Interests
Outside of my academic and career interests, I'm a big fan of anything that has to do with gamified problem-solving: riddles, escape rooms, video/board games, and murder mysteries.
I'm also a lover of the outdoors, particularly camping and campfire cuisines.
And lastly, despite having transitioned away from my art career, I still do have a soft spot for attending galleries and art shows. Art—particularly theory of aesthetics, art forensics, and forgery detection—has gotten a lot more interesting given the prevalence of AI-generated content!
Outdoors
My favorite outdoor activities are mostly centered around the campfire, though I greatly enjoy kayaking/canoeing and cycling!
Escape Rooms
My friends and I have 2 unofficial teams (west coast & east coast) that play for escape room leaderboard rankings. Across both teams, we've currently cleared just under 30 max-difficulty rooms with around an 83% pass rate. Our fastest solve was in 20 minutes.
It's on my bucket list to design and deploy an escape room of my own!
Board Game Developer and Aficionado
I am very fond of board games! I don't have favorite genres, but I do have genres that I can only play in a limited-capacity: family games (eg. Monopoly, Life, Scrabble), party games (eg. Cards Against Humanity), and dexterity games. For those unfamiliar, this hobby is extremely diverse and deep, so here's my plug to try out some popular gateway games (Settlers of Catan, Sushi Go Party, and Forbidden Sky)!
Besides being a hobbyist and collector, I have also prototyped a few physical games of my own. These ranged from being self-published with normal office printer to receiving a creator grant from the University of Pennsylvania to create a copy for "game development research". A lot of my games take inspiration from fantasy-themed deck builders, and I enjoy iterating upon these familiar mechanics to add more opportunities for strategic player input.
Murder Mystery Developer
I enjoy designing social experiences for large groups of friends. Unlike traditional murder mysteries (in which viewers eat dinner, watch live actors act out scenes, and discuss among themselves who they think are the killers), my take on this genre of world-building turn the viewers into participants. Here, everyone is assigned certain in-game powers and various objectives (packaged as a "role"), and must engage in politicking and social cooperation/sabotage in order to achieve their in-game goals. All my murder mysteries are zero-sum, so players have a direct impact on other players, which in turn drives the overall momentum of the game.
For example, in a past pirate mystery, the crew's captain was found dead in his chamber and the rest of the 13 crewmates (aka the players) must now decide what to do. Some players cared about solving the murder, others cared about promoting to be the captain, and "other" others wanted to trade away their wares. The effect of this is that every single character has a limited but unique perspective on the entire story with interweaving gives-and-takes. The joy in the game is piloting your role in the way that best matches your personal playstyle, while experiencing this 13-faceted mega-narrative unfold... live! I've hosted 5 of these murder mysteries from 2016-2020.
The images below are screenshots from my online-hosted pirate mystery.
Custom Tabletop Roleplaying Game / Dungeon Master
I hosted custom tabletop roleplaying campaigns on-and-off from 2018-2021. These were built-in from my own Dungeon-and-Dragons-inspired homebrew system. Combining my board game and murder mystery experiences, these campaigns are similar to traditional games except with a heavy visual-aid component to it (lots of corresponding pieces game tokens).
World of Warcraft: Server Emulation and Code Contributor
After playing the video game—World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lick King—for many years on private servers, I decided to try to host my own in 2023. Using the CMake, Visual Studio, HeidiSQL, and WDBX Editor tech stack, I was able to get my own custom private server going! (Source code for the game world is provided by the AzerothCore team.)
Since I enjoyed the server emulation so much, I decided to also contribute to AzerothCore's open source modules to help improve the game for all others. My most recent contribution was a number of bug fixes to the racial-swap-module, which helped expand players' freedom of gameplay choices.
I would consider myself to have a very "all-in" type of personality. When I start something, I dedicate wholeheartedly to continuously upskilling in it as far as possible. Coincidentally, this trait ended up being very compatible in competition, which is something I've enjoyed as a hobby in my youth.
Ex-Esports Competitor
From 2015-2020, I played the videogame "Paladins" in several capacities (ranging from casually to semi-professionally to coach), peaking at rank #22 in the world on the competitive ladder (Grandmaster league). I competed at various minor online and offline (LAN) tournaments. Below are screen-caps from my "debut" at the Hollywood Lan tournament, in which my team placed 2nd and won 40% of the total prize pool. My preferred team role is "frontline / tank".
Paladins is a team-based, strategic "shooter" game in which competitors need to capture a map-based objective; for those unfamiliar with this genre of games, it is similar in some dimensions to more popular titles like Overwatch or Valorant.
Ex-Competitive-Eating Contestant
During my senior year of highschool, I competed briefly in a few local MLE (Major League Eating) tournaments in California. My event was "soft-shell tacos", and my best performance was 14 tacos in 8 minutes. Since I was a junior competitor, my biggest concerns were actually still around mass (aka the amount eaten) rather than the speed.
I was by no means a pro, but it was an interesting time. It was surprising to learn how much physical training goes into this!
Ex-Art Competitor
In highschool, I competed in various national art competitions across a variety of mediums (digital art and oil were my favorite). My highest placements were finalists (top 3, top 5) in the Congressional Art Awards, American Art Awards, Arts and Writing Awards, and Celebrating Art Awards. I originally wanted to be a fashion designer (fashion illustration was my most prolific output), but through competing, I discovered that I loved the messages behind art more than the art itself. Thus, this led me to pursue art history in conjuction with my undergraduate study.
Below are selected winning pieces from my art portfolio. I've added a basic watermark to protect against webscrappers. (Also, generative AI didn't exist in 2010s like it does now, so everything is hand-made!)
