Em Lazer-Walker
Games / Mobile / JavaScript / IoT / Mixed Reality / HoloLens
Bio
Em (she/her or they/them) is a Cloud Advocate for Microsoft based in Toronto. She’s an artist/engineer who makes interactive art, experimental games, and open-source software tools to empower creativity. Most of her work focuses on using nontraditional interfaces to reframe everyday objects and spaces as playful experiences and to inspire people to become self-motivated learners.
She’s built projects as far-flung as a site-specific generative poetry walk, a game played on 19th century telegraph hardware, and a commercial board game that uses Amazon Alexa. In the past, she’s worked at companies like Pivotal Labs and Etsy, on games and apps such as Words With Friends and Timehop, and as a researcher in the MIT Media Lab's Playful Systems research group. She’s passionate about fostering diverse and inclusive communities, and organizes game events such as the Roguelike Celebration and the annual alt.ctrl.PARTY.
As a game designer and installation artist, her work has been featured in places such as the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Venice Architectural Biennale, and has been showcased at games events and spaces such as IndieCade (2016 finalist), alt.ctrl.GDC, Bit Bash, Come Out and Play, Babycastles, Different Games, and New York Toy Fair (2019 Game of the Year nominee).
Skills
- Game design and development
- Native iOS developemnt
- Nontraditional computing interfaces: spatial computing (VR/AR), voice and conversational UIs, and more
- IoT and hardware fabrication
- TypeScript
- Rich JavaScript webapps, particularly with React