Andrey Goncharov, MSc

Part Time Instructor
I believe video games are a powerful tool for education and training, yet there’s so few. They can be a powerful platform for communicating values, morals, and Christian ideas, yet it’s underrepresented. There should really be more of us Christian developers in the industry.

As a graduate of Interactive Arts and Technology program at Simon Fraser University, Andrey pursued his love for game design throughout his undergrad career by concentrating in interactive systems (programming) and media arts.

His deep passion for video games keeps him busy designing and programming games, creating prototypes, and helping others with their games. Andrey believes in a future where video games become a teaching and learning tool for the masses as the focus shifts from receiving entertainment to acquiring practical skills through play. Andrey’s Game Design experience includes, but isn’t limited to: working as a Teaching Assistant for IAT312 – Introduction to Game Design and IAT410 – Advanced Game Design at SFU. He taught Unity, C#, and game design to the students attending his lab. Working for Virtro Entertainment as a Unity developer, he worked on virtual reality games and a VR language learning game called Argotian. His ever-growing Unity and game development skills allow him to work on alternate applications of the game engine. For example, Andrey has worked as a Research Assistant for SIAT professor Steve DiPaola in his iVizLab, where a virtual interactive conversational avatar is being made in the Unity Game Engine as part of the lab’s research.

Andrey is also a Masters graduate with a Master of Science in Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University, where he worked on research related to virtual interactive avatars with the iVizLab team.

  • MSc in Interactive Arts and Technology (Simon Fraser University; 2024)
  • BSc in Interactive Arts and Technology (Simon Fraser University; 2020)

Expertise

Game Design and Development, Video Game Programming, Virtual Reality, Avatars, Conversational Avatars and Agents, Avatar Motion Tracking, Automated Gesture, Avatar Adaptation Gap, Avatar User Perception

Awards & Honors

  • Undergrad NSERC USRSA Grant - NSERC (May 2018)
  • Cody Sawatsky Award in Gaming – Sawatsky Family (September 2017)
  • Dean’s Honor Roll - SFU's Faculty of Communication Art and Technology's Martin Gotfrit (December 2013)

Recent Publications

  • Goncharov, A., Yalcin, O. N., & Dipaola, S. (2023). Expectations vs. reality: The impact of Adaptation Gap on avatars in social VR platforms. International Conference on Multimodal Interaction. https://doi.org/10.1145/3610661.3617643
  • Goncharov, A. (2024). Social believability of human-driven embodied conversational avatars in shared virtual worlds: the impact of the adaptation gap on users' experience of interacting with VR avatars [Thesis, School of Interactive Arts & Technology - Simon Fraser University]. https://summit.sfu.ca/item/38165

Affiliations & Memberships

  • Organizer/Event Planner of AFK (Away From Keyboard) Game Symposium.

  • GAME 110 Introduction to Game Development
  • GAME 140 Introduction to Game Design
  • GAME 290 Game Development Project I
  • GAME 390/391 Game Development Project II
  • GAME 490/491 Game Development Project III
  • GAME 350 Video Game Programming