Robin Hunicke of Funomena
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Funomena’s Robin Hunicke believes in games with intentional play

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 7 min

The Intentional Play movement is aimed at inspiring developers to create games that have a bigger purpose than fun. It’s for developers who want to create learning, understanding, and a meaningful purpose behind their work. Among the believers is Robin Hunicke, the CEO and cofounder of San Francisco-based indie game studio Funomena.

She has been making games for more than 12 years and is director of the Art, Games, & Playable Media BA program at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Hunicke will be speaking Friday at the Intentional Play Summit in Mountain View, California, at the Computer History Museum. Her company is making experimental games such as Luna (a virtual reality title for the Oculus Rift), Woorld (an augmented reality game based on Google’s Tango technology), and Wattam, a zany game for the consoles.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.