Do you live in or around New York City? Do you like good conversation and free booze? Come to a book party Persuasive Games and Eyebeam are holding in Chelsea tomorrow evening.

Even though it has been out for a few weeks, but this event is something of a launch event for my new book Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. Books will be available for purchase and signing.

There will also be a panel discussion with me, Alex Galloway (author of Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture), McKenzie Wark (author of Gamer Theory), moderated by journalist Clive Thompson.

The full, formal announcement is after the jump, but the important details are:

Date: August 1, 6 - 9:30pm
Location: Eyebeam, 540 W. 21st Street between 10th & 11th Avenues
Cost: Free

New York City, July 23, 2007 – Eyebeam brings together three leading media theorists for a
book launch and panel discussion on video games as a cultural form, following the release of
Dr. Ian Bogost’s Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames (MIT Press)
earlier this month. Alexander Galloway, author of Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture
(Minnesota, 2006) and McKenzie Wark, author of Gamer Theory (Harvard University Press,
2007) will participate in the panel, which will be moderated by The New York Times
Magazine contributor and technology writer Clive Thompson. A reception will follow the talk.

Increasingly sophisticated video games are gaining new ground and defying geographical
boundaries, with massively multi-player games creating new frameworks for shared virtual
worlds. Among the most prominent voices in the scholarly discourse surrounding gaming,
Bogost, Galloway and Wark will discuss the potential of video games in fomenting social
change and consider the significance of their growing use and popularity.

Copies of the publications will be available for purchase at Eyebeam’s bookstore. Recent
book launches at Eyebeam have included Jill Magid’s Lincoln Ocean Victory Eddy and the
Critical Art Ensemble’s Marching Plague: Germ Warfare and Global Public Health.

Dr. Ian Bogost is an Assistant Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and
Founding Partner at Persuasive Games LLC. Bogost is author of Unit Operations: An
Approach to Videogame Criticism (MIT Press 2006), recently listed among “50 books for
everyone in the game industry,” and of Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of
Videogames (MIT Press 2007). http://www.bogost.com.

Alexander R. Galloway is an author, programmer, founding member of the software
collective RSG, and creator of the data surveillance engine Carnivore. The New York Times
recently described his work as “conceptually sharp, visually compelling and completely
attuned to the political moment.” Galloway is the author of Protocol: How Culture Exists After
Decentralization (MIT, 2004), Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture (Minnesota, 2006), and
a new book co-authored with Eugene Thacker called The Exploit: A Theory of Networks
(forthcoming). Galloway currently teaches at New York University and is an Honorary
Resident at Eyebeam. http://cultureandcommunication.org/galloway/

McKenzie Wark is an Australian-born writer and scholar. He works mainly on media theory,
critical theory, and new media. His best known works are A Hacker Manifesto (2004) and
Gamer Theory (2007). Wark is currently Associate Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at
Eugene Lang College of The New School for Liberal Arts and The New School for Social
Research, and is an Honorary Resident at Eyebeam. http://www.ludiccrew.org/wark/

Moderator: Clive Thompson is a writer on science, technology, and culture. Thompson is
currently a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, and has written for Wired,
Discover, New York Magazine, and Wired News. http://www.collisiondetection.net/