| Full name | Chris Mark Bateman |
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| Born | January 1, 1972 |
| Era | Contemporary philosophy |
| Region | British philosophy |
| School | Fictionalism |
| Main interests | Game Design, Ethics, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Science |
| Notable ideas | avatar doll, demographic game design, funnelling, breadcrumbing, orthodox science fiction |
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| Website | onlyagame.typepad.com |
Chris Mark Bateman (born January 1, 1972, Bishop's Stortford, United Kingdom) is a game designer, outsider philosopher and author, best known for the games Discworld Noir and Ghost Master, the books Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Videogames, 21st Century Game Design and Beyond Game Design: Nine Steps Toward Creating Creating Better Videogames,[1] and his eclectic philosophy blog Only a Game.[2] Bateman runs International Hobo Ltd, a consultancy specialising in market-oriented game design and narrative and has worked on more than thirty digital game projects over the last fifteen years,[3] the most recent of which is MotorStorm: Apocalypse.[4]
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Bateman was born in the United Kingdom in the historic market town of Bishop's Stortford, but moved to Ventnor, Isle of Wight before he was one year old. He spent much of his time growing up in Steephill Cove, a secluded bay on the south coast of the island, where he studied marine wildlife, snorkelled, and surfed during the winter. During one such winter, he was almost killed in a surfing accident having chosen to go out into stormy waves despite a warning flag cautioning against entering the water. He was rescued by a local crab fisherman.[5]
In 1990 he moved to Manchester to study as an undergraduate and postgraduate at Manchester University, originally in Physics with Astrophysics but later switching to Computing and Information Systems. During these years, he was a contributing writer to the magazines GamesMaster International[6] and Cryptych.[7] Practising his game design skills by producing tabletop role-playing games with Discordia Incorporated,[8] he also won a game design competition run by Task Force Games with his card game Star Fleet Officers.
Graduating with a Masters degree in Artificial Intelligence/Cognitive Science in 1995,[9] he earned a job at Perfect Entertainment in Norbury, where he worked on numerous videogames including Discworld II and Discworld Noir, for which Terry Pratchett worked as the editor.[10] His work on the dialogue for Discworld Noir was praised by The Times newspaper as one of the best games ever scripted[11] and by Terry Pratchett as "good enough to be a novel in its own right."[12]
Bateman left Perfect Entertainment in 1999 to set up his own company, International Hobo Ltd.[13] In 2000 he lived and worked in Knoxville, Tennessee, but in 2001 moved back to Manchester having married Adria Smiley, who graduated from the University of Tennessee that year. He also lived in Knoxville for 15 months while working on Turner Interactive's FusionFall game.
Ernest W. Adams, founder of the IGDA, joined International Hobo in 2001,[3] and he and Bateman have been working together along with other game designers and narrative experts ever since. In 2007, he received the IGDA's prestigious Most Valuable Player award for his contributions to the game development community, including establishing both the IGDA North West UK chapter and the Game Writers Special Interest Group.[1]
Bateman has also pursued highly-acclaimed independent research into how and why people play games. In 2009, he was invited to sit on the IEEE's Player Satisfaction Modelling task force, in recognition for his role in establishing this research domain.[14] His most recent player model, BrainHex, is based upon neurobiological principles published in his paper The Neurobiology of Play (with Doctor Lennart Nacke),[15] and the BrainHex test has been taken by more than 60,000 people.[16]
Bateman also has an abiding interest in religious belief and practice. He has travelled the world studying religious practices and beliefs, and has taken part in everything from Native American sweat lodges to Pagan solstice celebrations, as well as visiting Buddhist and Shinto shrines in Japan, and witnessing traditional tribal religions in Africa whilst living in the Sahel Reserve near the Sahara desert.[9]
His blog Only a Game deals with both philosophy and digital game theory, and contains a prolific array of articles, many of which have been featured elsewhere. Since beginning the blog, his interest in philosophy has intensified, and he recently began to achieve recognition for his work in this field. In 2009, MIT Press invited him to endorse one of their books, Joanna Zylinska's Bioethics in the Age of New Media.[17] He has interviewed Joanna Zylinska,[18] Kendall Walton,[19] Mary Midgley,[20] and Michael Moorcock[21] in connection with their philosophy and writing.
In 2011, Zero Books published his latest book, Imaginary Games, which explores the philosophy of games and addresses the question of whether videogames can be art.[22] February 2011 also saw the birth of his son, Soren Albert Bateman.[23]
In 21st Century Game Design Bateman established a new way of thinking about game design, one which focusses on the concept that professional (rather than personal or artistic) game design should be focussed towards satisfying the needs of players, thus satisfying the audience for games and ensuring the commercial stability of game developers, calling this approach demographic game design.[24] The book also includes the first typology of gamers, DGD1.[25] This model was based on Myers-Briggs typology, but later work in the same field drew from Temperament Theory.[26]
Bateman's conceptualisation of the way that digital games can, should, and do guide their players deploys the concepts of breadcrumbing, which lays out a path for the player to follow, and funnelling, which guides the player back to this path if they lose track of it.[27] These ideas have been influential, and were brought to a wider audience by game writer Susan O'Connor.[28]
In later books, Bateman has connected game design with philosophy, and particularly with Roger Caillois, whose pioneering work in play and games has been connected by Bateman to modern neurobiological research related to play,[29] and the philosopher of art Kendall Walton.[30]
Much of Bateman's philosophical writing has been concerned with "an attempt to popularise philosophy,"[31] and he has written many articles intended to bring the philosophy of Wittgenstein,[32] Nietzsche,[33] Kierkegaard,[34] Charles Taylor,[35] Kant,[36][37] and Kendall Walton[38] to a wider audience. He has also discussed the metaphysics of author Michael Moorcock in a serial[39] that the British author has praised as "one of the most coherent précis of my work."[40]
Bateman's moral philosophy is in a formative state, but is being purposefully developed towards specific goals.[31] He describes his relative ethics[41] as "an early attempt"[31] to find a modern approach to Kant's 'Realm of Ends', which he dubs communal autonomy.[36] He has summarised his current position on ethics in a novella-length blog serial entitled Enemy: A Morality Tale, written to celebrate five years of his blog[42] and dedicated to Mary Midgley.[43] He has connected Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative to the alterity ethics of Emmanuel Levinas [44] in a piece that was featured in the 121st Philosopher's Carnival.[45]
His most robust work is in philosophy of games, which springboards from Professor Kendall Walton's make-believe theory of representation.[30] His serial Game Design as Make-Believe was featured on Kotaku in May 2010.[46][47][48][49][50][51] He has expanded the application of Walton's theory to games in the context of quasi-emotions in Shadow of the Colossus[52] and also teased out distinctions between the avatar and that which prescribes the appearance of the avatar, termed the avatar doll.[53] These ideas are fully expanded in his first book of philosophy, Imaginary Games,[22] due for publication by Zero Books in late 2011/early 2012.
His adaptation of Walton's make-believe theory of representation puts him into the philosophical school of fictionalism, which in 2011 he is exploring in an ongoing 'Fiction Campaign'[54] on his blog. He has explored the relationship between astrology and fiction,[55] and suggested that science can be treated as a megatext, leading to a concept of orthodox science fiction[56] which he has used to critique the immortality beliefs of both religious and non-religious individuals.[57] His fictionalist dialogue Pluto and Eris: a dialogue[58] was featured in the 120th Philosopher's Carnival.[59]