Espen Aarseth

Who is Espen Aarseth?

Espen J. Aarseth is a figure in the fields of video game studies and electronic literature. Aarseth was born in Bergen, Norway, in 1965 and completed his doctorate at the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Bergen. He co-founded the Department of Humanistic Informatics at the University of Bergen, and worked there until 2003, at which time he was a full professor. He is currently Principal Researcher at the Center for Computer Games Research at the IT University of Copenhagen.

Aarseth's works include groundbreaking Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature book, which was originally his doctoral thesis. Cybertext focuses on mechanical organization of texts by placing the medium as a critical part of literary exchanges. The book introduces the concept of ergodic literature, which is a text that requires non-trivial effort to be traversed. The book also contains a well-known theory, "typology of cybertext" which allows ergodic texts to be classified by their functional qualities.