Mark J.P. Wolf is a Full Professor and Chair of the Communication Department at Concordia University Wisconsin. He has a B.A. (1990) in Film Production and an M.A. (1992) and Ph.D. (1995) in Critical Studies from the School of Cinema/Television (now renamed the School of Cinematic Arts) at the University of Southern California. His books include Abstracting Reality: Art, Communication, and Cognition in the Digital Age (2000), The Medium of the Video Game (2001), Virtual Morality: Morals, Ethics, and New Media (2003), The Video Game Theory Reader (2003), The Video Game Explosion: A History from PONG to PlayStation and Beyond (2007), The Video Game Theory Reader 2 (2008), Myst and Riven: The World of the D’ni (2011), Before the Crash: Early Video Game History (2012),Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation (2012), The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies (forthcoming), Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood (forthcoming), Video Games Around the World (forthcoming), and two novels for which he has begun looking for an agent and publisher. He is also founder and coeditor of the Landmark Video Game book series from University of Michigan Press and the founder of the Video Game Studies Scholarly Interest Group within the Society of Cinema and Media Studies. He has been invited to speak in North America, Europe, Asia, and Second Life; has had work published in journals including Compar(a)ison,Convergence, Film Quarterly, Games and Culture, New Review of Film and Television Studies, Projections, and The Velvet Light Trap; is on the advisory boards of Videotopia, the International Arcade Museum Library, and the International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations, and is on several editorial boards including those ofGames and Culture and The Journal of E-media Studies. He lives in Wisconsin with his wife Diane and his sons Michael, Christian, and Francis.
Paper presented : "Beyond Immersion: Absorption, Saturation, and Overflow in the Building of Imaginary Worlds".