Andrew Goldstein

Last week I found out that my game, Boascope, won 2nd Place in the PlayStation Career Pathways Spring Game Jam! I am also honored to have received the individual scholar Most Improved Portfolio Award! There were about 40 other participants and 14 other projects. I was Boascope’s Gameplay Designer, Puzzle Designer, Narrative Designer, and Support Engineer! Huge shoutout to my lovely teammates, Allison Lee, Athenadis Roberts, Xara Shaw, and Lauren Ejiaga! They are so skilled and I had a great time working with them to bring Boascope to life! We worked on the game from the beginning of April to June, amidst finals, traveling, and internships. At the beginning of June, we presented it various PlayStation industry professionals, who were the judges. And another thank you to Lloyd Campbell III, CSM, Megan O'Connor, Jamari Selders, Joshua Kinney, and the rest of the PSCP team for hosting and giving their support throughout the entirety of the game jam. My team and I look forward to presenting Boascope at the upcoming PSCP HQ Summit!

It’s been a while but I’m happy to finally announce my MFA Thesis Project DRENCHED is available to wishlist on Steam! After working on it with the most amazing team for a year, we showcased the demo at USC Games Expo in May and also had the opportunity to showcase at GDC Festival of Gaming with Gameheads back in March. Now that I’ve graduated, we’re working diligently to finish the game and release later this year. Thank you so much for everyone’s support along the way! Wishlist now and stay tuned! https://lnkd.in/gKMsN7se

Super excited to share that The Unrealtor- a surreal house-tour co-op escape room- is now LIVE on Steam! Lots of people to thank for making my first experience as a game director so fulfilling: - My team, their intense dedication and willingness to dive headfirst into complex cross-functional design challenges - My mentors, the USC Games AGP faculty (special shoutout to David White, Lesley Mathieson, Scott Easley, Mason Lieberman - plus David Su) - The many property managers and landlords who directly inspired the predicaments within <3 Check it out: https://lnkd.in/gg59ke66

Thesis paper📚✅ thesis defense 👩‍🏫✅ expo showcase 🎪✅ My thesis game nudge officially wrapped up Spring 2026 production!! ✧*｡٩(ˊᗜˋ*)و✧*｡ * Our Steam page is now live, the demo will launch at the end of this month, we’re also joining Steam Next Fest in the upcoming month, and the full release is coming later this summer ☀️ * And… we won this year’s USC GAME EXPO Audience Choice Award for “Powerful Message”🏆 What’s a more powerful message than the friendship and collaboration within our team, the joyful advisement I shared with my awesome advisors Sean Bouchard & Martzi Campos, and making a game about negotiating personal boundaries with our families? 🥹 * All the free goodies and merch at this week’s showcase were WAY more popular than I ever expected. Thank you everyone for supporting my little side quest 🧸 I poured my heart into every single item like I did with the game, so seeing people genuinely love them made everything feel worth it. Thank you to my 21 teammates, a team split between Los Angeles and Tokyo, this one project somehow connected half of the northern hemisphere 🌎 Shout out to all my amazing members on team Joey’s Friends: Jenny Huynh | Producer Sammy Chuang | Engineering Producer Siyi (Toto) Wang | Art Lead Yu Pan | 2D Animator Claire Yang | 2D Artist Isabel Merced Galindo | Lead Designer Shan Lin | Designer Aochen (Daisy) Li | UI/UX Designer Ariel Li | UI/UX Designer Elvira Zhang | UI Designer & Engineer Nidhi Uppoor | Lead Engineer Patrick James Alcantara | Engineer Joy Pan | Engineer Michelle Zhou | Engineer Johannah (johh®) Chung | Audio Lead, Music & SFX, Marketing Yang Liu | Foley Recording Technician Jana Mae Rubio | Narrative Designer Molli Shuker | Narrative Designer & Usability Yueqian (Scarlet) Du | Usability Kaylee Morales | Usability Tianzi (Riley) Wu | Marketing 🧑‍🏫Thank you to my chair Sean Bouchard and second chair Martzi Campos, you guys are my advisors, professors, colleagues, and friends. Thank you for your guidance, your encouragement, and your passion with nudge and me. Another thank you to my industry advisor Kelsey Rice, it’s been a pleasure to have you as part of nudge as well. I also want to say thank you to Professor Tracy Fullerton, you’ve watched this project grow ever since it was still called Cabinet back in October 2024. Thank you for calling mom as the perfect antagonist at my defense. I would like to say thank you to Professor Richard Lemarchand for inheriting nudge’s infamous trinket trading box in Fishbowl at USC Games. I will never forget you told me “nudge is genius” while bowing to me after my defense. 💝Lastly, thank you for everyone who stopped by and supported us at both ULTRA RARE Thesis Show and USC GAMES EXPO 2026 this week. Your love and kind words for nudge is exactly what we need to carry the game forward. 💫nudge doesn’t just stop here, we can’t wait to show the world what we have been making! Stay tuned for our demo release for Steam Next Fest next month!

So I'm leaving USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. And unlike most LinkedIn posts, I'm actually serious. Growing up, I wanted to be a Gaming Live Streamer and a YouTuber which led me to studying PR and Advertising at Annenberg. At the time, it felt like the perfect fit - growing my own platforms, running social media for organizations, and learning design tools. But after a while, I noticed something. I enjoyed building things more than talking about them. Somewhere between the clubs, content creation, and 7 classes, I decided to take Game Design with Tracy Fullerton and Tonia Beglari. In four weeks, we built a tabletop game. Then another. Then another. The class demanded hours of playtesting, iteration, design reviews, and problem solving. It was easily the most time consuming course I've taken at USC. But it was also the one I looked forward to the most. That was the signal I couldn't ignore. After previously being rejected from internal transfer programs including Game Development and Arts, Technology and the Business of Innovation, I decided to apply again. Fifteen days ago, I opened an email that completely changed my plans. I was accepted into the USC School of Cinematic Arts Game Development and Interactive Design program. Games combine storytelling, design, technology, community, psychology, marketing, business and creativity. Suddenly, everything I had been exploring started to make sense. I am not leaving one world for another. I am realizing how connected they actually are. This fall, I'll begin my journey in the Game Development and Interactive Design program and I could not have done it without the SCA professors and faculty especially Gordon Bellamy 🔜 GDC 📈, Jared Yeager, Tonia Beglari, Tracy Fullerton and Neelam Savla. Maybe the dream was never just to talk about games. Maybe it was to build the worlds I used to escape into.

It has been a hectic and busy time. But I'm finally very exited to share with everyone the trailer for my MFA thesis game Banana Republic. Please stay tuned to my profile or our Banana Republic Game page for more updates in the coming weeks. We are planning to release soon! This game would not be where it is at if it was not for my incredible team of very talented people, shout-out to: Denise Bermudez-Canciobello, Kevin Hanlon, Matteo Vera, Andy Jin, Anna Zhu, Haoyu Yang, Kelly Cao, Christian David Camacho Garcia, Youngje Park, Rosie Gao, Alejandro Cuevas Sanchez, Cameron Coulter, Alexis Tyagi, Brandon Chui, Jaehyuk Choi, Jichuan Bai, Sophie Sun & Yueheng Ye. Thanks to all of you who have been part of this process and have helped shape this project into what it is today.

I am excited to announce that our demo for nudge is now available on steam! You can play the first two seasons of our game, Spring and Summer, and start collecting! Our team is so excited to share nudge with you and see how you decorate! We also have also updated our store page with a new trailer and some other goodies, so be sure to check it out! Don’t forget to wishlist nudge and let us know what you think. Happy nudging!