SUPERBETTER LABS “SUPERBETTER” GAME DESIGN DIRECTOR WINS 2012 RISING STAR AWARD
SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- SuperBetter Labs, a San Francisco based company, continues to be recognized for its innovation, ingenuity and talent. Chelsea Howe, Director of Design for its first online game, SuperBetter, has been awarded the 2012 Rising Star Award by Women in Gaming.
The Rising Star Award, presented at the annual Microsoft Studios for Women in Gaming Luncheon held every March, recognizes the woman who has made the most impact in the industry, demonstrating rapid advancement in work, responsibility, and results.
Ms. Howe has been the Director of Design for the past ten months on the development of SuperBetter, an online social game designed to help players build personal resilience and achieve their health and wellness goals. She worked directly with Creator Jane McGonigal to lead a team of professionals to launch SuperBetter to the public in beta on March 9, 2012, in Austin, TX, at SXSW Interactive.
“We're really lucky to have Chelsea on our team," said SuperBetter Labs CEO John Yost. "She knows as much about creating positive emotions, like delight, curiosity and gratitude, as anyone with whom we've worked.”
As Director of Design at SuperBetter Labs, Chelsea uses research on positive emotion and social connection to make more positive, evocative, and meaningful games like SuperBetter. Prior to her work at SuperBetter Labs, Chelsea co-founded a company named Proper Walrus to make indie iOS games. She also worked at Zynga, where she designed and analyzed features that touched tens of millions of people on their wildly successful game, FarmVille.
Chelsea is a graduate of Cornell University, where she designed her own major in game development and design, combining electronic music, digital art and animation, creative writing, human-computer interaction, cognitive science, programming and psychology. She graduated Summa Cum Laude and wrote an honors thesis, frequently cited in publications like Gamasutra and in the 2011 IndieCade keynote.
Chelsea also designs award-winning indie games like Influence and The End of Us. She created and runs the San Francisco Global Game Jam and has contributed as a judge for the IGF and Mozilla Labs’ Game On Competition. She has been featured as a speaker on the campuses of the University of California, Santa Cruz and the Rochester Institute of Technology. She has worked with developers at Cornell University on experimental gameplay demos and youth outreach.
Join Chelsea’s over 1,300 followers on Twitter @manojalpa
CONTACT: Cathie Bennett Warner, 415-420-1573, cathie@superbetter.com
ABOUT SUPERBETTER LABS: SuperBetter Labs’ mission is to design platforms that help people lead “epic lives.” The concept of an epic life is centered on developing strong social relationships, positive emotion, overcoming challenges, and creating a truer sense of purpose in the real world through the use of online game mechanics, gameful IT products and other tested methods of positive social interaction. SuperBetter is the first product of SuperBetter Labs, a social game platform designed to help players build personal resilience and achieve their health and wellness goals. More information on SuperBetter Labs can be found on the SuperBetter Labs web site, Facebook page and Twitter feed. www.superbetterlabs.com, www.facebook.com/superbetterlabs, twitter.com/superbetterlabs (@superbetterlabs)