The Games Institute acknowledges that we are living and working on the traditional territory of the Attawandaron (also known as Neutral), Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee peoples. The University of Waterloo is situated on the Haldimand Tract, the land promised to the Six Nations that includes six miles on each side of the Grand River.
English PhD
Toben, BA Creative Writing (BYUI), MA Rhetoric and Communication Design (University of Waterloo), is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Waterloo. Toben’s research focuses on role-playing games, collaborative worldbuilding, loot mechanics, and the magic circle in digital forms. His dissertation examines affordances and constraints of player character creation systems and game design that allows players to explore digital spaces in single-player role-playing games. Toben is the co-host and producer of The Games Institute Podcast, interviewing student and faculty researchers from the Games Institute and The University of Waterloo. He’s the recipient of the English Department's TA Award for Teaching Excellence (2020-2021). He also designs tabletop games for the Environments of Change project headed by Dr. Steven Bednarski. In addition to academic work, Toben is very involved in the independent comic book scene as a writer, letterer, and designer. He writes Crown & Anchor, a sci-fi fantasy pirate adventure comic that his wife, Alaire Racicot, illustrates. The first volume was successfully crowdfunded through Kickstarter in Spring 2019. And Emulator, a video-game centred family drama, successfully funded through Kickstarter in April 2021.
Supervisor: Dr. Neil Randall
- Toben Racicot
External Links
Affiliation:
University of Waterloo