Chris Bateman is a game designer, philosopher and writer, best known for the games Discworld Noir and Ghost Master, and the books Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Videogames, 21st Century Game Design and Beyond Game Design. Chris runs International Hobo, a consultancy specialising in market-oriented game design and narrative and has worked on more than thirty digital game projects over the last fifteen years.

Graduating with a Masters degree in Artificial Intelligence/Cognitive Science, he has since pursued highly-acclaimed independent research into how and why people play games. In 2009, he was invited to sit on the IEEE’s Player Satisfaction Modelling task force, in recognition for his role in establishing this research domain. His most recent player model, BrainHex, is based upon neurobiological principles published in his paper Neurobiology of Play, and the BrainHex test has been taken by more than 75,000 people.

His latest book is Imaginary Games (out now from Zero Books), which provides a robust argument demonstrating not only that games are art, but that all art isitself a kind of game.