Knight Chair, Professor
Dr. Lindsay Grace is Knight Chair in Interactive Media and a full professor at the University of Miami School of Communication. He is Vice President for the Higher Education Video Game Alliance and the 2019 recipient of the Games for Change Vanguard award. Lindsay’s book, Doing Things with Games, Social Impact through Design, is a well-received guide to game design. In 2020, he edited and authored Love and Electronic Affection: a Design Primer on designing love and affection in games. In 2021 he published the Amazon best seller, Black Game Studies, an Introduction to the games, game makers and scholarship of the African diaspora
His work has received awards and recognition from the Games for Change Festival, the Digital Diversity Network, the Association of Computing Machinery’s digital arts community, Black Enterprise and others. He authored or co-authored more than 95 papers, articles and book chapters on games since 2009. His creative work has been selected for showcase internationally including New York, Paris, São Paulo, Singapore, Chicago, Vancouver, Istanbul, and others. Lindsay curated or co-curated Blank Arcade (2014-2016), Smithsonian American Art Museum’s SAAM Arcade (2014-2017), the Games for Change Festival (2017, 2022, 2023) and others.
He has given talks at the Game Developers Conference, SXSW, Games for Change Festival, the Online News Association, the Society for News Design, and many other industry events. He has had appearances on domestic and international television and radio and written editorials published by CNN and others.
Between 2013 and 2018 he was the founding director of the American University Game Lab and Studio. He served as Vice President and on the board of directors for the Global Game Jam™ non-profit between 2014-2019. From 2009 to 2013 he was the Armstrong Professor at Miami University’s School of Art. Lindsay also served on the board for the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) between 2013-2015.
His teaching career includes teaching more than 75 courses at 5 colleges and universities. Prior to becoming a professor, Lindsay was a software developer and designer, a buyer and a data warehousing integrity analyst at an investment firm.
Courses Taught
CIM 122 Introduction to Game Studies
CIM 310 Introduction to Game Design
CIM 610 Designing Playful Experiences
CIM 111 Web Lab
JMM 692/592 Special Topics: Interactives, Toys and Games for Journalism
JMM 692/592 with CIM 464/664 Video Game Spectatorship and eSports / eSports, Casting and Game Reporting
Featured Publications
Selected Books
Grace, L. 2019. Doing Things with Games: Social Impact through Play Design, CRC Press / Taylor and Francis (269 pages), 978-1138367265
Grace, L. 2020: Love and Electronic Affection: A Design Primer (editor/author), Routledge / Taylor and Francis (294 pages), 978-1138367234
Grace, L. 2021: Black Game Studies: An Introduction to the Games, Game Makers and Scholarship of the African Diaspora (editor/author), ETC Press Carnegie Mellon University (208 pages), 978-1-7947-7914-3, https://doi.org/10.17613/mx6w3-nh307
Selected Book Chapters
Grace, L.D. 2024, Gran Turismo’s Meaning, On a Love of Racing Games, Speed and Progress, in Davidson, Drew ed., Well Played: For the Love of Games, Play Story Press, DOI: 0.17613/ybxs1-cs865
Grace, L.D. 2021, Micro, Macro and Meta-Persuasive Play to Change Society, in de la Hera, Teresa, Jeroen Jansz, Joost Raessens, and Ben Schouten, eds. Persuasive Gaming in Context. Amsterdam University Press, 2021.
Grace, L. 2016. “The Rise of Affection Games: The Private Lives of Mobile Devices,” In M. Willson & T. Leaver (Eds.), Social, Casual, Mobile: Changing Games, Bloomsbury Press, NY.
Grace, L., Jamieson, P. 2014. Gaming with Purpose: Heuristic Understanding of Ubiquitous Game Development and Design for Human Computation. IEEE Handbook of Digital Games,
Grace, L. 2010. Critical Gameplay: Design Techniques and Case Studies, Designing Games for Ethics, Volume II, IGI Global (2010)- [pdf]
Selected Peer Reviewed Conference Proceedings
Grace, L. (2025). Game Engine for Change, A framework for Balancing the Intrinsic, Extrinsic and Player States at the Heart of Game Design, June, Malta, https://doi.org/10.26503/dl.v2025i2.2431
Grace, L., & Sekhon, V. 2025. The Transformative Experience of Game Jams: How Game Making Improved Perceived Social Issue Understanding. The 58th Hawaii International Conference on Systems Science (HICSS), Kona Hawaii, January 2025
Grace, L. 2024. Newsgames at 21, A Modern Storytelling Medium and Content Analysis of 101 Different Newsgames. In: Murray, J.T., Reyes, M.C. (eds) Interactive Storytelling. ICIDS 2024. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 15467. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-78453-8_17
Grace, L. 2024 “Communities of Risk, Identity, Youth and Civil Disobedience: Parkour, Skateboarding, Skywalking as Rebellious Play”, The 57th Hawaii International Conference on Systems Science (HICSS), Oahu Hawaii, January 2024.
Grace, L. and Liang, S. 2024. “Exposure, Emotion, and Empathy, A Theory Informed Approach to Misinformation and Disinformation Behavior Change through Games“, The 57th Hawaii International Conference on Systems Science (HICSS), Oahu Hawaii, January 2024
Grace, L. and Liang, S. 2023. Examining Misinformation and Disinformation Games Through Inoculation Theory and Transportation Theory, The 56th Hawaii International Conference on Systems Science (HICCS), Maui, Hawaii, January 2023.
