Dr. Mark J. P. Wolf is a Professor in 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 World of the D’ni: Myst and Riven (2006), The Video Game Explosion: A History from PONG to PlayStation and Beyond (2007), The Video Game Theory Reader 2 (2008), J. R. R. Tolkien: Of Words and Worlds: (2009), Before the Crash: Early Video Game History (2012), Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation (2012), Encyclopedia of Video Games (2012), The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies (First Edition, 2014; Second Edition, 2023), LEGO Studies: Examining the Building Blocks of a Transmedial Phenomenon (2014), Video Games Around the World (2015), the four-volume Video Games and Gaming Culture (2016), Revisiting Imaginary Worlds: A Subcreation Studies Anthology (2017), Video Games FAQ (2017), The World of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood (2017), The Routledge Companion to Imaginary Worlds (2017), The Routledge Companion to Media Technology and Obsolescence (2018) which won the SCMS 2020 Award for Best Edited Collection, 101 Enigmatic Puzzles: Fractal Mazes, Quantum Chess, Anagram Sudoku, and More (2020), World-Builders on World-Building: An Exploration ofSubcreation (2020), Exploring Imaginary Worlds: Essays on Media, Structure, and Subcreation (2020), and Fifty Key Video Games (2022). and two novels for which he has begun looking for an agent and publisher.

He is on the advisory boards of Videotopia, and the International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations, and several editorial boards including those of Games and Culture, The Journal of E-media Studies, and Mechademia: An Annual Forum for Anime, Manga and The Fan Arts.

He has published articles in a wide variety of periodicals, and is the founder of the Video Game Studies Scholarly Interest Group (VGSSIG) and the Transmedia Studies Scholarly Interest Group (TSSIG) of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS). He lives in Wisconsin with his wife Diane and his sons Michael, Christian, and Francis.