Matthew Seiji Burns, writer, designer, musician (Call of Duty, Halo, Eliza). – My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin

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Matthew Seiji Burns is an American writer, director, composer, and game designer whose career has moved between some of the biggest studios in the industry and much smaller, more personal experiments in interactive storytelling. He worked as a producer at Treyarch, Bungie, and 343 Industries on franchises including Call of Duty and Halo, before spending time at the University of Washington’s Center for Game Science, exploring how games might be used for research and scientific discovery.

He later joined Zachtronics, contributing writing and music to games including Opus Magnum and EXAPUNKS, while also creating his own interactive fiction. In 2019, he created Eliza, a visual novel about an AI-assisted counselling service that explored automation and the boundaries between human empathy and technology years before those questions became unavoidable. His latest work has takenthose concerns into a different medium: Process, his debut novel, is a darkly comic and psychologically intense story set inside Seattle’s startup culture.

LINKS

Matthew Seiji Burns – website & socials

Matthew Seiji Burns – official website

Matthew Seiji Burns – Bluesky (@matthewseiji.com)

Matthew Seiji Burns – itch.io (game experiments and back catalogue)

Process – the novel

Process – hardcover edition (Tune & Fairweather)

Process – softcover edition (Tune & Fairweather)

Process – audiobook (read by the author, Audible)

Process – free digital sampler (Tune & Fairweather)

Eliza – the visual novel (2019)

Eliza – Steam