José Zagal

August 13, 2019
Professor, Lecturer
Building 72, Room 226
Campus Map
Biography

José P. Zagal is a Professor with the University of Utah’s Entertainment Arts & Engineering program. He is the author of Ludoliteracy: Defining, Understanding, and Supporting Games Education (ETC Press, 2010) and editor of both The Videogame Ethics Reader (Cognella, 2012) and, with Dr. Sebastian Deterding, Role-Playing Game Studies(Routledge, 2018). His most recent book, Game Design Snacks (ETC Press, 2019) is an edited collection of nuggets of game design wisdom covering various areas in game design with examples from commercially released videogames. José currently serves as Editor-In-Chief of the peer-reviewed journal Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association. In 2016 José was honored as a Distinguished Scholar by the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) for his contributions to the field of games research.

courses taught in fall 2019
  • EAE 2100-002, Introduction to Game Design, WeFr 1:25pm – 2:45pm, ST 214
  • EAE 3020, Ethics in Videogames, TuTh 10:45 – 12:05, BEH S 101
  • EAE 3020, Ethics in Videogames, TuTh 12:25 – 1:45, JTB 110
Research
  • Games Education
  • Ethics and Games
  • Game Analysis and Design
  • Game Ontologies
Education
  • PhD, 2008, Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology
  • MS Engineering Sciences, 1999, Engineering, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
  • Civil Industrial Engineer (with Computer Science Diploma), 1999, Engineering, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
  • Bachelor of Engineering Sciences, 1997, Engineering, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Awards
  • 3rd place, Game Design Contest for “Abstract Hex Dice”. BryceCon, 2019
  • Digital Games Research Association Distinguished Scholar. Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA), 2016
  • Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative Leadership in Ethics Education Award (2015-2016). University of Utah2016.
  • Best Paper Award, International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG), May 2013.
  • Best Paper Award, Meaningful Play Conference, 2010.
  • Best Paper Award Nomination, International Conference of the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA), 2015.
Selected recent publications

 

Books and Book Chapters

  1. Zagal, J.P. (Ed) (2019) “Game Design Snacks: Easily Digestible Game Design Wisdom”, ETC Press.
  2. Deterding, S., Zagal, J. P. (2018) “The Many Faces of RPG Studies”, in Zagal, J. P., Deterding, S. (Eds), Role-Playing Games Studies: Transmedia Foundations, pp1-16, Routledge. Published, 04/2018
  3. Zagal, J.P., Deterding, S. (2018) “Definitions of Role-Playing Games”, in Zagal, J. P., Deterding, S. (Eds), Role-Playing Games Studies: Transmedia Foundations, pp19-52, Routledge. Published, 04/2018.
  4. Zagal J. P., Deterding S. (Eds) (2018) “Role-Playing Games Studies: Transmedia Foundations”, Routledge. Published, 04/2018.
  5. Björk, S., Zagal, J.P. (2018) “Game Design and Role-Playing Games”, in Zagal, J. P., Deterding, S. (Eds), Role-Playing Games Studies: Transmedia Foundations, pp 323-336, Routledge. Published, 04/2018.

Conference and Journal Articles

  1. Zagal, J. (2019) “An Analysis of 1980s English-Language Commercial TRPG Definitions”, RPG Summit @ DiGRA 2019, Kyoto Japan, August 6-9.
  2. Bateman, C., Zagal J. (2018) “Game Design Lineages: Minecraft’s Inventory”, Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association (ToDiGRA). Vol 3. No. 3, 13-46. http://todigra.org/index.php/todigra/article/view/77/132. Published, 10/2018.
  3. Rothwell, E., Johnson, E., Wong, B., Rose, N., Latendresse, G., Altizer, R., Zagal, J., Smid, M., Watson, A., Botkin, J. (2018) “The use of a Game-Based Decision Aid to educate pregnant couples about prenatal genetic screening: A randomized controlled study”, American Journal of Perinatology. 14 August 2018, eFirst. Published, 08/2018.