Erin List is a polymath, artist, illustrator, designer (games, graphics, characters, multimedia, etc.), inventor, musician (drummer & percussionist, whistler), philosopher, photographer, librarian, scientist, intersectional queer-transfeminist, historian, storyteller, poet, anthropologist, ludologist, archer, (voice) actress, writer, cook, mythologist, activist, humorist, ethical BDSM practitioner, autodidact, information archaeologist, neurodivergent pattern-seeker, and versatile interdisciplinary creative human.
She has been acting as Art & Design Director at the Game Lab Graz from September 2019 to June 2025, (starting out as a project assistant, and also acting as Lab Coordinator, Visual & Concept Artist, Graphic Designer, UI & UX Designer, Game Designer, Playtester, Social Media Manager, Lecturer, Librarian, Educator and Researcher [also as Philosopher, although this was never formally declared anywhere, and is a little redundant to mention anyway, as pretty much all people are philosophers almost all the time]) within the Institute of Human-Centred Computing (HCC) at Graz University of Technology, where she has been involved in developing educational and “serious” video games that have a positive social impact and “go beyond” pure entertainment.
From 2018-2019, she has been working as a graphic designer, digital artist and digital print technician at pro mente Steiermark.
In 2018 she was formally diagnosed with Asperger-Syndrome.
In 2017 she publically “came out” as transgender.
In 2015 she co-founded Game Dev Graz, a non-profit association dedicated to supporting game developers and gaming culture, and is currently acting as its Vice-President. As part of the association, she has been co-organizing many local community meetups, game jams, and the annual Game Dev Days, as well as created various visual artworks.
After school, she tried to get admitted to various schools in Graz, as well as the Sir Karl Popper Schule in Vienna, but wasn’t accepted there, despite allegedly passing their acceptance test. She also tried to find an apprenticeship in the software development and media arts sectors, but found no available spots at the time. Being thus labeled “unemployed”, the AMS sent her to the SZG.
She went to high school from 2009-2011 at BORG Dreierschützengasse in the informatics branch (now the informatics and media branch), not staying there long enough to be able to do her Matura due to mental health problems she was struggling with at the time and a multitude of other reasons, such as semantic misunderstandings with school teachers, the mandatory school years in Austria only lasting until 16 years of age at the time, and getting bullied by some classmates.
Erin was born in the 1990s and mostly grew up in Graz and other parts of Styria, Austria, including Hartberg and Bad Radkersburg.
Her current residence (as of 2025), where her body is physically located most of the space-time, is her home city of Graz, Austria, where she is working on FruchtFabel, a vegan, gluten-free and sustainable food start-up, amongst other things, like her own art book, and perhaps a video game.
She speaks German and English in multiple dialects, snippets of other natural human languages, as well as a myriad of technical and professional languages.
In addition, she is committed to promoting and creating a more ethical, equitable, diverse, inclusive, accessible, joyful, passionate, loving, sustainable and regenerative world for all its inhabitants, to the best of her abilities and resources, wherever and whenever possible.
Year notations on this page are for the Common Era and Gregorian calendar. (tho I acknowledge of course that there are other calendars used by other people)
🎮 Ludography
- deep (currently unpublished and unavailable to play; originally published on itch.io in 2014)
- lootAtool (currently unpublished and unavailable to play; originally published on itch.io)
- Sorcademy (discontinued development)
- Ancient Board Game Collection, by Klemens Strasser
- Crop Crowd
- Spaceshi (yes, the letter ‘p’ at the end is intentionally missing)
- Maroon
- ETAP
- Project Chimera
- FemQuest
- EWA
- VR4UrbanDev
- Beyond
- Can’t see the WOOD for the trees
- Shades of Play (uncredited as of 2025)
- Various game prototypes
- A couple small analog games, mostly made at the analog game jams at Ludovico
- A couple of analog game adaptations that made the games more accessible for disabled people
- A couple small analog games I made as a kid at home
- Various Warcraft III mods and custom maps
- Others I’ll add to this list once I find the time and gather the energy to do so
📜 Scientific Publications
- Poglitsch, C., Safikhani S. Erin L., Pirker J. (2024) XR technologies to enhance the emotional skills of people with autism spectrum disorder: A systematic review
- At least one other on social media platforms together with Stephan Keller I wrote during my time at the Game Lab Graz, but I can’t find it right now.
