ACADEMIC WORK and PUBLICATIONS

As well as being our Creative Director, Dan Pinchbeck also currently works as a Reader in Computer Games at the University of Portsmouth, where he teaches game design and supervises doctoral research into experimental gaming.

He recently finished a book called DOOM: ScaryDarkFast, which will be published in Spring 2013 by the University of Michigan Press as part of their landmark videogames series. He also wrote a doctorate which you can download here, titled "Story as a function of gameplay in First Person Shooters and an analysis of FPS diegetic content 1998-2007". It's long, but it's got a lot of baseline data about FPS games in there, even if you don't want to trawl through the theory.

This is also a list of the academic publications Dan has written...

Pinchbeck, D. 2010. I Build to Study: A Manifesto for Development Led research in Games. Presented at Under the Mask 2010, University of Bedfordshire

Pinchbeck, D. 2009. Story as a function of Gameplay in First-Person Shooters and an analysis of FPS diegetic content 1997-2008. PhD Thesis, Unversity of Portsmouth.

Pinchbeck, D. 2009. Shock, horror? First-person Gaming, Horror, and the Art of Ludic Manipulation. In B. Perron (ed). Gaming After Dark: Welcome to the World of Horror Gaming. MacFarland & Co.

Pinchbeck, D. 2009. An Analysis of Persistent Non-Player Characters in the First-Person Gaming genre 1998-2007: a case for the fusion of mechanics and diegetics. Eludamos: Journal of Computer Game Cultures, 3 (2). pp 261-279.

Pinchbeck, D. & Gras, R. (in press). Machinima in Second Life: from art object to collaborative practice. In Lowood, H. & Nitsche, M. (eds.) The Machinima Reader, MIT Press

Pinchbeck, D. 2009. An affordance based model of gameplay. In proceedings of DiGRA2009, London: Brunel University

Pinchbeck, D., Anderson, D., Delve, J., Cuiffreda, A. & Olemu, G. 2009. Emulation as a strategy for the preservation of games: The KEEP project. In proceedings of DiGRA2009, London: Brunel University

Lowood, H., Armstrong, A., Monnens, D., Vowell, Z., Ruggill, J., MacAllister, K., Donahue, R. & Pinchbeck, D. 2009. Before It's Too Late: Preserving Games Across the Industry / Academia Divide. In proceedings of DiGRA2009, London: Brunel University

Pinchbeck, D. 2008. Conscientious Objector: Pacifism, Politics and Abusing the player in Doom 3. In S.M. Stevens and S. Saldamarco (Eds.) ICEC 2008, LNCS 5309, pp. 185–189, 2008.

Pinchbeck, D. 2008. Dear Esther: an interactive ghost story built using the Source engine. In U. Spierling and N. Szilas (Eds.). Interactive Storytelling: First Joint International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling (ICIDS 2008), LNCS 5334, pp. 51-55, 2008

Pinchbeck, D. 2008. Trigens Can't Swim: Intelligence and Intentionality in First Person Game Worlds. In Proceedings of The Philosophy of Computer Games 2008. University of Potsdam.

Pinchbeck, D. 2008. Story and Recall in First Person Shooters. International Journal of Computer Games Technology. 2008.

Pinchbeck, D. 2007. I remember Erebus: memory, story and immersion in first person shooters. In Proceedings of CyberGames2007: International Conference on Games Research and Development. Manchester Metropolitan University, 10-11th September 2007.

Pinchbeck, D. 2007. Counting Barrels in Quake 4: affordances and homodiegetic structures in FPS worlds. In Proceedings of DiGRA2007: Situated Play. University of Tokyo, 24-28th September 2007.

Pinchbeck, D. 2007. Ludic Reality: a construct for analysing epistemology and meaning-mapping in play. Presented at The Philosophy of Computer Games, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy, 25-27th Jan 2007

Pinchbeck, D. 2006. Games, Radio and the Inferred World. In Regarding Radio, G. Fuller & S. Thiermann (eds.) Leipzig: Spector

Pinchbeck, D. 2006. A Theatre of Ethics and Interaction? Bertolt Brecht and learning to behave in first person shooter environments. In Z. Pan, R. Aylett, H. Diener, X. Jin, S. Göbel & L. Li, eds. Technologies for E-Learning and Digital Entertainment, Berlin: LNCS Springer, 399-409.

Pinchbeck, D., Stevens, B., Van Laar, D., Hand, S., Newman, K. 2006. Narrative, agency and observational behavioiur in a first person shooter environment. In Proceedings of Narrative AI and Games AISOB Symposium, Bristol, UK, April 2006

Pinchbeck, D. 2006. Ritual Co-location: Play, Consciousness and Reality in Artificial Environments. In Proceedings of Connectivity: The tenth biennial symposium on arts and technology, Ammerman Center for Arts & Technology, Connecticut College, US, March 2006

Pinchbeck, D. 2005. Distributed and Environmental Narrative Tactics: Control, Illusion and Interactivity in Video Games. Presented at the National Postgraduate Conference in Creative Arts, Film and Media, University of Portsmouth, UK, 26th November 2005

Pinchbeck, D. 2005. Is presence a relevant or useful construct in designing game environments? In Proceedings of The Third Annual International Conference in Computer Game Design and Technology, John Moores University, Liverpool, UK. 8-9th November 2005

Pinchbeck, D. 2005. Six Perspectives on managing Interactivity and Narrative. Presented at The Bridge Symposium on Interactive Content Design, London College of Communication, UK. 30th September 2005

Pinchbeck, D. & Stevens, B. 2005. Schemata, Narrative and Presence. In Proceedings of Presence 2005: The 8th International Workshop on Presence. University College London, UK, 21-23rd September 2005

Pinchbeck D. 2005 & Stevens, B. Presence, consciousness & content: a perspective on the conscious processing of content-rich systems from the study of immersive computer environments, cognition and narrative structures. Presented at the International Conference on Consciousness, Literature and the Arts, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, UK. 7-9 May 2005.