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19Jun/1211

A Very New Thing: Dan Pinchbeck

This is the seventh article in the series The Academics Are Coming.

Dan Pinchbeck

Dr. Dan Pinchbeck is a senior lecturer for the School of Creative Technologies at the University of Portsmouth. His PhD thesis, completed in 2009, was titled “Story as a function of gameplay in First Person Shooters: an analysis of FPS diegetic content 1998-2007.”

As discussed two weeks ago on Electron Dance, Pinchbeck is a champion of development-led research. He is known principally for Dear Esther, originally a Half-Life 2 mod from 2009 which was released commercially this year. He runs a studio called thechineseroom which is working on two new projects: Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture and Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs with Frictional Games.

Dan has a lot to say about the relevancy of academic research and the strengths and difficulties of academic game development.

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