Dr. Kelly Tran: Game Designer, Researcher, Streamer, Player

SPARTIE-Cast with Dr. Robby Ratan

In this episode, host Robby Ratan speaks with Dr. Kelly Tran, a professional game designer and researcher working on a game to improve players’ social and emotional learning. She discusses her transition from academia to industry, the importance of aligning game mechanics with the impactful (or “serious”) intent of the game, the value of games as tools for stealth assessment, her eudaimonic experiences playing Chicory and Mass Effect and the fun she’s having Twitch streaming Final Fantasy XIV. And, of course, Robby nudged her to comment on avatars and self-presentation a bit too.

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About this week's guest:
Dr. Kelly Tran is the founder and applied designer at Evolved Play, a company building a free-to-play adventure role-playing game platform for children four-years-old and up. They plan to use social emotional learning to help players develop emotional intelligence, creativity and empathy through story and social gameplay.

Tran is also a Twitch streamer on her personal channel and a channel she shares with other professors.

About the SPARTIE Lab:

The Social and Psychological Approaches to Research on Technology-Interaction Effects (SPARTIE) Lab performs research on the effects of human-technology interaction, examining how the use of media technologies (e.g., avatars, agents, automobiles) influences meaningful outcomes (e.g., education, health/safety, persuasion).

The SPARTIE Lab is part of the greater academic community at the College of Communication Arts & Sciences at Michigan State University. More information on the lab's research projects, staff, and work can be found on the SPARTIE Lab website.

About the host:

Dr. Rabindra (Robby) Ratan, Ph. D., is an associate professor and AT&T Scholar at Michigan State University’s Department of Media and Information and is the director of the SPARTIE Lab.

He is also an affiliated faculty member of the MSU Department of Psychology, the MSU College of Education’s program in Educational Psychology and Educational Technology, and the MSU Center for Gender in a Global Context. Ratan received his Ph.D. from USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, his M.A. in Communication from Stanford University, and his B.A. in Science, Technology and Society, also from Stanford University.

Dr. Ratan conducts research on the effects of human-technology interaction, examining how media technologies (e.g., avatars, agents, automobiles) influence meaningful outcomes (e.g., persuasion, education, health/safety). He is particularly interested in the Proteus effect, media-rich transportation contexts, perceptions of media as self-representations and/or social others, avatarification for health and education, and gender stereotypes in gaming contexts.

Dr. Ratan lives near Lansing with his family. More information on his work can be found on his website.