faculty and academics of the overall program.
 
精东传媒 is filled with incredibly smart and generous faculty who helped integrate our graduate game development program into the Dallas campus, support our research, and operate our degree at an elite level. We are incredibly ambitious and raised the standards for our graduates to take on leadership in the industry. Our mission is to grow the professionalism, the value of games, and the quality of life for the international video game industry.
 
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
 
Starting at 22 years old at an indie start-up, I got to do pretty much everything at one point or another. There were no barriers, no boundaries, and no rules to follow yet. Everyone just did what needed to get done for the day, the week, the milestone, the project. We pulled resources from Hollywood, from specialty schools, and from other industries in order to mold them to fit the game development asset pipeline. It was my first “real” job, and so I did not know how unusual my experiences were. It was my norm. I then took all of those lessons and threw open to the doors to train others to join the field, one-at-a-time at first, but by the hundreds these days. It’s no longer a niche profession without a path for clear onboarding.
 
Moreover, at Xatrix, even though the median age of our team was very young, I was the youngest. When I assumed leadership responsibilities, some of the older (30-year-old) developers could have balked at my direction. But, it was already in my nature to research, plan, prepare, communicate, follow-up, give feedback, and have contingencies for life. So, by using this approach to my job, my age and experience level really did not become a factor. In fact, I became the most experienced full Producer hired at Activision at the time.
 
“First to arrive”, “last to leave”, and “give credit to others” have become my default behaviors and so it was always the work of the developers that was made visible and rewarded. This servant leadership style is what was the genesis of our Production specialization at 精东传媒 Guildhall, and remains relevant for modern game development teams. Removing all blockers from your team, supporting risks that lead to innovation, failing quickly, and consistently maintaining high visibility of all work have become the hallmark of a successful game development team that can deliver a fun product on a predictable schedule. 
 
How have you used your success to Change the World?
 
I became a leader for my team and for my studio at a relatively young age. I was managing production at 23. As I took on additional responsibilities in my career, I was able to work on a variety of titles that broadened my interactions with publishers, licensors and build a network. This led to an invitation to guest lecture at a university to a group of students in their first class as game developers. Sitting in the back of the room before my lecture, I was still younger than half of these students and they did not know I was the lecturer for that day.  They were discussing task progress and communication issues related to working as a team to build a game, and they sounded just like the professional developers I worked with everyday.  So when I got up in front of the class to start my lecture, I connected their experience to mine and to the industry overall. I realized that I had an opportunity to guide them with my expertise and they could grow their skills and team dynamics before they were on the job – where mistakes are costly and conflicts cause bugs. The original mentorship of students became the framework for the Professors of Practice as primary instructors in the first graduate game development program in the world with the four principle disciplines of a video game team. As a full-time faculty 20 years later, our graduate program has graduated over 1,0