Contact
j.s.kritz[at]qmul.ac.uk —
A little about me
I love games, this was the driving force that led me to pursue a career researching and creating games. My interests in games are as broad as the area can be. I believe games have a power unlike any other and researching them through any lens is always fascinating! My background is in Applied Mathematics and Computer Sciences, so this naturally leads my research to a more engineering type. However I have experience as a teacher and using games as a tool for learning and teaching. Currently, I am studying how to use AI in board game development. More specifically I’m aiming to create and evaluate metrics for specific board game attributes using AI agents and then validate this automated measurement against player experience.
A look to the past
I graduated at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Applied Mathematics to Computer Science. During this time I learned both about pure math and high level computer science, with a special focus on algorithms. I also worked in LabMA, a group dedicated to studying mortality and survival rates of brazilian population and the creators of the first brazilian based mortality table.
Immediately after graduation I started my Masters in Computer and Systems Engineering at COPPE. My masters was where I started focusing my studies in games. Most of my research and learning at this time was to better understand games, both their creation and use. It was also around this time that I found my place in the board games industry, latter releasing my first published board game.
After finishing my Masters I started working in a technical high school (15-18 years old students) teaching game programming and game design. It was a very unique experience that allowed me to learn a lot about pedagogy and further develop my understanding of games and their development. However, the greatest gain I had in this position was the development of my soft skills like communication, interpersonal skills, and time management.
Another past experience I had was as a game developer to bithotel.io. Where I created the maps where players walk around and socialize as well as some of the minigames featured in the game.
However, even during my time working outside of academia I never really stopped researching. During my time teaching we published results on using games on education. And due to my performance in my Masters I was invited to participate in a big project that yielded SCREENER an educational game to teach Drug Development and Discovery.
If you would like to know what I did in more detail you can see my Publications and Experience sections of this website. And you might also want to look at my game projects.