The Multiplayer Classroom: Game Plans

Lee Sheldon began his writing career in television as a writer-producer, eventually writing over 200 produced shows ranging from Charlie's Angels (writer) to Edge of Night (head writer) to Star Trek: The Next Generation (writer-producer). In 1994, tired of television, Lee turned to his new love: video games. Since then he has worked on over 40 games. In 2006 he began teaching video game writing and design at Indiana University. While there he first started designing classes as games. He also wrote and designed an alternate reality game that went through three iterations. The first two, The Skeleton Chase and Skeleton Chase 2: The Psychic, were funded by the Robert Wood Foundation and were designed to improve student fitness. The third, Skeleton Chase: Warp Speed was a redesign of the second game, shrinking playtime from 7 weeks to 3 days for a group of Coca Cola executives from North Africa.In 2010 Lee moved to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute where he was an Associate Professor in the Games and Simulation Arts and Sciences program. There he was co-director of the GSAS program for three years and created the first full writing for games program in North America. He was lead writer and creative director on several incarnations, both a class designed as a game and a digital version, of The Lost Manuscript a narrative-driven game teaching Chinese language and culture.He joined the Interactive Media and Game Development (IMGD) program at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 2015 where he is again designing classes as games and has developed the second full writing for games curriculum in North America. Lee's book Character Development and Storytelling for Games (Second Edition, 2013) is the standard text in the field. He wrote the bestselling book The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game (2011). Over 1500 people in 45 countries now follow the Facebook page for his method of teaching classes as multiplayer games. His recent applied game projects include The Janus Door, a cybersecurity class designed as a game, funded by an NSF grant, and currently running at California Polytechnic State University. He wrote and designed Secrets: A Cyberculture Mystery Game, an online class designed as a game teaching culture and identity on the Internet for Excelsior College that went live Fall 2015; and wrote Crimson Dilemma, a business ethics video game for his old school, Indiana University, that debuted Fall 2014. His most recent entertainment games are The Lion's Song, an episodic game following the creative and personal struggles of four