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
In Mobile Persuasion: 20 Perspectives on the Future of Behavior Change, edited by B.J. Fogg and Dean Eckles
There are three ideas I want to share in this short piece on mobile persuasion through videogames. First, how do videogames express ideas? Without understanding how games can be expressive in a general sense, it is hard to understand how they might be persuasive. Second, how do videogames make arguments? Videogames are different from oral, textual, visual, or filmic media… read more
On the potential to release new games for old consoles via Wii's Virtual Console. From my "Persuasive Games" column at Gamasutra.
Now that Nintendoâ??s Wii has finally hit the streets, we can really start assessing its potential impact on the future of video games in general, and serious games in particular. With all the fuss after Nintendoâ??s announcement of the consoleâ??s official name six months ago, itâ??s easy to forget that the company promised nothing less than a â??Revolutionâ? â?? the… 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
A riposte to the Critical Simulation section of Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan's edited collection First Person
You can buy First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game in print. You an also read this article with cross-references to other pieces in the volume at the electronic book review. Simon Penny discusses a specific kind of physical embodiment, having to do with corporeal coupling to simulation devices and videogame characters. Reading his call to consider the… read more