Grace, L., Hone, B. 2019. Factitious: Large Scale Computer Game to Fight Fake News and Improve News Literacy, 37th Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI – ACM), Scotland
Grace, L. Heuristics from Curating and Exhibiting Game Art in the 21st Century, In proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Digital Arts (Artech 2017), Macau, China
Grace, L., & Farley, M. How Game Design Thinking becomes Engagement Design. In Proceedings of the 20th Academic Mindtrek (Tampere, Finland, October 17-19, 2016). ACM, New York, NY
Grace, L. 2016. Deciphering Hackathons and Game Jams through Play, in Proceedings of the 1st International Conference of Game Jams, Hackathons and Game Creation Events, David Brower Center of UC Berkeley in California, ACM, New York, NY, USA, 4 pages.
Grace, L., Janssen, D., and Coyle J. 2014. Did you see that?: in-game advertising retention in players and onlookers. In Proceedings of the 11th Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology (ACE ’14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, , Article 42 , 4 pages. DOI=10.1145/2663806.2663856 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2663806.2663856
Grace, L. 2014. Adapting Games From Literature: Game Verbs for Player Behavior. In Proceedings of the 32nd of the international Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Toronto, Canada, April 26 – May 1, 2014). CHI EA ’14. ACM, New York, NY, USA
Grace, L. 2011. The Poetics of Game Design, Rhetoric and the Independent Game, 5th Digital Games Research Association Conference on Games and Play (DIGRA). Utrecht School of the Arts, (Netherlands)
Selected Editorials and Syndicated Content
2018: The Conversation (Salon.com, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, et al), What’s leisure and what’s game addiction in the 21st century?, June 27, 2018
2018: The Conversation (LA Times, Chicago Tribune, Smithsonian Magazine, et al.) What 40 years of ‘Space Invaders’ says about the 1970s – and today, June 18, 2018
2018: CNN (Opinion) Video games do not teach shooters to become shooters in real life, March 9, 2018
2017: The Conversation Designing games that change perceptions, opinions and even players’ real-life actions, March 25, 2017
reprinted: Axelrod, Rise B., and Charles R. Cooper. The St. Martin’s guide to writing. Macmillan, 2018.
Selected Keynotes
2025: Grace, L. Social Impact Through Play: The Transformative Power of Games and Play to Move US Toward a Better Future, Media in Motion, Center for Transformative Media, Northeastern University, Boston, MA.
2023: Grace, L. Young Southeast Asian Leader’s Initiative (YSEALI) Game Changers, Designing Socially Impactful Games workshop and game jam Kuala Lumpur , Malaysia
2023: Grace, L – Doing Things with Games: Employing the Power of Play to Solve Complex Problems, 71st Association of University Radiologists meeting, (Lucy Squire Keynote), Austin, Texas
2022: Grace, L. Keynote: Designing Games to Combat Climate Change, Disinformation and Support Gender Equity, US Dept. of State Tech Camp, Istanbul, Turkey
2021 Grace, L. Keynote: Play as Interface, CHI Play 2021
2019: Grace, L. Keynote: “Games + Libraries”, Libraries, Games and Play Conference, Washington, DC, USA
2018: Grace, L. Keynote: Games+ the African Diaspora, Annual Conference on Cape Verdean & Diaspora Studies Bridgewater State College, Massachusetts
2016: Grace, L. Keynote: Online News Association (ONA)-London, United Kingdom
2015: Grace, L. Keynote: Queerness in Games Conference, University of California-Berkley, California, October 2015
Selected Press
2024: Featured: Kansei Economy, Leading the technological Innovation, Yomiuri Shimbun on July 6, 2024
2023: Featured: Astro Awani (Malaysian Television), It’s About YOUth: Driving positive social impact through games, premier date, May 14, 2023
2023: Featured: Ruthless, Monopoly’s Secret History, PBS American Experience, premier date, February 20, 2023.
2019: Featured: NPR Marketplace, Tech: Is “Fortnite” any more addictive than Facebook?, Molly Wood, April, 23, 2019
2018: Featured: Variety, ‘Fake News’ Game ‘Factitious’ Finds Following, Brian Crecente, June 28, 2018
2018: Featured: Gamasutra, At GDC 2018, get expert insight on how to teach game dev around the world, March 15, 2018
2017: Featured:Al Jazeera [English], US video games focus on historical accuracy, Shihab Rattansi, April 26, 2017
2017: Featured: Federal News Radio, Fact-checking in the era of fake news, Debra Roth and Nikki Cannon, March 10, 2017
2016: Featured: Diversity in Action Magazine, Diversifying the Video Game Industry, Sonya Stinson, September/October 2016
2016: Featured: Black Enterprise, Meet the Game Designer Creating Video Games with Social Impact, May 17, 2016
2015: Featured: WAMU 88.5 (Washington DC NPR affiliate) – Kojo Nnamdi Show, The Evolution of Teenage Friendships in the Internet Era, June 25, 2015
2014: Featured: Al Jazeera English, The Stream (TV): Life lessons from the virtual world, November 19, 2014
2009: Featured: Gamasutra: IGF Festival Preview: Interview about Polyglot Cubed(12/12/2008) | Gamecareer Guide: Independent Game Festival Preview 2009 – Polyglot Cubed (12/12/2008)
Grants and Awards Received
2020: Co-Principal Investigator (with F. Khasmood, CalPoly), Knight Foundation (Journalism Tech), AI4Reporters: Design of a Prototype using Natural Language Processing and AI to automate state news reporting
2019: Vanguard career award, Games for Change, New York, New York
2016: Innovator/Inventor Award, Inaugural Digital Diversity Network Awards, Civic Hall, New York, New York
2013: Games for Change Festival Hall of Fame, Critical Gameplay Wait
2013 10th Advances in Computer Entertainment Conference Game Competition, 1st Place
2009: Polyglot Cubed (finalist), I/ITSEC Serious Games Showcase, Orlando, Florida, USA