Stephen Jacobs who transformed game design education and open source innovation retires after 30 influential years at RIT

Rochester, New York – For three decades, Stephen Jacobs has been more than a professor. He’s been a visionary, a builder of worlds both digital and academic, and a mentor whose influence stretches far beyond the classroom walls at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). Now, after 30 years of innovation, collaboration, and impact, Jacobs is retiring, leaving behind a legacy that reshaped the way students and faculty think about games, storytelling, and technology’s potential to do good.

“I’m not a traditional academic,” Jacobs said. “It’s been a pleasure to spend the last 30 years as an RIT professor.”

That modest declaration encapsulates a career built on creativity, boundary-pushing, and a refusal to follow conventional paths. Starting in the early 1990s as an adjunct in both English and computing, Jacobs quickly found himself on the frontier of a new kind of education—one where storytelling met code, where games became tools of learning and cultural reflection, and where students were encouraged to dream as big as the technologies they worked with.

From Modest Beginnings to a National Powerhouse in Game Design

Jacobs’ impact is perhaps most visible in the thriving game design programs at RIT. Alongside colleagues Andy Phelps and Jeff Lasky, he helped draft the blueprint for what would become one of the top game design and development graduate degrees in the country. What started as an idea has grown into a nationally recognized academic powerhouse, regularly placing in the top 10 rankings for games education.

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Under Jacobs’ watch, courses in game programming and narrative design flourished. He didn’t just teach students how to build games; he taught them how to tell stories, how to think critically, and how to consider the social and ethical implications of the technologies they create.

That influence extended into the physical heart of innovation at RIT—MAGIC Spell Studios, the university’s digital media incubator. As one of MAGIC’s original associate directors, Jacobs helped bridge the gap between academia and industry, pushing students’ work out of the classroom and into the world.

He was instrumental in the production of MAGIC’s first Nintendo Switch title, The Original Mobile Games, developed in partnership with The Strong National Museum of Play and Second Avenue Learning. The game reimagined historical toys and games for a digital audience, showcasing the collaborative, cross-disciplinary mindset Jacobs championed throughout his career.

A Lifelong Collaboration with The Strong

For Jacobs, the relationship with The Strong National Museum of Play was more than a partnership—it was a shared mission to preserve and explore the cultural importance of play.

“I’ve been a Scholar-in-Residence since 2007. In that role, I’ve been able to serve as a member of exhibit design teams, co-create an online course in game design history that was nominated by students for an edX award as a best course, and help bring conferences to Rochester—like the upcoming 2025 Conference on BIPOC Games Studies,” Jacobs said.

His work with the museum didn’t just influence exhibits; it became part of the curriculum. Every year, Jacobs brought his students into The Strong’s galleries to blend hands-on exploration with academic analysis. This year’s History and Design of Pinball course ended with students demoing their analog and digital creations at a museum-wide pinball celebration co-organized by Jacobs himself.

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He also dove into research on the Jewish roots of the toy and game industries in Germany and the U.S.—a project now being developed into a full museum exhibit slated for 2026. This confluence of history, culture, and design perfectly mirrors Jacobs’ own academic philosophy: understanding the past to shape the future, all while keeping the joy of learning intact.

Championing Open Source for Global Good

While his impact on game education is profound, Jacobs is equally known for his dedication to open source and its humanitarian applications. His journey into the world of FOSS—Free and Open Source Software—was sparked by the One Laptop Per Child initiative, which aimed to provide low-cost educational tools to children in developing nations.

“I was attracted to this world through the One Laptop Per Child initiative. They were providing low-cost laptops to children in developing countries,” Jacobs explained. “In 2009, I created an honors seminar for our students to make educational games for the One Laptop Per Child community.”

That seminar snowballed into something much larger. Over the years, Jacobs helped establish an entire curriculum focused on humanitarian open source development—culminating in the creation of an interdisciplinary minor unlike any other program in the world.

But Jacobs didn’t stop at curriculum. As director of Open@RIT, a research center dedicated to promoting open work among faculty, staff, and students, he built infrastructure and opportunities to support a community of thinkers and makers who wanted their work to have real-world impact. Under his leadership, the center held international workshops, joined the Linux Foundation, and secured over $1 million in grants—including support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

This work also earned him accolades, including the Provost’s Excellence in Faculty Mentoring Award in 2019–2020 and the PI Millionaire Award in 2023, recognizing his success in securing research funding.

A Mentor First and Always

Despite his many professional achievements, Jacobs has never lost sight of what he calls the most important part of his job: mentoring students. Across disciplines and departments, he guided young minds not just through code and lectures, but through their own personal and professional growth.

Whether it was leading game development teams, advising on open source projects, or co-planning museum exhibitions, Jacobs built communities of learners and doers. His office wasn’t just a place for academic advising—it was a space for creative collaboration, occasional chaos, and always, inspiration.

His approach to mentorship wasn’t conventional—he often eschewed titles and hierarchy in favor of mutual respect and shared curiosity. And that authenticity made all the difference.

A Legacy That Will Outlive Any Title

As he steps away from his full-time role, Jacobs leaves behind a university—and an industry—that looks very different than it did three decades ago. The programs he helped shape, the centers he built, and the students he inspired will carry his influence into the next era of gaming, education, and open source development.

And while his time as a professor may be ending, Jacobs isn’t vanishing from the scene. He remains engaged with ongoing research projects, upcoming conferences, and the continued development of exhibits and educational materials. Retirement, for him, simply means a new way of participating.

There’s a fitting poetry to that. Just as he taught students to design open-ended experiences—games without a single, rigid solution—Jacobs himself is now entering the next level of his journey, armed with curiosity, compassion, and a playbook that’s always evolving.

As he reflects on his career, one quote seems to capture the essence of what he built at RIT:

“It’s been a pleasure to spend the last 30 years as an RIT professor.”

The pleasure, it seems, was shared by an entire generation of students, faculty, and collaborators lucky enough to work and learn alongside him.