Directory Profile

An Associate Professor in the Interactive Media Division of the School of Cinematic Arts, Richard Lemarchand is a game designer, a writer, a public speaker and a consultant.

Between 2004 and 2012, Richard was a Lead Game Designer at Naughty Dog in Santa Monica, California. He led the design of all three games in the Uncharted series including Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, winner of ten AIAS Interactive Achievement Awards, five Game Developers Choice Awards, four BAFTAs and over 200 Game of the Year awards.

Richard also worked on Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Jak 3 and Jak X: Combat Racing for Naughty Dog, and helped to create the successful game series Gex, Pandemonium and Soul Reaver at Crystal Dynamics in the San Francisco Bay Area. He got his game industry start at MicroProse in the UK, where he co-founded the company’s console game division. Richard has made storytelling action games the focus of his career, and he is interested in the way that narrative, aesthetics and gameplay work together to hold a player’s attention and facilitate the expression of their agency.

A passionate advocate of indie and experimental games, Richard has been involved with the IndieCade International Festival of Independent Games for several years, and was the co-chair of the IndieCade Conference in 2010, 2012 and 2015. He regularly speaks in public on the subjects of game design, development, production, philosophy and culture, and from 2009 to 2019 he curated and hosted the GDC Microtalks, a Game Developers Conference session celebrating games and play with short talks by diverse speakers. His book for the MIT Press, A Playful Production Process: For Game Designers (and Everyone) will be published on 5 October 2021.

Richard grew up in a small town in rural England, dreaming of ancient civilizations and outer space. He has a degree in Physics and Philosophy from Oxford University.