The Beauty of Games

A grand unified theory of games as an aesthetic form. Available now from MIT Press.


Donkeyspace My Substack on Games, Philosophy, and Art in the Age of AI


“Wheels Within Wheels”Medium, June 2019

“Games and the World”The Gameful World: Approaches, Issues, Applications, editors: Steffen Walz, Sebastian Deterding, MIT Press, 2015

"Double Futures", in Game Design Advance, March 2015

"Foreword", A Game Design Vocabulary, Anna Anthropy and Naomi Clark, Addison-Wesley Professional, 2014

"The Drinking Man's Guide to Watching Starcraft: Parts 1 through 6'", Edge Magazine, October 2012

"Donkeyspace", in Game Design Advance, April 2011

Galcon, in Well Played 2.0: Video Games, Value and Meaning, editor: Drew Davidson, ETC Press, 2010

"The Truth in Game Design", in Game Design Advance, March 2010

“Pervasive Games and the Art Question”, in Pervasive Games: Theory and Design, editors: Markus Montola, Jaakko Stenros. Morgan Kauffman Press, 2009

"Games are not Media", in Game Design Advance, August 2009

“Designer Perspective: Frank Lantz”, in Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, Tracy Fullerton. Morgan Kauffman Press, 2008

“Design Case Studies: Big Urban Game, PacManhattan”, in Space Time Play: Computer Games, Architecture and Urbanism, editors: Friedrich von Borries, Steffen P. Walz, Matthias Böttger. Birkhäuser Architecture, 2007

“Foreword”, “Ironclad Design Notes”, in Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, MIT Press, 2003

CD-ROM Reviews, monthly column in ID Magazine, 1990 – 1993

Rules, Play and Culture: Towards an Aesthetic of Games, in Merge Magazine, 1999

Panic Quake Servers, in Panic Encyclopedia, The Definitive Guide to the Post-Modern Scene, editors: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker, St. Martin’s Press, 1989