Jonathan Lessard, PhD
Associate Professor, Design and Computation Arts
Primary Investigator (LabLabLab)

Office: |
S-EV 6781 Engineering, Computer Science and Visual Arts Integrated Complex, 1515 St. Catherine W. |
Phone: | (514) 848-2424 ext. 4717 |
Email: | jonathan.lessard@concordia.ca |
Website(s): |
Portfolio LabLabLab Absurdus |

Jonathan is designer, historian and theoretician of games. Indie developer as Absurdus since 2000, he completed a PhD on adventure games in 2013. He is currently exploring two main research avenues: the design of playful natural language conversations and identifying patterns in the formal evolution of games.
His credo: "... but is it fun?"
Education
- PhD Cinema Studies (Université de Montréal)
- MA History (Université de Montréal)
- BA Arts and Humanities (Université de Montréal)
Research interests
Game design; game history; interactive storytelling; natural language interaction; adventure games.
Areas of expertise
Game design, history, and theory; 3D modelling and rendering; Interactive storytelling; Natural language interaction
Publications
Recent publications
Lessard, Jonathan; Arsenault, Dominic. “The Character as Subjective Interface.” In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Interactive Digital Storyteling, Los Angeles: CA, 2016.
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-48279-8_28
Lessard, Jonathan. « Design Rationale for Natural-Language Based Game Conversations ». In Demo Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games. Pacific Grove: CA, 2015.
http://www.fdg2015.org/papers/fdg2015_extended_abstract_12.pdf
Lessard, Jonathan. « Technologie et design de jeu ». Sciences du jeu, no 4 (2015). http://sdj.revues.org/521
Lessard, Jonathan. “Early Computer Game Genre Preferences (1980-1984).”In Proceedings of the 2015 DiGRA International Conference, Vol. 12.Lüneburg, Germany, 2015.
http://www.digra.org/digital-library/publications/early-computer-game-genre-preferences-1980-1984/
Lessard, Jonathan. « Game Genres and High-Level Design Pattern Formations ». In Proceedings of Workshops Colocated with the 9th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games. Florida: ACM Digital Library, 2014. http://fdg2014.org/workshops/dpg2014_paper_02.pdf.
Lessard, Jonathan. « Livre, film ou monde interactif ? Les métaphores de la construction formelle du jeu d’aventure ». Mémoires du livre 5, no 2 (2014). http://www.erudit.org/revue/memoires/2014/v5/n2/1024781ar.html.
Lessard, Jonathan. « The Casual Revolution of... 1987: Making Adventure Games Accessible to the Masses ». In History of Games International Conference 2013 Proceedings. Montréal: Kinephanos, 2013. http://www.kinephanos.ca/2014/adventure-games/
Lessard, Jonathan. « Adventure Before Adventure Games A New Look at Crowther and Woods’s Seminal Program ». Games and Culture 8, no 3 (2013): 119‑135. http://gac.sagepub.com/content/8/3/119.
Games
LabLabLab Games (2013-...)
Conversation-based games made at the LabLabLab can be found here: www.lablablab.net
-Hammurabi (2017)
-SimHamlet (2016)
-SimProphet (2015)
-A Tough Sell (2014)
Game Studies (2016)
http://jonathanlessard.net/?p=127
Game Studies is a playable “intro to game studies” manual. Discover the magic circle! Re-live the famous narratology-ludology debate! Impress your friends by using terms such as “ergodic literature” correctly!