SAMUEL SHIELDS is a technical systems designer that believes that building, playing, and researching video games can bring us together.

  Video games represent a new horizon for how we relate to one another and how we create dynamic, expressive experiences that move us. Sam's work focuses on building complex, scalable game systems that enable iterative testing, development, and design activities around procedural content generation and agent behavior design. He believes that frequent iteration and a center on player experience is the key to producing meaningful games.

  Sam has contributed to award-winning projects and used results from his games to publish academic work. He uses his background in technology production and engineering to build technical and people processes to keep projects moving towards their desired goals. Sam believes that creating supportive team environments with high team-member autonomy combined with gradual skill scaffolding produces teamwork that is socially sustainable, productive, and balanced with leadership expectations.