Robin Hunicke is an American video game designer and producer. She is a professor of game design at UC Santa Cruz and the co-founder of Funomena. Hunicke began her career at Electronic Arts where she worked on multiple games including MySims as Lead Designer and Boom Blox and its sequel as a Producer. After leaving EA, she was hired by thatgamecompany where she produced Journey, an online cooperative game for the PlayStation 3. After its completion, Hunicke joined Tiny Speck to develop the social MMORPGGlitch, teaming with Katamari Damacy creator and personal friend Keita Takahashi. Prior to the release of Glitch, Hunicke left Tiny Speck to co-found Funomena together with Martin Middleton, former teammate and engineer at thatgamecompany. In October 2012, Funomena announced their first project: "to build a game that takes data from a pedometer and does something fun with it." They have since announced two new games, Wattam and Luna, "a tactile puzzle game set in a vibrant and sculptural story-book world", both of which are currently in development and executive produced by Hunicke. Hunicke is recognized in the industry for her support of independent game development, experimentation in game design, research in dynamic difficulty adjustment, and the advocacy of women within the games industry.
Hunicke began her work with Electronic Arts at Maxis, where she became a designer for ' after meeting famed game designer and Sims director Will Wright. Following her work on The Sims 2, Hunicke went on to become the lead designer for MySims on the Nintendo Wii, and later, was a producer for Boom Blox and its sequel, '.
thatgamecompany
Following her work at Electronic Arts, Hunicke joined thatgamecompany as producer. She joined the team in the early conceptual stages for the studio's third project Journey, a multiplayer cooperative adventure game released in early 2012.
Tiny Speck
After the release of Journey, Hunicke left thatgamecompany to join Tiny Speck to continue development of their social MMORPG Glitch.
Funomena
Prior to the release of Glitch, Hunicke left Tiny Speck to co-found Funomena together with Martin Middleton. They announced their first project in October 2012: "to build a game that takes data from a pedometer and does something fun with it." Their first video game is Luna, a VR-focused art game which is described as "a tactile puzzle game set in a vibrant and sculptural story-book world". They then developed Wattam, a spiritual successor of Bandai Namco'sKatamari series directed by its creator, Keita Takahashi. It was released on PlayStation 4 and PC on December 17th, 2019.
In her studies, Hunicke researches dynamic difficulty adjustment. She is also interested in how "the notions of fate, meaning, and consequence can be communicated via video games".
MDA framework
From 2001 to 2004, Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc, and Robert Zubeck created the Mechanics-Dynamics-Aesthetics framework to focus and improve game analysis. The framework categorizes the many aspects of a game as Mechanics, Dynamics, or Aesthetics, and outlines the inverse perspectives of designer and player. From the perspective of the designer, the Mechanics generate Dynamics which generate Aesthetics. From the perspective of the player, the player experiences the game through the Aesthetics, which are provided by Dynamics that emerge from the game mechanics.
Awards and recognition
On May 21, 2008, Hunicke was chosen for Gamasutra's "Gamasutra 20", "honoring the Top 20 women working in the video game industry". In 2009, Microsoft awarded Hunicke the Women in Gaming Award for Design. She also earned a spot on the Hot 100Game Developers of 2009 list by Edge Magazine. To date, the various titles Hunicke has worked on have garnered awards, such as the "Online Innovation Award" for Journey at the Game Developers Choice Online Awards and a BAFTA award for "Best Casual Game of 2008" for Boom Blox. She's a contest judge in Will Wright's Proxi art challenge.
