Last Online: 5/1/07
Casey O'Donnell
I am a PhD candidate in the Science and Technology Studies Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and have performed ethnographic fieldwork at Vicarious Visions over the past two and a half years. My dissertation research is titled, "Playing the New Economy: Video Game Development in India and the United States," and is being funded by a National Science Foundation grant. My work examines the diverse forces and activities -- laws, technologies, collaboration, and workplace cultures, for example -- that shape video game development, and make it tenable in today's globalized economy. My broader research questions, "What can the everyday worlds of video game developers teach us about the 'new' economy?" and "How do these worlds differ across national and cultural boundaries?" links the game industry to global processes.
Don't touch it! It's the History Eraser button, you fool!
Career Summary
I began my academic life as a computer scientist and mathematician, started studying computer graphics, that led to 3D scientific visualization work for JPL, was snatched up by a game company in La Jolla, worked on 3D sound systems for N64, PS1, PC, Mac, Linux until it('s clients) went bust, tried graduate school in CS, wasn't happy, worked for an Autodesk subcontractor (and general design automation company), put people out of work with automation tools, got tired of that, and with the help of a Marxist feminist and a sociologist found "STS" as a (un)discipline, got in, studied Open Source Software development for a while, got tired of it, did some pilot research studying work at a video game company, that company got bought by Activision, and decided to study "the game industry" in the US and India. Simple right?
