Ian Bogost

Ian Bogost is a video game designer, critic and researcher. He is associate professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and founding partner at Persuasive Games LLC. His research and writing consider video games as an expressive medium, and his creative practice focuses on games about social and political issues.

Bogost is author of Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames and Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism, recently listed among "50 books for everyone in the game industry." He is co-author of Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System. He is a popular writer and speaker and widely considered an influential thinker and doer in the video game industry and research community.

Bogost's video games about social and political issues cover topics as varied as airport security, disaffected workers, the petroleum industry, suburban errands and tort reform. His games have been played by millions of people and exhibited internationally at venues including Laboral Centro de Arte (Madrid), Fournos Centre for Digital Culture (Athens), Eyebeam Center (New York), Slamdance Guerilla Game Festival (Park City), the Israeli Center for Digital Art (Holon) and The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (Melbourne).

Bogost holds a bachelors degree in philosophy and comparative literature from the University of Southern California, and a masters and Ph.D. in comparative literature from UCLA.