William Emigh

Biography

Will Emigh is a Senior Lecturer and the Director of the BS in Game Design at the Media School. He joined the IU department of Telecommunications as a game design Lecturer in 2013. His interests include using motion to control video games, particularly for physical therapy, micro card games, and gameplay engineering. Will is the faculty advisor for the student game design group Game Design @ IU, the faculty champion for the game design special interest group at the Center of Excellence for Women & Technology, and manages the monthly game design meet-up Bloomington Indie Game (BIG) Night.

In the process of earning an MS in Telecommunications (Masters in Immersive Mediated Environments) from IU in 2008, Will led a group of students in the design of an 11-week long alternate reality game. This inspired him to co-found Studio Cypher, a game company that designs positive games. Started in 2005, Studio Cypher produced a series of alternate reality games before expanding to create projects as diverse as kiosk games for Chicago’s Field Museum, a card game based on the Prisoner’s Dilemma, and physical therapy games using motion-tracking hardware. His most recent project is acting as Gameplay Engineer on Mineko’s Night Market, released in 2023.

Will’s background is in Computer Science (BS) and Philosophy (BS), from North Carolina State University. Before being hired as a full-time lecturer, Will taught as an adjunct at IU.