#concept In my work I explore this continuum: from fully automated, self-playing virtual worlds to  playable, immersive games. If you have a video game, you have a playable model of a world and you're engaging, controlling, and experiencing that space. But virtual worlds can also be self contained spaces, populated by simulated ecosystems and agents that interact with other agents. I'm interested in both ends of that spectrum. That being said, it's interesting to think about the player and player agency. A video game is in many ways a shared, co-authored work between the designer and the player. I am now working on my first commercial video game called Enigma Station, and it is designed with a very wide player base in mind. But for years I worked on games where the students were the main players, in fact, they were the players but also co-authors of the video games. These were special, architectural video games, where we design and play together in order to think about architecture and understand space differently. It was a shared play but also shared design, a process of co-authorship that to me is at the core of worldmaking.  With games we move away from the paradigm of a passive observer to that of a player who can engage with a world made for them, and even a player as a designer who can come in and design aspects of that world. The beauty of games is that you're not just watching, but playing and engaging with the game and the designer's thinking. It's a new art form for human expression, subjectivity, and self-discovery. // I am starting to use this term as an overriding principle that goes beyond [[authorship]] and identity. I think the big crisis within the student body and young people I interact with today is that of agency and not of identity or authorship.