Ben Sawyer
Ben Sawyer, Co-founder, Digitalmill
Ben Sawyer is the co-founder of Digitalmill, a videogame consulting firm based in Portland, Maine. Since beginning his career in game development over ten years ago,
Sawyer has pioneered major initiatives in the field of serious games and has become a nationally recognized leader within the games community.
For the past seven years, Sawyer has dedicated his professional life to discovering new ways to expand the use of games beyond entertainment. In 2002, he co-founded the Serious Games Initiative, a project of the U.S. Government's Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The following year, Sawyer organized the first-ever Serious Games Summit – a conference which now attracts 300-500 attendees annually, who meet to share best practices in the development of serious games. The Serious Games Initiative continues to serve as one of the leading organizations in the field of
serious games.
In 2004, Sawyer also co-founded the Games for Health project, an initiative which has
built the primary social and professional networks of the health games industry. Through
on-line resources and regular regional and national events, Games for Health connects
health professionals, researchers, and game developers in order to advance the
development of health games and game technologies. The Games for Health project
receives major funding from the Pioneer Portfolio, an initiative of the Robert Wood
Johnson Foundation.
As a game developer, Sawyer has worked on over one dozen major serious game
projects. In 2000, Sawyer began producing the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's university
simulation game, "Virtual U," which was an award finalist at that year’s Independent
Games Festival. Sawyer has also served as a designer, producer, advisor, and/or manager
on projects for Cisco, DARPA, ONR, Leimandt Foundation, Cadbury, USAID, Lockheed
Martin, and several other Fortune 500 organizations.
He currently is working with the Yale School of Medicine on a game to help youth at risk
for HIV infection and with Boulder, Colorado’s Space Science Institute on a game for
NASA and the NSF about solar system science and formation. Sawyer resides in
Freeport, Maine with his wife Olivia and their two sons (and gamers), ages 7 and 5.
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