Espen J. Aarseth (born 1965) is a Norwegian academic specializing in the fields of video game studies and electronic literature. at the University of Bergen, and worked there until 2003, at which time he was a full professor.

He is currently a full professor and Head of the Center for Computer Games Research at the IT University of Copenhagen, and principal investigator of a €2 million ERC Advanced grant for the project Making Sense of Games. Aarseth is also the Editor in Chief of Game Studies, the oldest peer-reviewed journal in the field of game studies, and member of the advisory board of G|A|M|E, a journal of comparative videogame analysis.

Cybertext

Aarseth's works include groundbreaking Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature (Johns Hopkins UP 1997) 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 (pre-ludological) theory, "typology of cybertext" which allows ergodic texts to be classified by their functional qualities. (In Aarseth's later work with Solveig Smedstad & Lise Sunnanå this typology of cybertext transforms into "a multi-dimensional typology of games".)

  • Game Studies, an international journal co-founded by Aarseth
  • G|A|M|E, an international journal for which Aarseth is a scientific advisor
  • Making Sense of Games - ERC project