Dan Pinchbeck

The Chinese Room

Dan Pinchbeck is the co-founder and Creative Director of The Chinese Room, an award-winning game development studio based in Brighton, UK. He conceived, wrote and directed Dear Esther (2012), which is generally regarded as kick-starting the walking simulator sub-genre. He led the studio through the development of Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs (2013), Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture (2015) and the VR fairy tale So Let Us Melt (2017). In 2018, TCR joined Sumo Digital and in 2020 shipped the technicolour platform adventure Little Orpheus on Apple Arcade. Under Pinchbeck’s direction, TCR have been nominated for, and won, game awards across the board and have established an international reputation for storytelling, art, music, audio and voice acting.

Prior to starting the studio, Pinchbeck was Reader of Computer Games at the University of Portsmouth, where he got his PhD in Story and Gameplay in First Person Shooters. He also worked on game preservation research projects, made experimental mods and wrote a book about DOOM.

Selected Publications:

  • Doom: Scarydarkfast
    Pinchbeck, D, 2013, Michigan: University of Michigan Press. 224 p. (Landmark video games), https://researchportal.port.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/doom-scarydarkfast(979cec9a-6b7f-482a-b205-affd71581d7e).html
  • Meat Chunks in the Metro: The Apocalyptic Soul of the Ukranian Shooter
    Pinchbeck, D (2012). In G. A. Voorhees, J. Call and K. Whitlock (eds.), Guns, Grenades, and Grunts: First-Person Shooter Games. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, p. 63-88.
  • Shock, horror? first-person gaming, horror, and the art of ludic manipulation
    Pinchbeck, D, 2009, Horror video games: essays on the fusion of fear and play. Perron, B. (ed.). Jefferson, NC: McFarland, p. 79-94, https://researchportal.port.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/shock-horror-firstperson-gaming-horror-and-the-art-of-ludic-manipulation(a2713e28-2358-48f7-b564-2f093f625223).html
  • Trigens can’t swim: intelligence and intentionality in first person game worlds
    Pinchbeck, D, 2008, Proceedings of The Philosophy of Computer Games 2008. Gunzel, S., Liebe, M. & Mersch, D. (eds.). Potsdam: Potsdam University Press, p. 242-260, https://researchportal.port.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/trigens-cant-swim-intelligence-and-intentionality-in-first-person-game-worlds(198f0cd9-58d6-4e5d-8414-5fc458150d61).html
  • Story and recall in first person shooters
    Pinchbeck, D, 2008, In : International Journal of Computer Games Technology. p. 1-7, https://researchportal.port.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/story-and-recall-in-first-person-shooters(1c7df140-2805-4680-95c0-e92432bfb6d9).html
  • Counting Barrels in Quake 4: affordances and homodiegetic structures in FPS worlds.
    Pinchbeck, D, 2007. In Proceedings of DiGRA 2007.
  • Ludic Reality: a construct for analysing meaning-mapping and epistemology in play.
    Pinchbeck, D. 2007. Presented at The Philosophy of Computer Games, Reggio Emelia, Italy. 27-29th January 2007.

    • All Sessions by Dan Pinchbeck

    • 1. Young Academics Workshop

      Nov. 18

    • 13:00  - 14:00
      The Chinese Room’s (TCR) games have always been held in high regard for their ability to create compelling, emotionally rich and heavily atmospheric worlds. In this lecture, I’ll talk about some of the practical ways in which we go about that, and how this relates to an underpinning stance on consciousness, experience, presence and gameplay that derives from my previous life as an academic. We’ll chart the trajectories of studying VR, ritual, storytelling, early history, psychology and philosophy through to TCR’s historic design ethos. We’ll talk about how Half Life relates to Lascaux, why Dear Esther’s vision of reality comes straight from William Burroughs and why Victor Turner should be essential reading for any game designer. It’ll be a blend of personal reflection, practical application and unanswered questions that continue to inspire, annoy and occupy me as this journey into the oldest medium in the world continues.
      Where
      Zoom




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    Dan Pinchbeck