My Talks at DiGRA 2009
I’m just returned from the 2009 Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) Conference, which was held this week at Brunel University in Uxbridge, UK. The conference was enjoyable, with good talks, good company, and good ale. I did two talks at this DiGRA, the text of which I have now posted on my site. I’ll describe them in brief and point… read more
New Book Reviews
Some recent book reviews, one each of all my books: First, LB Jeffries wrote about Unit Operations at Pop Matters. It’s nice to see that title getting covered outside of the usual academic venues. Second, from Jennifer deWinter an extensive review of Persuasive Games, including a blow-by-blow for each section and chapter. This review is gratifying because it sits squarely… read more
A response to Levi Bryant
In a lengthy comment on my pragmatic speculative realism post, philosopher Levi Bryant asks what issues in technology and media studies prompted my interest in object-oriented ontology. I’d like to try to answer the question for the benefit of readers finding their way here from sources in philosophy rather than game studies. In some ways, I think I was doing… read more
In Digital Culture & Education
Thomas Apperley has written a new review of Racing the Beam in the new open-access peer-reviewed journal Digital Culture & Education. Nick and I are delighted to see a review of our book in the inaugural issue. I was likely delighted to see Apperley trace the steps toward the platform studies project in my earlier writings: The gestures towards a… read more
who misconstrues my work and that of my colleagues
(1) I’m not going to bother to write a thorough prose response to your recent Escapist article Quibus Lusoribus Bono? Who is Game Studies Good For?, but only numbered objections and comments. Readers, you’ll have to go read Travis’s article before any of these will make sense. (2) Your article is based on the premise that Douglas Wilson looks down… read more
My keynote presentation at the 2008 Game Developers Conference Education Summit
Note: this is a written version of the keynote address I gave at the Education Summit at the 2008 Game Developers Conference. The original presentation was extemporaneous and included evocative (rather than explanatory) slides. This version has been adapted from the presentation and the slides in a manner that will hopefully preserve the ideas fully while maintaining their original context:… read more
In order to mature properly, videogaming not only needs a Citizen Kane moment; it needs a little humdrum too
Think of any media form – say writing, photography or film. Now think of all of the things you can imagine doing with it. I like to think of this as the “possibility space” – a spectrum running between so-called high art at one end, to tools at the other. High art doesn’t have to be hoity-toity snobbery, and it… read more
Reflections on making books that work more like software
What I have in mind is not much different from Raymond Queneau’s Cent mille milliards de poèmes, a configurative sonnet of 1014 possible configurations. Queneau’s composition is a bit too configurative for my purposes, but the principle is instructive. What if we could take core principles of an argument like the one I make in Unit Operations and offer different… read more
Who I am and what I do
Looking for a bio (long, short)?Looking for photos of me?Want my curriculum vitae?Trying to contact me? Dr. Ian Bogost is an award-winning author and game designer whose work focuses on videogames and computational media. He is Ivan Allen College Distinguished Chair in Media Studies and Professor of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he also holds an… read more
An Approach to Videogame Criticism
This book is available in digital or physical format. Buy from Amazon A book about comparative videogame criticism: games, philosophy, literature, and art. In Unit Operations, Ian Bogost argues that similar principles underlie both literary theory and computation, proposing a literary-technical theory that can be used to analyze particular videogames. Moreover, this approach can be applied beyond videogames: Bogost suggests… read more