Ian Bogost

Ian Bogost is an American philosopher and video game designer. He holds a joint professorship in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication and in Interactive Computing in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he is the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts Distinguished Chair in Media Studies.^[1]

He is the author of Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism and Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames as well as the co-author of Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System and Newsgames: Journalism at Play. Bogost also released Cow Clicker, a satire and critique of the influx of social network games. His game, A Slow Year, won two awards, Vanguard and Virtuoso, at IndieCade 2010.^[2]

Education

Bogost received his bachelor's in Philosophy and Comparative Literature from the University of Southern California in 1998. He then went on to get his masters in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2001, and received his doctorate in Comparative Literature from UCLA in 2004.^[3]

Professional career

In 2008, Bogost became an Associate Professor in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology. In 2010, he was appointed Director of the Graduate Program in Digital Media, a position he held until 2012. In 2011, Bogost became a Professor of Digital Media and an Adjunct Professor of Interactive Computing. In 2012, he was named the Ivan Allen College Distinguished Chair in Media Studies and a Professor of Interactive Computing, both positions he still holds. With Christopher Schaberg, he is co-editor of the series Object Lessons from Bloomsbury Publishing.

His Alien Phenomenology or What It's Like to be a Thing (U of Minnesota P, 2012) critiques aspects of Bruno Latour's Actor-network theory.^[4]

Bogost was also a Founding Partner of Persuasive Games LLC Atlanta, GA, and Persuasive Games Latin America SA. He is currently the Chief Designer for Persuasive Games LLC Atlanta, GA.

Honors and awards

• TIME Magazine Best 50 Websites 2012, for persuasivegames.org
• Winner, Vanguard & Virtuoso Awards, Indiecade Festival 2010 (for A Slow Year)
• Finalist, Indiecade Festival 2010 (for A Slow Year)
• ELearners.com Mindshare Awards, first place, gaming category, for website bogost.com, 2010
• Finalist, Independent Game Festival 2010, Nuovo category

Games

Bogost has designed and developed a variety of video games since 2003, among which are:

Bibliography

• The State of Play: Creators and Critics on Video Game Culture. Seven Stories Press. 2015. ISBN 1609806395.  (anthology, edited by Daniel Goldberg and Linus Larsson) (Bogost contributed the article "The Squalid Grace of Flappy Bird")^[15]
• How to Talk about Videogames. University Of Minnesota Press. 2015. ISBN 0816699119. 
• Alien Phenomenology, or What It's Like to Be a Thing. University Of Minnesota Press. 2012. ISBN 0816678979. 
• How to Do Things with Videogames. University Of Minnesota Press. 2011. ISBN 0816676461. 
• A Slow Year: Game Poems. Open Texture. 2010. ISBN 1933900164. 
• Newsgames: Journalism at Play. MIT Press. 2010. ISBN 0262014874. 
• Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System. MIT Press. 2009. ISBN 026201257X.  2nd edition (with Nick Montfort)
• Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. MIT Press. 2007. ISBN 0262026147. 
• Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism. MIT Press. 2006. ISBN 026202599X. 

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ian Bogost.

• Official website
• Persuasive Games
• Ian Bogost talks about Serious Games at XML
• Bio at The Art History of Games Conference