Dr Rafael Arrivabene

Program Leader for the MA Game Design and Lecturer in Games and Experience Design at the School of Art, Design and Architecture.
Rafael has been professionally involved in the games industry since 2010. Working as Creative Manager at MStech, he has conducted the production of award-winning educational games for Brazil's public education sector. For the entertainment industry, he has designed and published table-top games and worked with international teams, designing for computer and console games. Rafael has also advised companies on gamification strategies and new technologies.
His passion for game making and interactive media stems from childhood and has permeated all his academic life. His freshman project during BA Industrial Design (UNESP-Brazil) was an interactive visual experience, exhibited at the 2006 FILE - International Festival of Electronic Languagein Sao Paulo. His graduation project was an interactive book with AR features, printed and published in 2009. In 2016, in collaboration with Design in Time of Crisis, he developed a fictional playground game for the Algerinha Viveproject, exhibited at Climactic: Post Normal Design Exhibition hosted at Miller Galleryat Carnegie Melon University (USA). His MSc dissertation in Knowledge Engineering and Management, published in 2017, deals with the discursive nature of game mechanics and his PhD thesis, published in 2022, proposes a Game Design framework to analyze Electoral Systems.
Before coming to Plymouth, he worked as full-time lecturer for the BA Games and Digital Entertainment (UNIVALI-Brazil). His teaching covered topics such as 2D Graphics, Board Games Production, Digital Game Design, Management, among others. In 2019 he was commissioned to write a didactic book on game design, which now integrates the bibliography of courses in different HE institutions in Brazil.
rafaelarrivabene.com.br
researchgate.net/profile/Rafael-Arrivabene

Rafael is a Fellow of the Advance HE.

Reviewer for Computers in Human Behavior journal since 2019 

Rafael is the Program Leader for the MA Games Design at the School of Art, Design and Architecture.
Currently teaching in i-DAT courses, as Digital Media Design, MRes Digital Media and Technology, BSc Game Arts and Design and MA Game Design.
Teaching interests
Game Design
Cultural Game Studies
Multimodal Semiotics
Analogue games and play
Gamification and Playbour