I am a professor and administrator at Washington University in St. Louis, where I work in three of our nine schools and the provost's office.
The Small Stuff
My new book about the sensory enchantment of daily life. It's an actually useful, easy-reading, philosophical self-help book that looks beyond happiness to the weirder, simpler, and easier contentment that arises from deliberately and regularly using your senses to contact and appreciate the ordinary world.
Coming in Summer 2026
Selected Books
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The Small Stuff
How you got disconnected from the physical world—and how to reclaim that lost joy in everyday life. Out summer 2026.
Play Anything
How filling life with play—whether soccer or lawn mowing, counting sheep or tossing Angry Birds—forges a new path for creativity and joy in our impatient age.
Persuasive Games
How videogames mount arguments and make expressive statements about the world
How to Talk About Videogames
A fond look at the preposterous—and yet essential—pursuit of games criticism.
Alien Phenomenology
A bold new metaphysics that explores how all things—from atoms to green chiles, cotton to computers—perceive, and experience one another.
Racing the Beam
The relationship between technological design and creative expression in the Atari VCS (2600).
Newsgames
How videogames offer a new way to do journalism
Unit Operations
A literary-technical theory for analsys of configurative systems
Recent Writing
View more →Selected Games
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Persuasive Games
Persuasive Games designs, builds, and distributes videogames for persuasion, instruction, and activism. It also offers business, legal, content, and design consulting.
Simony
A site-specific game art installation commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Jacksonville
Cow Clicker
A Facebook game about Facebook Games
A Slow Year
A chapbook of game poems for Atari VCS, PC, and Mac. Independent Game Festival finalist and 2x Indiecade winner.
Selected Projects
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Buns.life
Put words between buns.
Platform Studies
A book series about the technical foundations of computational life and creativity. Published by MIT Press.
Object Lessons
A book series, 100+ books strong, about the secret life of ordinary things. Published by Bloomsbury.
Metropolis Now
A series at The Atlantic on how technology is transforming cities, for better and worse.