Matthew Thomas Payne is an Associate Professor in the Department of Film, Television, & Theatre at the University of Notre Dame specializing in the cultural history of video games. He is author of Playing War: Military Video Games after 9/11 (NYU Press, 2016), and is a co-editor of the anthologies How to Play Video Games (NYU Press, 2019), Flow TV: Television in the Age of Media Convergence (Routledge, 2011), and Joystick Soldiers: The Politics of Play in Military Video Games (Routledge, 2010). Matthew has taught a range of media studies and film/video production courses at the university level, and he has conducted industry research for Warner Brothers. He is currently working on a book project that historicizes the influence of Ultima, an early computer role-playing game. Matthew also serves as a regional director for the Learning Games Initiative, a multi-institute research collective dedicated to archiving games and gaming ephemera, and to distributing these materials to educators for classroom instruction. He adores Ms. Pac-Man and is irrationally terrified of Midwestern winters.