INconversation with Tracy Fullerton

Walden, a game, to be released this summer, is a first-person simulation of Thoreau’s life during his experiment in self-reliant living at Walden Pond. It’s been generating tons of buzz, including in The New York Times and at Davos, for its creativity, its beauty and its sheer unlikeliness. Join us as we welcome lead designer Tracy Fullerton, director of the Game Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, to talk about “the world’s most improbable video game.”

Listen in as Tracy shares how—and why—she turned a 19th-century memoir into a 21st-century digital game while sipping on Sun King’s Dragon’s Delight beer and snacks. We’ll get a peek at the game itself and learn about the delightful challenges of its creation, from scouring Thoreau’s original surveys of Walden Pond to create the game’s landscape and establishing rules and choices for the first-person player, to designing a color scheme and soundtrack that subtly cue the players to their success or failure in “living deliberately.” And we’ll think together about the remarkable possibilities of games and their ability to help us navigate our complicated, ever-changing world.