About Me
I’ve been gaming for over 30 years and owned a few consoles, but my home is the PC. While my work gravitates towards immersive sims, strategies, and cRPGs, I’ve also written about shooters, action adventure, platformers, puzzle games, and VR.
I was born in Russia in the late 80s, moved to the UK in the late 90s, and now live near Manchester with my wife and two children. When I’m not running after the little ones or eking out time to write, I manage research and development in a large public sector organisation. I have a PhD in philosophy, specialising in analytic philosophy of language (the semantics of context-sensitive terms, if you really want to know). I’ve taught most aspects of philosophy: from formal logic and philosophy of science to the history of analytic philosophy.
In addition to writing about videogames, I’ve published a few peer-reviewed papers in philosophy and some short stories under different names.
I speak fluent English and Russian.
I approach videogame criticism the way I approached my research: it is important to understand what works and what doesn’t, why that is, and what themes are present in a piece of work. Above all, however, I try to start with the principle of charity: to attribute the best, most rational interpretation to another’s work.