too cool to fly
a penguin head production
Sarvin Eshaghi
I make games about places and the heritage in them.
Game designer, producer and researcher. I design educational games for cultural and urban sites, and I explore how cooperative play can carry into public space: playable cities and participatory urbanism that build community and a deeper sense of place.
At the stu/dio, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, I’m Associate Producer and QA Lead, setting QA processes and production standards across projects. PhD student in Informatics, with a background in architecture, landscape architecture and historic preservation.
Champaign, Illinois: 40.1020° N, 88.2272° Wa long waddle from the nearest penguin
Selected games playable in your browser!
Waddle to all games →
PRODUCTION · THE STU/DIO
Producing games at the stu/dio
Associate Producer and Quality Assurance Lead at the stu/dio, the University of Illinois student-led game development studio (Director: Dan Cermak), since summer 2025.
stu/dio projects
- 2026Organizer, Global Game Jam site
- 2026Co-organizer, AR Hackathon
- 2025–2026Panels on student game production
Research
Slide to publications →DISSERTATION · IN PROGRESS
Which heritage does a city see?
Chicagoans file 311 requests about potholes, graffiti and broken streetlights. My dissertation reads those records against the city’s designated landmarks to ask which heritage the city’s service data registers, and which it leaves invisible.
The next phase proposes a location-based game that routes players to these low-visibility landmarks to carry out civic tasks around them.
SCHEMATIC · NOT REAL DATA
Step 1 of 3
Chicago as 311 sees it: every dot is a report.
Research lines
Heritage and play
Serious games that treat tangible and intangible heritage as something players act on, and studies of what players learn.
- The Sericum Via (ASCAAD 2021)
- Learning rate in a heritage game (eCAADe 2021)
- Player-review data mining (ARCC 2023)
- SILK, Pixel Quest and the Silk Roads thesis game
Civic data and heritage visibility
Reading administrative data against cultural value: what 311 records show about which landmarks a city attends to.
- Dissertation: Chicago 311 and designated landmarks
- Heritage Invisibility poster (NCPE 2026)
- A location-based game for low-visibility landmarks (proposed)
Place and learning
How game worlds compose landscape and sense of place, and how play supports learning in design education.
- Virtual landscape patterns (JoDLA 2022)
- Environmental storytelling (ASCAAD 2023)
- Location-based games and tourism (Case Studies in the Environment 2025)
Selected publications
Slide to all publications →- 2023A Framework Proposal for Developing Historical Video Games Based on Player Review Data Mining to Support Historic Preservation
Eshaghi, S., Vaez Afshar, S., & Hadighi, M. (2023). A Framework Proposal for Developing Historical Video Games Based on Player Review Data Mining to Support Historic Preservation. ARCC 2023 International Conference: The Research-Design Interface.
- 2021The Sericum Via: A Serious Game for Preserving Tangible and Intangible Heritage of Iran
Eshaghi, S., Vaez Afshar, S., & Varinlioğlu, G. (2021). The Sericum Via: A Serious Game for Preserving Tangible and Intangible Heritage of Iran. 9th ASCAAD: Architecture in the Age of Disruptive Technologies, 306–316.
- 2021Evaluation of Learning Rate in Serious Game: Based on Anatolian Cultural Heritage
Vaez Afshar, S., Eshaghi, S., Varinlioğlu, G., & Balaban, Ö. (2021). Evaluation of Learning Rate in Serious Game: Based on Anatolian Cultural Heritage. 39th eCAADe: Towards a New, Configurable Architecture, 2, 273–280.
Education
Waddle over to About →2024–presentPhD, InformaticsUniversity of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
2022–2024MSc, ArchitectureTexas Tech University
2018–2022MSc, Landscape ArchitectureIstanbul Technical University
2012–2016Bachelor of ArchitectureUniversity of Tabriz
Penguin fact generator1 of 13
Speedrun
Gentoos are the fastest-swimming birds, at about 36 km/h.
Game idea: an underwater speedrun.
gentoo penguins say hello with a pebble
Say hi, or let’s make something together
Studios, labs, collaborators and fellow penguin fans welcome. I usually reply within a few days.