I’m thrilled to be joining Manchester Met as a Visiting Professor. I’m Senior Narrative Designer with Sony VR and a writer working across different media, specialising in digital storytelling, transmedia narrative, world-building and shared storyworlds. I’ve previously worked for Rebellion Developments on their Sniper Elite franchise and helped develop British company To Play For’s new storytelling platform. As a freelance journalist I’ve written for The Guardian, Edge, Develop, RetroGamer and PopMatters, amongst other publications.

Aside from games, my original short fiction won the first Pulp Idol award, jointly conferred by SFX Magazine and Gollancz Books in 2006. I’ve written licensed tie-in fiction for franchises such as Doctor Who, Highlander and Judge Dredd and comic material for 2000AD and Commando. I also contributed the novella ‘Dead Kelly’ to the collection Journal of the Plague Year, published in 2014 by Abaddon Books.

I’m the author of the academic book Fantastic Transmedia (Palgrave 2015), an exploration of crossmedia storytelling in science fiction and fantasy franchises such as Star Wars, Marvel, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Halo, as well as smaller independent projects. In fact I’ve written and presented extensively on game narrative and transmedia storytelling in a variety of international contexts. My PhD, exploring the interrelationship of storytelling and play in video game media using ideas of affect and memory, was conferred in 2009.