Mata Haggis

Prof. Mata Haggis-Burridge (né Haggis) is an English writer and game designer. They have worked on multiple award-winning projects and been nominated for Best Writing in a Video Game by the Writers' Guild of Great Britain and the Matthew Crump Cultural Innovation Award at SXSW. They are a prolific public speaker and have featured at dozens of international conferences and events, delivering talks for both media and non-media audiences. Their talks cover topics such as future trends in gaming, cultural innovation, narrative design, diversity awareness, storytelling, AI, and interface design. Their career began in 2000 with animations and later games made for the internet, and moved across onto television when their internet series 'Little Goth Girl' and 'Mr Snaffleburger' were picked up by MTV2 Europe. They later worked in a freelance capacity as an animator and games developer for Channel 4, Flextech, other online and television media companies, and charities, alongside continuing their own animations and games creation. In 2006, they finished a PhD thesis regarding cyberpunk literature and the connections between technology and identity, which was awarded by the University of Southampton in 2007. Between 2007 and 2010 they worked for EA Games and Rebellion Developments Ltd. as a games designer, lead designer, writer, and narrative designer. In 2010 they moved into lecturing at NHTV (now known at 'Breda University of Applied Sciences' or 'BUas') in the Netherlands, but still worked as a consultant on game development projects. During their time lecturing at BUas they met the team that became Sassybot, with whom they collaborated on the 2016 release of 'Fragments of Him'. In 2015, Prof. Haggis was awarded the professorship of Creative and Entertainment Games at BUas, and in 2017 they launched a game and narrative design consultancy called Copper Stone Sea. Since then, they have worked in consultancy as a writer and designer both on well-known and original IPs.