- Several publications where I haven’t been added as co-author, even tho I contributed to the project or publication in a manner other than being purely a study participant. (so much for proper accreditation in the sciences and academia, as if they haven’t learned one bit from the history of science and its all too often exclusion of women and other minorties…)
🌐 Wikipedia Articles (which I have written a substantial amount of)
- Broken Rules
- Gibbon: Beyond the Trees
- Stacklands
- I’ve contributed to a couple other articles in a smaller amount
🎨 Visual, graphic, sculptural and plastic Artworks
- For most of my purely visual art works, visit my Cara, ArtStation and Instagram (mind you, not all of my visual works are currently visible there)
- Logo, mascot, and other branding/corporate designs for the Game Lab Graz
- Some graphics for the Institute of Interactive Systems and Data Science at TU Graz (when it was still called that)
- Logo of the Institute of Human-Centred Computing at TU Graz
- Various drawings and paintings I did in art class during school
- 🛴 A kick-scooter (that I bought) which I modified with additional bags and gadgets
- A drum stick holder made of an old toilet paper roll, a small plastic cup, a toothpick, and attached to my e-drum set with duct tape
- BDSM & Kink Community Graz 2025 flyers, adapted and built upon from a previous design by local community members (not mentioned here by name for sake of discretion)
- Adaptation of rope safety flyers for the shibari community in Graz
- A marble run of wood and paper I created in secondary school together with others, which became dysfunctional at some point and was thus discarded
- 🐘 A knitted elephant puppet I crafted in elementary school (which I’ve since lost or handed on to someone else)
- 🕯 A candle holder made of clay I did in elementary school, which still works to this day
📰 Selected Press
- PGDA Call: Gender Diversity & Inclusion – Pioneers
- An interview I gave many years ago for an independent games journalist, whose name I can’t remember, and I can’t find the link to the interview either…
🗣 Selected Talks & Lectures
- The Game Design of Diablo, talk I gave together with Lorenz Jäger in 2014 at Spektral Graz (if only I could find the slides on my laptop, I would link them here…)
- Intro to Game Art, lecture(s) held for the Game Design and Development course at TU Graz
- A small talk I gave at the Games Intersectional Symposium 2025
- A presentation I held in secondary school on dromedary camels
- A presentation I held in secondary school on Aristotle
💭 Philosophical contributions
- Intergenerationeller Philosophieabend im Lendhafen Graz, irgendwann zwischen 2020-25 (kann mich grad nicht ans genaue Datum erinnern)
🏆 Prizes and Honours
- Won a little medal for running really fast in elementary school once
- Won a small wooden medal for participating in the 5. Grazer Inklusionslauf
🎶 Music & Audio
- Every sound I’ve ever made and uttered with my mouth and other body parts, every melody I have ever hummed or whistled, and every song I’ve sung, some recorded, some not. Whether some other human has heard it or not matters little as to the fact that I’ve produced the soundwaves anyway.
📜 Writing
- A bunch of essays I’ve written at school
- A couple blog posts here and there
- Lots of chat messages inside video games
- Loads of messages via Skype, Slack, and Discord (some now lost forever)
- Too many tweets and other social media posts
💶 Scholarships & Grants
- So far, none. Nada. Keine. Zero (0). Zilch.
- Also no student discounts of any kind. Not even food stamps for the food I ate and paid for on university campuses while I was working there. No ECTS (European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System) either for any of the things I did in a university context, for which other people who were officially and formally inscribed students got some points already, even though the activities were essentially the same. Students at least got support through various institutional measures, some of which I had to pay for out of my own pocket instead (such as hardware equipment, software licenses, professional literature not available in the university library, etc.).
Opinion on Austria’s educational system (emphasis on system)
- Mixed
- Much that could be improved on
- As of 2025, it still feels elitist and exclusionary to me in respect to and towards minorities, the physically as well as “mentally” or “socially” disabled, cripples, the working class, women (some but certainly not all), LGBTQIA2S+ people, gender non-conforming people, men that “don’t act like men”, ethnic minorities, BIPOC, non-academics and those from a non-academic family background, people intersectionally and structurally discriminated against, people who have to work to earn money so they can keep their appartment and don’t end up on the street or worse, and thus don’t have the time, space, energy, material or immaterial resources to invest in so called “higher” education (this distinction between “higher” and “lower” education is yet another [in my eyes] nonsensical way to hierarchically distinguish between what is ultimately skills and knowledge of various kinds, all together necessary for a society and culture to function and flourish in its entirety anyway), etc.
- Yes, I’ll keep ranting about it until it is fixed and peace between all the people on earth is achieved.
- Informal autodidactic education is a form of education too btw.
Opinion on the competition culture (in general, and as opposed to, say, a cooperative culture) that to me seems to be so very ingrained in certain parts of western society, or humankind in general
- Questionable if not outright harmful to the survival and well-being of our species (that is, the human one) on planet earth
💡 IDEAS
- Writing disabled and neurodivergent people into history
- Writing games and play as important and influential cultural media forms into history