Adam Sulzdorf-Liszkiewicz

Base

Country

U.S.A.

Institutional affiliation

University of Southern California

Title

Adjunct Assistant Professor

Research interests relevant to game philosophy

My current research interrogates play as an ontological practice and commitment, and attempts to follow through on this commitment through both theoretical and practice-based production. More specifically, I am working on a number of games, of various shapes and sizes, that investigate the relationship between poetry, play, and games. This continues my research from my collection AFEELD (http://afeeld.com/), which will soon be re-released as a full-length collection by the Center for Digital Discourse and Culture, in their Digital Originals series. In part, my past and current creative and theoretical work has explored poetry and poetics as a ready-at-hand form of ontological commitment, that is available to designers of all kinds and that is an alternative to narrative and simulation]systems-driven ontological practices.

Publications and presentations relevant to game philosophy

PUBLICATIONS (selected)

— “A. J. Patrick Liszkiewicz: Statement and Artwork”, Leonardo Electronic Almanac, Vol. 19, No. 2, April 2013

— “When Did You First Play The Binding of Isaac?”, Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins, 15 March 2013

— “Are Video Games Stories?”, Word For/Word: A Journal of New Writing, No. 18, April 2011

— “Cultivated Play: FarmVille”, MediaCommons, 09 March 2010; republished in Kotaku, 22 April 2010

PRESENTATIONS (Selected)

— Sulzdorf-Liszkiewicz, Adam. “Lusory Attitudes and Electronic Literature”. American Studies Association Conference, Los Angeles, CA, 07 Nov. 2014.

— Sulzdorf-Liszkiewicz, Adam, Anton Hand, and Luke Noonan. “Small Team, Big Results”. IndieCade: International Festival of Independent Games, Culver City, CA, 03 October 2013.

— Sulzdorf-Liszkiewicz, Adam, Anton Hand, and Luke Noonan. “Postmortem: Museum of the Microstar”. UNITE: Unity3D Developers Conference, Vancouver, BC, Canada, 30 August 2013.

— Boisvert, Heidi, Una Lee, and Adam Liszkiewicz. “Making Games for Social Change”. Allied Media Conference, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, 22 June 2013.

— Liszkiewicz, A. J. Patrick. “Minecraft Memorials: Deconstructing Virtual Worlds Through Artistic Interventions”. Visual Studies 2012 Graduate Student Conference, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, 06 April 2012.

— Liszkiewicz, A. J. Patrick. “Thirteen Ways of Looking at Team Fortress 2”. Popular Culture Association of Canada Conference, Niagara Falls, ON, Canada, 13 May 2011.

— Liszkiewicz, A. J. Patrick. “The Poetics of Video Games”. &Now: A Conference of Innovative Writing and the Literary Arts, Buffalo, NY, 14 October 2009.

Keywords

Games Studies, Game Design, Ontology, Poetry, Sports

Name

Adam Sulzdorf-Liszkiewicz

Background

Adam is the Chief Operations Officer of the award-winning design studio, RUST LTD., creators of the best-selling virtual reality game, Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades. He has designed and consulted for clients such as Dave and Buster’s, the Independent Television Service, Nokia, Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, and Toyota. He is also the author of a full-length collection of digital poetry and games, AFEELD, which was published by the Collaboratory for Digital Discourse and Culture at Virginia Tech in 2017. Adam currently teaches game studies and game design courses at the University of Southern California, where he serves as Director of the Playwork Lab.