Ian Bogost is a videogame researcher and designer. He is an Assistant Professor of Digital Media at the Georgia Institute of Technology and is the founder of two companies: Persuasive Games, a game studio that creates videogames for persuasion, instruction, and activism, and Open Texture, a publisher of cross-media education and enrichment materials for families. He holds a B.A. degree in Philosophy and Comparative Literature from the University of Southern California, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Bogost is interested in videogames as cultural artifacts, particularly in how we critique games alongside other media like literature, film, and art; and how games make arguments. He is the author of Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism and Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames, co-editor of Ludologica Retro: Vintage Arcade Games 1972–1984, and author of more than fifty articles, book chapters, and conference presentations on videogames, digital media, literature, and film. Bogost is also co-editor at Water Cooler Games, the online resource about videogames with an agenda, and he is a regular columnist at the videogame trade publication Gamasutra. Currently he is finishing a book on the Atari 2600 and a videogame about the politics of nutrition.

Bogost’s videogames about social and political issues cover topics as varied as airport security, disaffected workers, the petroleum industry, and tort reform. His games have been played by millions of people and exhibited at venues including Laboral Centro de Arte, Fournos Centre for Digital Culture, Eyebeam Center, Slamdance Guerrilla Game Festival, The Australian Centre for the Moving Image, and the Israeli Center for Digital Art. Bogost was co-designer of the first official US presidential election videogame, and he is especially interested in the ways videogames can change the future of politics and public policy.