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Greetings! My name is Catherine Herdlick. I make cross-media games and game-like things to entertain and delight. I have
designed games that last 20 minutes and games that last 2 months about things like bicycles, perfume, and ghosts.
You can find out more about
all of my projects right here on this website!
I also trust the universe,
believe in the power of sincerity, know that most people mean well deep down inside, and feel angry sometimes despite all of that.
I'm one of the co-founders of
the sort of well-known Come Out & Play Festival for street games. The youngest of
3, I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri (though my family might be inclined to say I never did grow up!).
True to my state motto (the "Show Me State") and my sign (Capricorn), I am
a hard-working doer who is more interested in seeing things get done than talking about doing them or
how awesome they will be when they are done.
That said, I enjoyed a very fancy and extensive education in how to talk and write about things at such fine institutions
as John Burroughs School in St. Louis, Wesleyan University in
Middletown, CT, and Parsons School of Design in New York City.
So, I am up for both, really: talking and doing.
At Wesleyan, I earned a BA in "College of Letters" which is an interdisciplinary
degree (like liberal arts for the liberal arts major): Literature, History, and Philosophy. We also had to focus on a specific culture
and read source texts in the original language. I chose Spanish and spent a very transformative semester and a summer living in Madrid, Spain. My
honors thesis at Wesleyan was a theatrical historical adaptation of the Odyssey set in 15th-century Spain. The play was never produced.
After Wesleyan, I worked at the Boston Children's Museum where I caught the learning-while-doing bug while creating hands-on activities and programs for
the museum's community outreach initiatives. After a year in Boston, I moved to New York to attend graduate school at Parsons School of Design where
I focused my studies on play and game design for children (I didn't realize yet just how much adults still wanted and needed to play too!). My work
towards my MFA in Design and Technology at Parsons nurtured my interests in play and learning while also helping me develop real-world skills in
design and production.
For 5 years after graduating from Parsons in June 2003, I had an amazing dayjob for indie game developer Gamelab
in New York. I started as a Programming Intern but was Director of Production by the time I left in August 2008.
In that capacity, I basically I helped run the studio and made sure that all of the projects in development were running smoothly.
I left Gamelab to become a Product Manager at Lime Wire, another awesome New York company.
Transitioning from games to software was a little more nostalgic than I thought it would be, but we did some fun
things at Lime Wire too. I especially enjoyed being an active part of the Open Source community,
whose values I find really inspiring. The best part of all, though,
was working with some of the most brilliant and kind people I've ever
met and exposure to a non-gaming company's approach to design, process, and technology.
I left Lime Wire at the end of 2008 and moved from Brooklyn to San Francisco in February 2009, in pursuit of the good life and innovation.
I continue to work on Come Out & Play (remotely) and freelance for clients like iWin
and Gigantic Mechanic. New original
work includes Scenic Route, a locative walking game that I'm developing with Gabe Smedresman,
and The Cowgirl Way Society,
an alternate reality game project for which I'm proud to say I was awarded a 2009 Creative Capital grant.
I live and work in a sunny apartment one block from Golden Gate Park in Haight-Ashbury with my two adorable cats. I
have a plot in the White Crane Springs Community Garden in the Inner Sunset area of San Francisco where I'm trying to
develop a green thumb. Other passtimes (not that I have much spare time to pass!) include hiking, camping, snowboarding, arts and crafts, live music, contra dancing (well, I've only gone once but it was awesome!),
and hanging out with my nephews.
My life's goal is to make as many fun
things for people to do in the real world as possible. If you are interested in
working with me or hiring me to make something big, something fun, and something that crosses multiple media, get in touch!
September 2, 2009
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