About Me
Hello there! My name is El Schaefer, and if you’re looking for someone to take your project’s engagement to the next level, I’m your gal.
For years now, I’ve studied and practiced experiential design in both interactive and traditional formats. A childhood fascination with books, film, and theater became a teenaged study of narrative practices and interest in game making, which led me to attend college majoring in interactive design and pursue a career in experience development. Working both on teams and on my own, I’ve learned to create engaging arcs, interfaces, and more.
My areas of skill and interest are wide-ranging – arc development, interface design, script writing, effects development – but are all in service of shaping users’ sensory, psychological, and emotional experience. As a worker, I can be a standout creative or supportive collaborator, generating new ideas or developing others’. I’m always ready to learn new concepts and explore new ideas – with a good goal to work towards, I can adapt to whatever shape the journey might take. In the quest to bring our projects to life, I can be the Alphonse to your Edward, the Dan Cain to your Herbert West, the Fritz to your Frankenstein (yeah, Igor was called Fritz first, go figure).
All in all, I want to create games no one has made before, games that no one else can make, with new ideas and perspectives, new worlds and characters, new mechanics and tech. I want to make the kind of games I wish I could have played – as a bored little girl who thought video games were for boys, as a hyper kid who wanted to dive into the worlds of books and movies, as a tween understimulated by browser games and overwhelmed by console action. I want to make the kind of games that stick with players, games that teach, games that challenge, games that inspire. But ultimately, of course, I want to create games that are fun.
My favorite games to play tend to be story- and puzzle-based with unconventional mechanics (e.g. Return of the Obra Dinn, Hue, Until Dawn). When not working on projects or mining for inspiration, I can be found knitting or doing handicrafts, learning new skills (ask me about my progress learning Russian!), brushing up on my bartending (I don’t drink, but I love to mix), or hanging out with friends.
For years now, I’ve studied and practiced experiential design in both interactive and traditional formats. A childhood fascination with books, film, and theater became a teenaged study of narrative practices and interest in game making, which led me to attend college majoring in interactive design and pursue a career in experience development. Working both on teams and on my own, I’ve learned to create engaging arcs, interfaces, and more.
My areas of skill and interest are wide-ranging – arc development, interface design, script writing, effects development – but are all in service of shaping users’ sensory, psychological, and emotional experience. As a worker, I can be a standout creative or supportive collaborator, generating new ideas or developing others’. I’m always ready to learn new concepts and explore new ideas – with a good goal to work towards, I can adapt to whatever shape the journey might take. In the quest to bring our projects to life, I can be the Alphonse to your Edward, the Dan Cain to your Herbert West, the Fritz to your Frankenstein (yeah, Igor was called Fritz first, go figure).
All in all, I want to create games no one has made before, games that no one else can make, with new ideas and perspectives, new worlds and characters, new mechanics and tech. I want to make the kind of games I wish I could have played – as a bored little girl who thought video games were for boys, as a hyper kid who wanted to dive into the worlds of books and movies, as a tween understimulated by browser games and overwhelmed by console action. I want to make the kind of games that stick with players, games that teach, games that challenge, games that inspire. But ultimately, of course, I want to create games that are fun.
My favorite games to play tend to be story- and puzzle-based with unconventional mechanics (e.g. Return of the Obra Dinn, Hue, Until Dawn). When not working on projects or mining for inspiration, I can be found knitting or doing handicrafts, learning new skills (ask me about my progress learning Russian!), brushing up on my bartending (I don’t drink, but I love to mix), or hanging out with friends.