Factsheet

Developer:
Aaron Oldenburg
Based in Baltimore, Maryland, USA

Founding date:
July 18, 1995

Website:
http://aaronoldenburg.net

Press / Business contact:
aaron.oldenburg@gmail.com

Social:
@AaronOldenburg

Releases:
Desert Mothers

Address:
By request

Phone:
By request

Description

I'm a solo game designer and new media/video/interactive artist.

History

Early history

I've been making games since I was a kid, though you probably won't be able to find anything on the internet made before 2000. My interests have lead me through two years in the Peace Corps doing HIV education (after reproductive health-related work during my undergraduate fine arts degree) to my current 10+ years teaching game design at the University of Baltimore.

After that

I tend to work in series of game design experiments: 2000-07 were interactive narratives, 2007-08 were six casual games sold to AddictingGames.com, 2009-10 were games with mechanics based on the rules of religion, 2011 were games that intersected with sound art theory, and after that were games that used documentary process in the creation of fictionalized game worlds. These games have been written about in Kill Screen, Rock, Paper, Shotgun and Baltimore City Paper. My work has shown in various forms at over 140 national and international art exhibitions, screenings and festivals.

Projects

Videos

Desert Mothers Vimeo

1,000 Heads Among the Trees Vimeo

Cho-Am Vimeo

Images

1000HeadsAmongTheTrees.png
BriefExcursion.png
Cho-Am.png
Islid.png
Seer.png

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Awards & Recognition

  • "Official Selection" - LeftField Collection, EGX Rezzed 2018
  • "Official Selection" - Slamdance DIG, Big Pictures LA, 2017
  • "Official Selection" - 5th International Games and Playful Media Festival, A MAZE. / Johannesburg 2016
  • "Official Selection" - Blank Arcade, DiGRA 2014
  • "Distinguished Scholarly and Creative Activities Award" - Yale Gordon College of Arts and Sciences, University of Baltimore, 2015
  • "Official Selection" - FILE Media Art, 15th, 12th and 10th Electronic Language International Festivals, São Paolo, 2014, 2011, 2010
  • "Individual Artist Award for Digital Art" - Maryland State Arts Council, 2010
  • "Artbase Inclusion" - Rhizome.org, 2010

Selected Articles

  • "It is a pure, abstract experience, and if I had to compare it to any traditional horror scenario, I have to wonder if it's similar to the feelings supposedly experienced during an alien abduction."
    - Michelle Ehrhardt, Kill Screen
  • "It's all pleasantly dizzying, like a fever dream."
    - Rebekah Kirkman, Baltimore City Paper
  • "The chilled out tone and ethereal texture of the game suggest a certain degree of pensiveness and maybe even transcendence. [ . . . It] captures some complex and not altogether noble feelings evoked by engaging with historical trauma of this magnitude. It's difficult to wrap one's head around, and feels far away, and yet there's the lingering phantom of something terrible just out of view."
    - Lana Polansky, Sufficiently Human
  • "Towa Towa isn't a minigame with a bird racing theme pasted on. This is you literally counting the chirps these birds make as you judge this contest. That's GREAT. That's all there is. That's enough."
    - Porpentine, Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Video
I've made a number of videos of my work. You can check them out at https:.

Team & Repeating Collaborator

Aaron Oldenburg
Designer

Contact

Aaron Oldenburg
aaron.oldenburg@gmail.com

presskit() by Rami Ismail (Vlambeer) - also thanks to these fine folks