Doug Brown

Doug lectures in digital games theory and runs the School of Arts undergraduate games programmes. He has a BA (Hons) Degree in English from Oxford University (St Edmund Hall), an MA in Games Theory and Design and a PhD in Games Theory, both from Brunel. He has recently completed, and is now seeking to publish research into how the suspension of disbelief works in videogames.

A lifelong gamer, Doug has also worked in the games industry for Square-Enix / Eidos, credited on several titles. He chose to enter into academic research on games rather than continue a career in the industry because writing about games and trying to understand them more deeply had been a lifelong goal and interest.

Doug has had articles published in journals and written chapters of edited collections, often collaborating with Prof. Tanya Krzywinska since their research interests align. These interests include games and narrative, MMO and Online gaming structures and games' place as an exciting new artistic medium. All of this hinges around a passion for gaming as a new textual form, and its potential to work with the human imagination. Doug’s career development has matched games’ generally breaking out into the mainstream while simultaneously starting to be taken seriously as a media form by critics and academics. It is Doug’s desire to help this continue and take root, by showing students the importance of understanding games’ unique features and possibilities within the context of other media. Unlocking the storytelling potential of games as a medium is something he hopes his own research and the work of his students both in academia and the games industry will achieve in the future. He is always happy to field any questions or requests from current or potential students.

Research Overview

Games and the imaginary, Virtual worlds, Suspension of disbelief, Game design and storytelling, Games in context.

Teaching Activity

Game Studies, Game Theory, Writing for games, Narrative and technology, New Media and the Internet, Audiences and imagination.

Some of Doug’s Publications:

Journal Articles
Rez: An Evolving Analysis – The Refractory Journal May 24th 2008

Conference Papers
The Fourth Wall in Metal Gear Solid – Brunel Postgraduate Games Conference 2007
Gaming DNA: On Narrative & Gameplay Gestalts - DiGRA 2007
Counter-Rhetoric in Bioshock - Brunel Postgraduate Games Conference 2008
Panel: Rhetorics in Videogames - IAPL conference 2009

Chapters in edited editions:
Movie-Games & Game-Movies: Towards an Aesthetics of Transmediality (With Tanya Krzywinska) - Film Theory and Contemporary Hollywood Movies –Warren Buckland ed. Routledge, May 2009
World of Warcraft: the only (end)game in town - Online Gaming In Context Crawford ed. Routledge. (Publication date 31/03/2011)
Following in the footsteps of Fellowship: A Tale of There and Back Again (with Tanya Krzywinska) – Ring-Bearers: Lord of the Rings Online as Intertextual Narrative – Krzywinska, Parsler & McCallum-Stewart ed. Manchester University Press (MS submitted April 2010).

Publications

Journal Papers

(2008) Brown, D., Rez: An Evolving Analysis, Refractory 13

Book Chapters

(2011) Brown, D. and Krzywinska, T., Following in the Footsteps of Fellowship: A Tale of There and Back Again. In: Krzywinska, T., Parsler, J. and Maccallum-Stewart, E. eds. Ringbearers - The Lord of the Rings Online as Intertextual Narrative. Manchester : Manchester University Press

(2011) Brown, D., The Only (End)Game in Town: Designing for Retention in 'World of Warcraft'. In: Crawford, G., Gosling, VK. and Light, B. eds. Online Gaming in Context - The social and cultural significance of online games. Routledge -

(2009) Brown, D. and Krzywinska, T., Movie-games and Game-movies: Towards an Aesthetic of Transmediality. In: Buckland, W. ed. Film theory and contemporary Hollywood movies. Taylor & Francis -