Designing and researching what makes games fun, and leading the people who build them.

Early in his career, Dr. Schaffer worked as Playtest Project Manager at Ubisoft on AAA titles including Splinter Cell: Blacklist, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, and WATCH_DOGS. Since then, he has mapped the sources of player enjoyment through card sorting studies. He created, validated, and published psychometric questionnaires that measure those sources, then used them in controlled experiments with custom research games.

Dr. Schaffer has guided 25 independent-study students through building research games. Several co-authored papers among his 15 peer-reviewed publications and 2 book chapters. PhD adviser: Xiaowen Fang at DePaul. Master's research adviser: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, co-founder of the field of positive psychology.

Dr. Schaffer is now Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Elmhurst University, where he teaches and runs a research group. In seven years of university teaching, he has taught computer science, data science, game programming, web development, and human-computer interaction. His research combines HCI, positive psychology, and game development, and applies to both game design and serious games. His current project uses serious games to train people to defend against social engineering attacks.

Education