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Robin Hunicke, Associate Professor and Program Director of Art & Design: Games & Playable Media, is Co-Founder and CEO of Funomena

Robin Hunicke

Robin Hunicke, Associate Professor and Program Director of Art & Design: Games Playable Media (AGPM), who brought to world the highly-lauded game Journey, is Co-Founder and CEO of the experimental game design company, Funomena, which launched October 2017 Professor Hunicke’s eagerly anticipated PC and VR game Luna -- a poignant parable about mistakes and the consequence of making choices.

Oculus Blog, posted by Oculus VR, October 2017, had this to say about Luna.

With a visually stunning style heavily influenced by origami and emphasis on the ability of games to move us in compelling ways, Luna brings the wonder and artistry of indie favorite Journey home to VR. Following OC3 in 2016, Luna was praised by Engadget for its ability to “have you feeling like a child again.” By E3 of this year, VentureBeat declared it “magical and spellbinding.” And we couldn’t agree more.

"Not everything that happens in your life is good,” says Professor Hunicke. “But everything that happens is a part of your story." Luna, then, is a game about learning to move forward and set things right. "It's important that we make fairytales, that we make legends about learning from your mistakes… Because that's how life really works."

Professor Robin Hunicke is among a rare breed of video game creators. As Mike Diver of VICE has noted:

We could all be better at supporting games-makers who want to progress this medium in all the right ways—through sharing, through inventing, through fun, rather than rinsing and repeating what's known to "work." Robin Hunicke is just one of many people wanting to encourage change in the way we work within and relate to video games, but it's exciting to imagine what'll happen when all of the voices around hers, singing equally inspiring songs, do band together.

Originally posted: 01/10/2018