About

Hi, I’m Shashank. As a kid, I would spend all of my free time playing video games. I used to wonder how the game ‘reacted’ to what i had done. When i found out how games worked, I knew I wanted make games when I grew up. I have followed this goal throughout my career.

I started by learning to code. I pursued a B.E. in Computer Science and started making games with my coding skills. But soon, i realized that game design is what made games special, and no amount of expertise in coding alone will help me make good games. This started the second phase of my career.

I pursued a M.S. in Games for learning, and learned game design at the NYU game center. During this time, i found that there was a fundamental connection between play and learning. This sparked a keen interest in me to study how people play, and how this applies to learning. I realized that research is a crucial part of making video games, and that i needed to improve my research skills. I dedicated the third phase of my career to improve these skills. I learned to conduct research with video games as a Research assistant and a PhD student.

After completing my PhD, I started exploring opportunities in the commercial space. First, I worked as a Senior Education Consultant at This Time of Now, where we developed a playful virtual school program for a global audience. Second, I accepted the opportunity to lead the system design efforts at Age of Learning, Inc. In this role, I have focused on developing an advanced personalized learning game system based on cutting-edge research in educational technology and cognitive sciences. In the next phase of my career, i want to continue working with video games. I look forward to improve games by better understanding players, and to improve learning by better understanding games.