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Creative Technologist

With a background in engineering and art, Maria Deslis joined the Creative Industries track of the Creative Technology and Design MS program to pursue her calling: to develop games that help players connect, heal and feel empowered—a departure from mainstream games, where "destruction, fighting and competition" are dominant themes. As part of a culminating project, she developed Eternal Eclipse, a game with positive messaging that rewards empathy. She is currently a senior developer for a Meow Wolf project.

Backstory

After earning a BS in mathematics and computer science from the Colorado School of Mines, Maria worked for several years as a software developer. Maria felt the job was repetitive and uninspiring, and that her creative dreams were slipping away. In spring 2017 she was laid off along with half of her department. It was not easy, said Maria, but it was the prompt she needed to re-evaluate her life. Traveling to Wyoming to witness the August 2017 solar eclipse, she was moved to tears by the experience. Turning to a friend, she said, "I’m going to pursue my dreams and not waste any more of my life." She decided to return to graduate school, and her research led her to the CTD program. "Everything about ATLAS resonated deep within my core," said Maria, who met with students and professors and attended the Fall 2017 ATLAS Expo. "Seeing the work students were making, awakened something deep inside me. It propelled me to get back on track and pursue my calling. Joining this program and this school was one of the best decisions of my life.”

During her time at ATLAS, Maria taught code classes for the Colorado School of Mines and design classes for CU Boulder.

Coursework

 Core: 

• Creative Industries Professional Seminar: The Business of Creativity
• Creative Technologies
• Design Methods
• Design Studio

Electives: 

• Game Design
• User-Experience Design
• Game Development
• Master's Independent Study x 2
• Self-teaching Unity development:  My First 3D Level   
• Video games and typography:  The Typography of Undertale
• K-12 computer science education research:  Pre-College Experiences that Influence Women in Computing, by Kayla Jernigan and Maria Deslis

Projects

: A "light" puzzle game where users try to climb to the top of a mountain in order to see an eclipse in entirety.

Maria's culminating Thesis project is a puzzle game built around positive messaging and rewards empathy. 
The sun and moon represent different parts within the player, and the eclipse represents new beginnings and transformations, from a difficult or depressing experience to a reminder to use the light within to grow and heal.

: A short protoype game of Eternal Eclipse.

Maria felt inspired to create a game where players walk across a treacherous mountain terrain as a representation of enduring hard times in life. In this prototype game of Eternal Eclipse, players climb a mountain in a blizzard while listening to their character's negative inner, self-pitying monologue, that asks questions such as, "What did I do to deserve this?" As their characters approach the summit, the inner monologue becomes more positive, exclaiming motivational phrases such as, “I'm almost there!” or “I can do this."

Battleship: IN SPACE: A twist on the classic Battleship game.

In Maria's Battleship: IN SPACE, players command a fleet of seven ships and find and destroy their enemies' spaceships. During each turn, players take four tokens with a torpedo on one side and blank on the other and they throw a four-sided die to see how many space torpedoes to fire. How many torpedoes the player can fire is based on the number of tokens available. The player who finds and destroys the mothership and the medic ship first wins the game. 

ME-LLENIALS: A millienial life-path board game.

Millennials have been labeled as the "lazy, entitled, job-hopping generation," indulging on avocado toast and killing the Applebee’s restaurant chain. In this board game, players will be able to prove to their friends that they can live a more self-sufficent life than other Millennials, including balancing their student debt and searching for jobs, all while trying to achieve their dreams.

: A prototype action-adventure game.

Maria's ChromaBlade is hack-and-slash action-adventure game that puts the player's mastery of color to the test. Weilding a powerful chromatic sword, players must switch between the different colors of the rainbow tactically in order to defeat their foes. Each color has its own unique mechanic, each being crucial in the defeat of the variety of enemies players face as they progress through the game.

: A physical walk-in immersive adult-sized kaleidoscope.

In this physical installation, users climb a ladder and turn one of the many cranks to interact with the projections, images and shapes that appear in the viewing area. The goal was to create a space that recalled childhood whimsy and excitement, a place for adults to feel small and young, as they experience a giant version of the kaleidoscopes they used as children. Gabe Chapel, Maria Deslis, Grace Kroeger, Chris Vecchio

Career Goals

• Design games that empower players, build empathy, enrich lives and enhance confidence. 
• Use technical, design and creative skills to create new products and experiences.
• Use knowledge and background to make the world a better place.