Bayan Mashat
About
You can call me Bayan, or B for short, and I make things happen, especially in games. I made my first game in high school as a part of my science fair project (Intel ISEF 2011), which somehow got me the first place in the social and behavioral sciences category, among other awards (MIT Lincoln Laboratory naming a minor planet after me, full-scholarship from KGSP...). I got my bachelor's degree in computer science from University of California in 2019 and since then have been set to make fun and meaningful experiences (aka games).
What am I doing right now?
- Building and leading Blue Tango Street, an indie remote-first game studio.
- Making Job Will Hunting, a story-driven game about the gruesome job hunting process.
- Writing a book 👀
- Tirelessly thinking of ways for expression, and of ways to make learning efficient, and ways of unlocking maximum potential of storytelling in games.
Things I'm interested in & care about:
Games
- Storytelling
- Writing
- Software
- Learning
- Memories
- Emotions
- Education
- Mental Health
- Accessibility.
Things I think about:
Games as a medium to tell stories
- human relationships and connections
- how we express our feelings & emotions
- what's makes learning efficient.
Ballroom Dancing?
Yup! Ballroom dancing is my serious hobby I discovered my last year of college :) After taking many classes and participating in a bunch of shows and competitions, I decided it's time to learn how to teach! I have a diploma in teaching Bronze level in American Smooth, American Rhythm, and American Club dances from Professional Ballroom Teachers Academy. I'm also a certified associated instructor in American Smooth from Dance Vision. I'm currently being trained and preparing to get certified in International Standard & Latin American dances from the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing.
Games
Job Will Hunting (In Progress )
A narrative-based slice-of-life character-driven game about the job hunting process, complexity of recruitment, and surviving through life’s unfair, unexpected hardships.
Forza Motorsport (2022 - 2023)
I worked at Microsoft's Turn 10 studio on Forza Motorsport as an assosiate producer for the following teams: Concept Art, Look Development, VFX, and Procedural.
Proxi (2018 - 2019)
Worked with senior data scientist in NLP and AI research for Proxi, Will Wright’s next AI simulation game based on memories. Work involved creating emotions classifiers, building Proxi language models, and designing Proxi-to-player interactions through conversation.
Re:Search, A Campus Story (2017 - 2019)
An educational role-playing video game used as assignments for the online course "Introduction to Research", taught by Prof. Angelique Louie throughout UC campuses in spring 2018. I served the role of the game designer and the project manager, where I designed the concept for the game to match the learning goals of the class & maintain the game design document (GDD) while managing a team of 7 students (programmers, artists, writers, and composer) and guiding game development to align with the course objectives.
The Day I Opened The Fridge (2019)
A text-app simulator game attempting to highlight the difficulty & importance of communication in relationships.
Ranam (2017 - 2018)
Ranam is a mobile game application that teaches users to play songs with Oud and cultural instruments in a fun, engaging, and accessible way. Ranam offers an engaging game-like experience, where users follow the game’s steps with their instrument, and our application listens to their playing and provides them with instant feedback on their performance. I was a game developer intern from summer 2017 to launch on Mar 2018.
Shadow Pan (2016)
Shadow Pan is an expressive video game where the player solves mini mental health problems (specifically depression) through interactive conversations with animation characters. Each level the player will get to meet a different character, listen to their problems, interact with them, and give (write) them solutions or suggestions on how to fix it or how move on. Results can be shared with other players to learn about different approaches on how to deal with depression. I wrote, designed, and developed the game as a side personal project.
GOOPLAY (2011)
GOOPLAY is an educational video game I designed & developed in Scratch for researching the effectiveness of using video games for improving web-searching skills for kids ages 10-12. This project was part of my research project for Intel ISEF 2011 that won the first place in the social and behavioral category.
Resources
- Game Production Resources
- Other Useful Resources
Friends 💙
My Friends are amazing, talented, and incredible people and their work deserves to be shared.
Enjoy admiring their work!
- Abdulmalik Zubailah - Singer, Songwriter, & Producer.
- Ahmad Khalifa - Game Designer/Developer & Games AI Professor/Researcher.
- Pixomori - Indie game studio by my friends Mark and Sydney.
- Please - VR adventure rhythm game telling a story about trauma and communicated by my friend Michael Lee.
- Kristin Kirk - Composer & Sound designer.
Coffee? ☕️
I’m always down for coffee, always. If you want to grab coffee and chat about games, programming, data, writing, art, or even coffee, feel free to reach out! We can meet in real life or online :)
You can reach me at b.m.mashat [at] gmail [dot] com or on Twitter or book a meeting through Calendly.