Hi, I’m Dan and I’m a writer who spent sixteen years making cult games.

I used to run the internationally acclaimed studio The Chinese Room, which I started back in 2012 with the composer Jessica Curry. We built a reputation for making games that were uncompromisingly creative and focused heavily on story and music. In 2018, I steered TCR through acquisition by Sumo Digital and stayed on as Studio Head and Creative Director, stepping back from the role in August 2023.

Under my direction, TCR established itself as one of the most interesting and restlessly creative game studios in the UK, winning a whole load of some of the most prestigious awards in the industry along the way. I created, wrote and directed the games Dear Esther, A Machine for Pigs, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, So Let Us Melt, Little Orpheus and Still Wakes the Deep.

My games have been exhibited across the world in museums and galleries and are often cited as major titles in the debate of how games are seen as art or can make significant, serious contributions to culture. I’ve been credited for inventing, or kick-starting, the walking simulator sub-genre, although I’d put a caveat or two against that particular claim.

I started playing tabletop RPGs when I was ten and spent most of my teens writing my own RPG systems and homebrew expansions to existing games like Rifts and Dark Futures. I’m an old punk at heart who loves music and books and spent a few years in the wilderness of theatre doing stage management and fight choreography; got into digital and new media arts for a while, and then started TCR whilst working at the University of Portsmouth and doing a PhD on First-Person Shooters.

As an academic, I taught game design, game narrative and new media art and published international research into games, narrative and FPS design, eventually becoming a Reader in Computer Games at UoP. I’ve given keynotes at international conferences and sat on editorial panels for conferences and journals. I currently mentor students at the National Film & Television School and give talks about game development, design and running a studio across the UK. I also mentor and act as a creative consultant to a number of small studios.

In the last few years I’ve focused on writing and am working on several projects currently. These include a debut novel and various discussions with a number of production companies about radio, film and TV adaptations of my work.