Dr. Renard Gluzman

Game designer, Historical research, Senior lecturer at the M.Des in Digital Game Design and Development, the Kedar Game Center, Shenkar. 

Renard is one of the founding fathers of the Israeli video-game industry. He started his professional life by creating original video games for the local market (1996-2003) and headed the first academic program for video-game designers in Israel (2005–2011).

He also worked as a senior game designer in various gaming companies (Pixel Multimedia, Oberon, Mytopia, Roshambo, Vyond, Hed-Arzi Multimedia, Keshet Productions, etc.). In 2017, He won the Midlife contribution award to the Israeli Video Games Industry, “Half-Life” Achievement Award, GameIS (2017).

He completed his doctoral studies at the School of Historical Studies at Tel-Aviv University and spent several years of research on Venetian shipping in Italy and Greece. His monograph Venetian Shipping from the Days of Glory to Decline, 1453–1571 was published by Brill (2021).

In the past three years, Gluzman was a game writer and producer for the comeback of the cult Israeli interactive adventure game series Piposh from the late 90s. The game was successfully crowdfunded in 2019.

Today, he is a Senior lecturer in the M.Des Program in Video Game Design, Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, Ramat-Gan. He teaches courses in game design, game production and final projects.

He co-teach a course in the development of analogue games in collaboration with Prof. Scot Osterweil, creative director of MIT Education Lab, and a workshop in non-linear storytelling. Gluzman is also a research fellow at the Haifa Center for Mediterranean History at the University of Haifa.

Main areas of research: the history of video games and gaming culture in Israel; regional game studies; the implementation of ARG (alternate reality games) and citizen science games in the humanities; Mediterranean maritime history in the Early Modern period; Venice and its colonies overseas.