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WILLIAM
WOLFF

HERBERT

CULTURAL CHEMIST,  
CIVIC TECH EVANGELIST

"Where do new ideas comes from? The answer is simple: differences. Creativity comes from unlikely juxtapositions."

Nicholas Negroponte—founder of the MIT Media Lab—revealed in a single sentence the seemingly explosive, intangible secret that I'd been building my life upon. Born the shyest storyteller, I drafted my first transmedia narrative when I launched the 4,000-brick LEGO Death Star straight into the plastic scaffolds of my painstakingly constructed LEGO Hogwarts Castle. It never felt like an accident. 

Ten years later, you could find me assembling a tripod atop the roof of my dad's GMC Envoy. I'd begun to notice the socioeconomic disparities and post-industrial decay characteristic of my native New Jersey, and it'd struck a nerve. Landscapes stood representative of something larger than me, a problem I couldn't solve. So I did the only thing I felt I could, documenting the carnage in panoramic detail.

 

Working through undergrad, the world seemed to be brimming with similarly impregnable hardships. I was dying to solve a problem that mattered, and this drive gave birth to a venture—my bootstrapped civic tech firm, the game studio Cult Quiet Collaborative. Our first and only effort, Hollow Beat, envisioned role-play, narrative, and mechanical metaphors as inroads to lasting empathy.

Suffice to say, I'm not in love with the modern world. But I can see how emerging technologies are capable of changing it. The persuasive game design I'd applied to Hollow Beat feels illustrative of that prospect, and of Negroponte's insight. Here I'd synthesized Zelda with the behavioral psychology of clinical depression. But nearly everywhere else, the roots were the same: some "unlikely juxtaposition."

Juxtapositions

HONORS & AWARDS

Amigo+Seed

Finalist, Best Overall Game

University of Washington
Sustainability Game Jam 2017

Hollow Beat

Innovation & Potential Award

Northeastern University
Game Demo Day 2015

Split/Circuit

Winner, Best Gameplay

Northeastern University
Game Demo Day 2016

Cult Quiet Co.

Provost Undergrad Research & Creative Endeavors Award 

Northeastern University, 2015

Split/Circuit

Winner, Best Overall Game

Northeastern University
Game Demo Day 2016

Working Title

Winner, Player's Choice

Northeastern University
Game Demo Day 2013

Honors & Awards

CULTURAL CHEMISTRY

At Change Collective, game design thinking fused with social accountability to fuel behavior change. MyArenaFund brought pro-sports in conversation with real estate investing. Meanwhile, current initiatives like Meta4m, r.Ally, and Amigo+Seed approach civic engagement from disparate angles, channeling everything from Rorschach tests to Mad Libs, Tinder, and Tomogatchi, to the millennial obsession with succulents.
 

In other words? I'm more practice than theory, more curious than the cat. I work hard (a mentor recently described me as "the army of one"), and I'm a sponge and/or chemist when it comes to culture—I design games for social impact, I exhibit my paintings and photographs professionally, I hone my storycraft with the poets and writers at Hugo House, and I recently began lessons in music production with Seattle DJ Academy.

I’ve spent a good portion of my life struggling with hardship. Chronic health issues in particular have forged a life that, for many years, felt sisyphean. Yet somehow, unexpectedly, I persevered, and I continue to. I've gained nothing from the process if not empathy, and I posit so much to the art and culture, the tech, and the genuinely good people that've helped me to learn and cope. UX is the means by which I give it back. 

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