Associate Professor, Co-Director - GSAS Program

• MFA, Directing for Film, California Institute of the Arts
• BFA, Directing for Theater, Boston University

“At heart I am a writer. I have successfully written for a variety of media, and expect to add more in the coming years,” Sheldon said. “Currently my profession, my research, my teaching and my passion all share a common desire: create the best games possible; discover new opportunities in our lives where games can educate, advocate, intervene and yes, even entertain. I have yet to find a field, a cause, a theme or an aspiration that cannot be illuminated by a good game.”

Lee Sheldon is Associate Professor and Co-Director of the Games and Simulation Arts program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He has written and designed over two dozen commercial and applied video games and MMOs.

In June 2011 Lee's book, The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game was published by Cengage Learning. The Facebook page for his method of teaching classes as multiplayer games is now followed by over 500 people in 45 countries. His book Character Development and Storytelling for Games is required reading at many game developers and in game design programs at some of the world's most distinguished universities. A new edition will be published in Spring, 2013.

Lee is a contributor to many books on video games including Well-Played 2.0, Writing for Video Game Genres from the IGDA, Game Design: An Interactive Experience and Second Person. He is cited in many publications; and is a regular lecturer and consultant on game design and writing in the US and abroad.

Lee began his academic career in 2006 at Indiana University where he taught game design and screenwriting.  At IU Lee first instituted the practice of designing classes as multiplayer games; worked on the applied games Quest Atlantis and Virtual Congress; and wrote and designed the alternate reality games The Skeleton Chase and Skeleton Chase 2: The Psychic funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; and Skeleton Chase 3: Warp Speed funded by Coca-Cola.

He is head of the team building the Emergent Reality Lab at Rensselaer, a massive mixed reality space for research and education; and is working on the sequel to his alternate reality game teaching Mandarin and Chinese culture that will be the first project of the lab.

Most recently Lee was design consultant and lead writer on Gameforge’s casual MMO, Star Trek: Infinite Space; and lead writer on Zynga’s Facebook game, Indiana Jones Adventure World and a new Kinect game for Harmonix. Lee is lead writer and design consultant on an applied game project teaching math for AT< consultant on StatStar, an applied game teaching statistics for the University of Connecticut; and has recently begun writing and designing an applied game teaching business ethics for Indiana University.

Before his career in video games Lee wrote and produced over 200 popular television shows, including Star Trek: The Next Generation, Charlie's Angels, and Cagney and Lacey. As head writer of the daytime serial Edge of Night he received a nomination for best writing from the Writers Guild of America. Lee has been twice nominated for Edgar awards by the Mystery Writers of America. His first mystery novel, Impossible Bliss, was re-issued in 2004.