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Greetings! My name is Catherine Herdlick. I make games and game-like things to entertain and delight. I also trust the universe,
believe in the power of sincerity, know that most people mean well deep down inside, and feel angry sometimes despite all of that.
I'm one of the co-founders of
the sort of well-known Come Out and Play Festival for street games. The youngest of
3, I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri (though my family might be inclined to say I never did grow up!).
True to my state motto (the "Show Me State") and my sign (Capricorn), I am
a hard-working doer who is more interested in seeing things get done than talking about doing them or
how awesome they will be when they are done.
That said, I enjoyed a very fancy and extensive education in how to talk and write about things at such fine institutions
as John Burroughs School in St. Louis, Wesleyan University in
Middletown, CT, and Parsons Schol of Design in New York City.
So, I am up for both, really: talking and doing.
At Wesleyan, I earned a BA in "College of Letters" which is an interdisciplinary
degree (like liberal arts for the liberal arts major): Literature, History, and Philosophy. We also had to focus on a specific culture
and read source texts in the original language. I chose Spanish and spent a very transformative semester and a summer living in Madrid, Spain. My
honors thesis at Wesleyan was a theatrical historical adaptation of the Odyssey set in 15th-century Spain. The play was never produced.
After Wesleyan, I worked at the Boston Children's Museum where I caught the learning-while-doing bug while creating hands-on activities and programs for
the museum's community outreach initiatives. After a year in Boston, I moved to New York to attend graduate school at Parsons School of Design where
I focused my studies on play and game design for children (I didn't realize yet just how much adults still wanted and needed to play too!). My work
towards my MFA in Design and Technology at Parsons nurtured my interests in play and learning while also helping me develop real-world skills in
design and production.
For 5 years I had an amazing dayjob for indie game developer Gamelab
here in New York, where I worked since graduating from Parsons in June 2003. I started as a Programming Intern but was Director of Production by the time I left in August 2008. In that capacity, I basically I helped run the studio and made sure that all of the projects in development were running smoothly.
Now I'm a Product Manager at Lime Wire, another awesome New York company. Transitioning from games to software was a little more nostalgic than I thought it would be, but we're doing some fun things at Lime Wire too. I'm also enjoying being a part of the Open Source community, whose values I find really inspiring. The best part of all, though, is that I get to work with some of the most brilliant and kind people I've ever met. I think the whole change is going to have really wonderful effects on my independent work.
I use most of the money I earn from working at Lime Wire to pay rent, spend time with friends, travel to San Francisco, go snowboarding, go hiking and camping, pick up new hobbies, and finance independent projects.
I live in a sunny apartment in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn with my two adorable cats (who have never set paw outside of Brooklyn).
I also have a studio in nearby Gowanus where I work on independent projects. In my spare time, I like to make as many fun
things for people to do in the real world as possible. I have
designed games that last 20 minutes and games that last 2 months about things like bicycles, perfume, and ghosts. You can find out more about
all of my projects right here on this website!
If you are interested in working with me or hiring me to make something big, something fun, and something that crosses multiple media, get in touch!
September 28, 2008
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